All Things Big and Small

In just the 9 days we have been out so far we have been fortunate to see many wonderful sights. It's amazing when you spend lots of time outside how many more
Encounters you have with creatures! It's easy to forget that all these critters are always outside moving around, we just have a hard time accepting that animals, plants and insects don't
Suddenly appear when we set foot outside the door. We've seen lots of species of fish and birds. Perhaps most striking are the great trumpeter swans. Since arriving onto the Bay of Quinte
Which is quite a large body of water the number of huge carp that we see has exponentially increased. There are many turtles, deer, and cycles of insect. We've seen clouds of shad flies live out their
Ephemoral lives and this yeats fresh crop of canadian goslings. This vast tract of canadian landsape that we will are crossing is unbelievably productive. One lake, in particular Rice Lake is said to be the most densely populated
By fish lake in all of Canada! Everywhere you look 8 lb bass are jumping out of the water and thousands of perch, pickerel and sunfish swarm under the boat. We've never seen so many herons in one place ever before, it's just stunning
How much life one lake can hold. Each and every day we see something, learn something, that we haven't experienced yet. Even in the small-scal ecosystem that has developed in the water in the boat there are developing mayflies, life stages of various critters and snails.
Even when we clean up, something moves in over night, it's a fact of life. This is why we choose to travel the way we do...it's a speed that allows us to keep up with the countless miracles great and small happening every day around us.

Day 4 and feelin' fine!

Greetings all! Here we are in our little tent as the rain is starting to fall feeling very good with our progress so far. We've seen some wicked weather, been windbound for 18 hours,have several new blisters and the locks have closed down because of high water. Yep! All this amazing infrastructure so you can go hundreds of kms without getting out of your boat and we have to portage around every single one! We did 10 kms straight today because it was faster than unloading/loading the boat 6 times. But we're still making our distances and having the time of our lives. Life is pretty simple and we're settling into the trip pretty quickly. Somehow tomorrow is day 5 already! Other than being a bit red in the neck, sore on our seats and stiff in our shoulders, we've never felt better. We love you all! Over and out.

Waiting...

You'd think we would try and sleep in as many beds as we could before leaving for a 3 month trip....We've slept in our new tent for the last 3 nights in the back yard and are in love with it!  It's so clean and not covered in a million squished bugs from years of pre-bed time slaughter.

We're off to the cottage tomorrow bright and early to work on the boat if the weather holds, also to take the bulk of our row boat gear up.  Really just to try and catch the massive pike that we've seen swimming under the dock.  We'll be back for one last visit with family and friends before the ultimate departure and we're just champing at the bit for it.  Our food boxes are mostly sorted for Quebec and Labrador, we're really just puttering on trivial details.

Sunday will come soon enough, but until then.....we dream of all the peanut butter and jellies on the horizon.

Homeless, but Happy!

Drizzle, rain, drizzle, drizzle, rain. We're hoping mother nature gets her beans out in the next 6 days so the skies will clear for at least our first day.  We know we're going to see lots of liquid sunshine over our 3 months out but at least one sunny day would be great to start on!

We're a little bit more homeless today than we'd bargained for.  We've officially moved off the Danforth (YAY!) and are houseless, bouncing between all of our kind family members doing laundry, sending emails, making phone calls.  Unfortunately we got word from the gear store in Peterborough that the Nemo tent we'd ordered a few weeks ago is so back ordered that it didn't get here for May 14th.  It's unlikely to show up even before July......it's looking like we're going to have to find a Canadian Tire special after all our shopping around and research.  It will be a heck of a lot cheaper though!

So's life.  We're still smiling and not worried in the slightest about what shelter we'll end up in for the trip.  We hear blue tarps are nice!  Surely all this rain will breed enough bugs to keep us company while we sleep.

THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!

Thank you!

So many wonderful people have offered their advice, thoughts and encouragement through the planning of this trip.  We know the list will only get longer as we move through the expedtion.  Thank you everyone, we are incredibly lucky to have so many great people in our lives.

Schwaib at MEC- The first person we ever talked to about this trip...thanks for all the advice in biking!

Marla Black- For the hand-crafted, Canadian-made, travel-sized backgammon board.  We have no idea how to play the game, but we've got lots of time to learn :)

Ken Bouchard- The super awesome fellow Rossiter rower who has lent us 18 nautical charts that will take us from the cottage all the way to Quebec City!  THANKS KEN!!!!

Mum and Dad Rawley- Endless support, and never saying we were crazy. Really helping by mailing all the goodies we bought on ebay up from Maine.  One day, we'll have money to support local businesses. 

Mom and Dad Greene- SO much encouragement, lending us the Rossiter, brain storming, flares, VHF radios, a place to store our junk while we're gone, taking us to Costco...etc.  Thanks!

Joe Connoly- What a guy! We have you to thank for getting us addicted to Twitter. Also all sorts of incredible ideas.

The Grand River Keepers- Volunteering their time to shuttle our canoe for us in Labrador and lending us maps and a guide book for our canoe trip down the mighty Grand River.

Vena and Horace Goudie- For sending us Horace and Horace's mum's autobiographies of their lives in Labrador, what an inspiration!

Steve and Sandra- Two of our best friends who are driving our bikes and all our gear to Quebec City for the start of our cycling portion of the expedition.  We'd be toast without them!

Ryan Benson- For his canoe paddle and continuing the unofficial explorers book club with Dave, and also for keeping the dream alive.

Jacqueline- Thank you so much for helping us FINALLY find a tent that works for us.  What an adventure it's been just finding a tent! 6 months of research and testing and it all came down to 6 days before we leave for the expedition to find the right one.  Yay Jacqueline, good luck with school!

T-Minus 10 Days!

Soon we will be into the single digits for our countdown to shove off into the great unknown! We went for a second trial bike ride with our new gear set up and rocked it.  44 kms from Markham to Unionville, camped out and rode back 44 kms the next day.  Our food rations seem to be great and we're feeling much more confident about the whole bike-tripping thing. 

We bought a new tent!  We're super excited about a new company based out of New Hampshire, small and grassroots, Nemo Equipment is their name and simplicity of design is their game.  Just the way we like it! 

All 347 of our meals for the expedition are ready to go, weighed, sorted, rationed and packed.  The apartment is full of boxes all destined for the East.  All's left is to pack up the apartment and move, no biggie.  Rest assured, this will all get much more interesting once we've hit the proverbial road.