The Flora Burn

Day 18

We awoke and began the day with showers! We then packed up and dragged our canoe to the outfitters and left her there while we went and explored downtown Newport.

newport library

We went to the library, which was in an old beautiful building. The upstairs had great huge meeting rooms with old cushy chairs and the hallway was lined with a glass case filled with stuffed (taxidermies) animals. Then we went to a great diner called My Family Recipe Diner. Some grilled cheese sandwiches and corn chowder later we set off to a local natural food store. Its here that picked up what became one of the best additions to our food stores – powdered soy milk. It has greatly improved our morning oatmeal and our mash potatoes. We then headed to catch our shuttle. The guy doing the shuttle was a young employee of the outfitter. He obviously hadn’t loaded many canoes on trucks before but we managed to get it on – or so we thought. Turns out he hadn’t rigged up the come-along winches properly and one came off. Half way to Salem Lake Flora fell off the truck! We both saw the trip end right there. Our hearts stopped. Thank god there wasn’t any on coming traffic! Flora it turns out can really take a beating. She was in fine shape and we tied her back on (Mahsa and me taking the lead on securing her). We made it to the lake with out anymore trouble and with relief said goodbye to the shuttle.

We again checked over Flora for any damage and found none. She really is a trooper. As we were loading up and preparing to set off across the lake a summer day camp unleashed upon the lake and dozens of kids suddenly swarmed the lake in kayaks. It was total chaos! Hilarious chaos! Most of the kids were tiny and totally dwarfed by the kayaks. We watched the mess for a while before finally setting out.

The wind on Salem Lake was strong and blowing right into us. It took forever to cross a 2 mile lake! After Salem Lake was a small pond and then the Clyde river. The Clyde is narrow, fast moving and littered with blow downs and as usual we were going up stream – which made it even more difficult to navigate. We got to a turn with a couple of blow downs back to back, so we deicide to try and find a way around. Morrigan went into the brush to find a possible portage around and in the process stepped on a hornets next. She ran frantically towards the canoe, where Mahsa yelled for her to jump in and PADDLE! Paddling was hard given that the hornets were still attacking Morrigan, bighting her hands and arms. We made it to a small bank where Morrigan leapt out and looked like she might throw up. We frantically pulled out the first aid kit and applied sting relief to the 12+ bites. At this point we decided that we had had enough of the clde and we were going to pull out and hit the road to the next pond. We really weren’t that far from when we’d have to pull out anyway. We managed some tricky maneuvering around the strainers and up the river to another bend. Here we found a place to pull out of the water next to an oozing pile of garbage.

the oozing garbage pile

It was nasty and smelled of stale and rancid beer. Once we had gotten through the garbage and up onto the road we walked along the road stopping at Kathy’s Corner Store where we got some snacks to help us through our rather arduous day: tuna helper, canned beats, ice cream bars. Kathy also gave us some much needed encouragement telling us she was so proud of us girls (we were the first team of all girls she’d seen come thru attempting the trail). The guys out front were also great (in fact hilarious). One guy was the leader (the wise man who knew the most), the guy with the fly swatter who interjected when needed, and the guy who offered comic relief (who also had a miniature American Eskimo dog who barked at cars coming into the gas station). From here we portage uphill and over rapids which were much harder then advertised. WE made it to our put in and paddled across a small, lovely pond to a camp site. We had tuna helper for Mahsa’s b-day dinner. That night we didn’t flip the canoe or put up the tarp since everyone it wasn’t going to rain. But of course it did. In the middle of the night a loud clap of thunder ushered in the rain that would last all night.