29 July: Day-49, Total-53; Miles-38, Total-1780
– Chuck
At 10am Bill was cooking his meal of the day and I started working
on yesterday's Journal entry. Later, I whipped up some scrambled eggs,
smoked salmon and onions. This with instant mashed potatoes & onions
was great. It was all washed down with a couple of large mugs of coffee
while Bill worked on his diary.
We cleaned some gear, organized the cockpit of our canoes and were off.
It was a clear day with a partial cloud cover and a light breeze.
I plugged the coordinates for Pilot Village into my GPS and we paddled
in that direction. As it is more and more prone to do, the river widened
with large bays and long wide turns. It is often three or four miles
across. And, to further confound navigation, it is sometimes dotted
with islands creating multiple channels.
Somehow, we never spotted Pilot Village. We are back on a 1:1,400,000
map and it is impossible to extract precise coordinates. Plus, with
no detail, the village could be up a side stream a mile or more but
still be depicted as on the river. Also, the village could have been
abandoned years ago with little trace of it remaining.
Bill was able to sail some of the time and at other times he would paddle,
with the sail providing a welcome assist. He had to tack much of the
day, so I paddled a straighter course along the right bank. On a rare
downwind run, I paddled alongside and we talked until a bend in the
river or a wind shift would force Bill to tack in a zigzag course again.
As we paralleled a sandy shore, I saw a beautiful red fox trotting along
far ahead of us. The sun sent long shafts of light through the clouds
in the Northwest. The fox enjoyed one of these shafts as it patrolled
the shoreline.
We had decided to paddle until about 10:30pm then look for a campsite.
At 10:15pm, I found a small cove with sand banks and a large flat area
with knee-high vegetation. I radioed Bill that we had a home for the
night and a few minutes later he sailed around the bend and tacked into
our little harbor.
After pitching our tents, I had a couple of "Alaska" beers
with smoked salmon and chatted with Bill. A stiff breeze kept the bugs
someplace else as low light shining over the horizon and reflecting
off high clouds made for a spectacular sky. It was a good day.