Retired after 38 years

My yellow Perception "Chattooga" purchased new in 1975 has finally retired from river duty. It was still a viable boat but at 85 lbs I couldn't flip it up over my head like old times. Virtually indestructible, it has some nasty scars but was built to last with metal gunwales, metal thwarts (7 of them including the seats) and the thickest ABS plastic I've ever seen.

These first 6 photos are from our July 1980 paddle on the Allagash Waterway in Maine. Two college buddies, Jim and Patricia joined us. No kids to worry about yet - Amanda was born 9 months later

From my notes on this trip, we saw many moose and most barely acknowledged our presence. We also saw mink, fox, beaver, loons, ravens and the usual suspects - deer and pesky squirrels.

It is not raining in any of these photos, but my notes remind me it rained everyday and we were really wet even at night. The black flies were a nuisance. We wore head nets while on land. 

Before heading out, we decided to leave all timepieces behind and see how we managed. Nanci found this difficult and was prone to ask other paddlers what time it was. There was only one time when we ended up cooking supper after sunset.

Looks like we had a pile of gear, even a cooler. At Jim and Patricia's home we picked blueberries and brought them fresh on the trip. The first morning I made blueberry pancakes with fresh blueberries heated in maple syrup.

Now we're back the days of black and white film. If you are wondering if Nanci ever paddles, the answer is "rarely". 

Merchants Millpond State Park has a primitive canoe camping area. At night we hung one lantern at the camp and took the other in the boat for a night paddle. It would have been easy to have gotten lost but we kept the camp lantern in sight all the time so we'd find our camp.

Amanda and Nanci paddle on Deep River. When Amanda was still a baby, we paddled Deep River with her in her car seat, unstrapped of course. There are about a dozen class one riffles on that stretch too.

So here is where my canoe has retired to. It remained in this state for a couple months until I was able to collect some wood for a fence from my longtime canoe partner, John Ferree. John had taken apart an old deck and tossed the lumber in pile to rot. It was salvaged and pressure washed and the the fence was built.

I have beans, cucumbers, bee balm and mint growing in the canoe right now. You might also note I painted the house during the canoe garden construction. 

Happy Retirement