Colonial Fireside Inn Pembroke

A mere 400 or so miles later I pass into very familiar territory, the Ottawa Valley. Rolling farm fields, barn smells and small towns after you bypass Ottawa (which has a charming hostel - the old Ottawa Jail right in the downtown).<br>There's a fiddle festival going on over the Labor Day weekend. It's become a phenom now after several years. The riverside park fills with rvs and bodies. Nice location.

... visitors because the lady in charge started asking us about why we were here and what we were taking pictures of her restaurant for.<br><br>We found out the stools were "original" from way back in the day. And we also found out where the famous covered bridge is. Earlier Tim told us it was a two hour drive away! Not so, it is just down the street. <br><br>After chowing down on a lunch special of burger and fries, we headed off to the covered bridge. Yep, there it is, the ...

Phew, where can I start? First of all,sorry that I haven't written anything for a while. After my last entry we were whisked off for a week to camp by the Ottawa River next to a rapid called Lower Olstroms. There we did swiftwater rescue training, whitewater canoeing and a lot of swimming in the river. We set up tension diagonals, rescued people from the other side of the river using spinal boards and canoes lashed together and generally got very wet. We ran the whole ...

The last two days have been spent rafting on the main channel of the Ottawa River. We learnt the basic guide strokes and techniques, including several flip drills and lots of ferrying and breaking into and out of eddies. It's very hard work - much harder than it looks - and I'm aching a lot now. After learning the basic strokes we paddled down to the main ...

... to stabilise the stick whilst we moved her out of the river and onto an insulating mat. We wrapped her in blankets while we stopped the bleeding and stabilised the stick with bandages. We managed to cut off her wet clothes and dress her in our spare dry clothing. Karine and Karine assessed the patient whilst I tried to radio for help and sent Scott and Trish back for a basket stretcher to carry her out. The evacuation was long and ...

I have made a rolling contract with Karine C. This means that whenever I want to practice my roll she has to go out on the river and help me but whenever she decides I should go out and practice I have to go. If we have time we are going to practice tomorrow afternoon after class. I'm not sure how much time there will be though, as we are doing a night search and rescue tomorrow. I'm really looking forward to that.

Christmas came at last this morning and we got some of the gear which we ordered so that everyone had enough to go paddling. We were supposed to be doing day two of the Wilderness First Responder, but Jim (who is supposed to be teaching it) broke down on his way back from Northern Quebec and was stranded 7 hours away, so we had kayak school day one instead! We loaded up boats from The Stick and brought them back on the bus before unwrapping them (see, just like ...

... to get out on the river this afternoon before dinner to practice my roll. I told her I don't have one but her and Siedsel (from Denmark) stood in the bay with me and helped turn me back up when it all went wrong. Siedsel paddles Greenlandic kayaks and can roll in many different ways, including with no hands or paddle! Anyway, I spent a long time ...

... a misunderstanding. I think that the more times I swim, the easier it gets and I will gradually lose my fear. It was a good day. WILD started in the evening with an all you can eat pizza buffet and lots of paperwork, rules, information and getting to know people. I think everyone has arrived now, but there are 25 so it's hard to keep track. They all seem very nice and I have been assigned a very small tent with a girl called Cailyn. *Still no Davidson. :(

... good to be back on the river. This time, though, I was looking at it with fresh eyes - seeing the stoppers and waves, looking for the eddies and wondering what line I would take. The water is huge though, much bigger than I remember. After lunch it was the Main Channel. No Buseater at this level, but Coliseum was at a runnable level. We had four rafts in the river and the coliseum flip rate was 50%. Only one actually made it ...