Day 9

Day 9
Last night brought more rain showers but we woke dry and rested in Sandy and Jeff's pop up camper in the yard. At 7:15 Sandy had a wonderful breakfast ready, blueberry pancakes, Jeff's homemade maple syrup, scrambled eggs and cantaloupe. We made quick work of eating and rushed out the door to load our boats. As we were preparing to shove off towards Grand Rapids Sandy greed to help Shawn with a on going problem of his. Shawn, who I like to call Noah because his boat contains two of everything, asked Sandy to ship home a small mountain of gear for him. Relived of a few pounds dead weight we headed out into the marsh with slick waters and no wind.
The fist leg of the trip today was 16 miles to the tiny river town of Cohasset. The river was about 40 yards wide and again made half mile straight runs with almost no current but also no wind. The last 4 miles a slight tail wind picked up and it felt like flying to shoot along at 5 plus miles per hour. We covered the 16 miles to the boat ramp in just over 5 hours. Shawn stayed with boats while Joe and I made a quick walk to the A&W for to-go burgers and fries. From Cohasset it is a quick 2 mile paddle to Grand Rapids and the portages.
Grand Rapids has two dams within the town. The first is on the northern edge of town and requires a 50 yard portage of boats and gear, the second is at a local paper plant and requires a 400 yard portage down busy city streets. The paper plant had offered a free portage around both dams until they sold the turbine and generator segment to the local power company a few years ago. Recently the power company has had to cut extra services including the portage service. Guess who works at the power company? yep Jeff. When Jeff found out the portage service was being canceled he and Sandy agreed to take over as unpaid volunteers. Jeff brought the canoe trailer to the dam after getting off work. We loaded all our gear and boats on and down the road we went. Along the way Jeff stopped at both the local sporting goods store and the grocery store so we could grab our first real resupply in 9 days. Our last stop was the camp site located in a green space next to the library and park. Shortly after setting up camp we had a visit from another local River Angel. I can not remember his name but he is the supervisor for the next section of river. He was nice enough to answer all our questions about the upcoming miles. Just before turning in the three of us reflected on the flurry of activity of the last 24 hours compared to the slow, quiet, remote week before. From what we understand we are heading back out into another remote area for the next 5 to 7 days.