We started our journey at Lake Francis, NH, a man-made reservoir far to the north. While portaging through Pittsburg, the first of many one stoplight towns, we could see the Canadian border at the end of the road. After Murphy Dam there is a long stretch of quick water that we were not confident in paddling due to this being our first canoe trip. Luckily for us, an experienced angler gave us quite the peptalk. While the words have faded, the general message was: You won’t destroy your canoe, you might get wet, I’m 70 what’s your excuse? And with those bracing words we set off. I am happy to report that while we got spun around a few times, we never flipped, and are now experienced at class 1 through 3 rapids. We finished off that day seeing our first covered bridge, portaging around a bad set of falls and dam, before spending the night at a campground in West Stewartstown.
Storms pepered the next day, but we managed to stay in a blue sky bubble for most of it. The river has many primitive one tent campsites along its shores. Well marked and always welcome, these and sandbanks are our go-to locations for spending the night. While each have their pros and cons, sandbanks are generally preferred due to less mosquitoes, soft sand, and sweeping vistas. That night while on a sandbank we realized that the pile of logs across the river was not a log jam, but a beaver lodge. While we were interested, they were not pleased to have neighbors and smacked their tails as warning many times.
We then entered an extremely squiggly portion of the river where oxbow lakes are common. While picturesque, these squiggles prove exhausting in their length and lack of current. This portion showed its age as old bridge abutments, breached dams, and log cribs were common. Log cribs are artificial islands used to create log jams to control their movement downstream to the timber mills. Have you ever seen a pile of rocks over 200 years old?
Our spirits and weather are great and we will be stopping in a town soon to do some laundry. Meanwhile hopefully the river straightens out a tad so we can rack up the miles easier.

Now to list all the animal friends we’ve seen!

Speckled Sandpipers, Bank Swallows, Bald Eagles, Ospreys, Ravens, Red Breasted Mergansers, Canadian Geese, Snow Geese, many other birds we don’t know, Beavers, Otters, Black Bear, Cows, Frogs, Baby Fish, and the whole gambit of Dragonflies, Butterflies, and other insects