Con't Past Exerience

At the end of that day we were just getting on to the Petawawa River. Which is probably the longest river in Algonquin Park. Its also one of the most fun, because of its easy rapids.

At this point my dad and I decided to skip most portages and attempt to ride the rapids in our canoe filled with stuff. I must say I was a little nervous at first, but after a couple I started to gain some confidence in my dads skills as a canoeist. Unfortunately during on of those fateful rapids, we got pinned on a rock sideways horizontal to the river, so we had the entire pressure of the river pushing on the entire side of our canoe onto this one rock. We were lucky that we decided to get the Kevlar canoe because if we hadn't any other canoe would of snapped in half. My dad told me even for being so young I didn't panic, I listened to what needed to be done and we managed to get off the rock safely. Was definitely on of the scariest moments on the entire trip

We continued down the Petawawa the fourth and fifth day. On the fifth day we came upon some fairly large rapids, where we saw a fairly hardcore couple sitting on the shore looking at the rapids. I say hardcore because they were dressed up in all river gear and whitewater canoing stuff. My dad just hopped out and scouted the rapids, and figured it looked safe so we hopped in and took off down the rapids. As we started we accidentally ended up spinning and going down the rapids backwards. It must of been quite a site for that couple seeing my dad wearing no life jacket and his son who's eight sitting calmly in the front smiling waving as we go pass them.

The remainder of the trip was a series of rapids quick decisions and current guiding. If it wasn't for all my fathers past experiences this trip could of ended up way worse, but because of him it gave me a whole new profound look at outdoors. Thats most likely the reason why I decided to go to the course Outdoor Adventure at Algonquin College. I want to experience the thrill of the outdoors, like how I did with my dad.

Past experience

When I was eight years old, my father and I went on a week long canoe tripping adventure through Algonquin park. This was my first real outdoor experience. My father chose to put in at Grand lake and for the first day we paddled north till we got to the longest portage in the entire park, almost six and half kilometers.

The funny thing though was that traversing that portage turned out to be easier than the one we had to do the next day. The biggest reason for that was, even though the longer one was farther and had a lot of elevation changes, there was fresh spring water bubbling out of the ground all up the trail and down the trail. That was the best water I have ever had in my entire life.

The second day portage was about five and half kilometers, but was very hard. The reason for that was due to the fact that there was no water during the whole trek. The only water source we found was a swamp which we had to strain then purify before even thinking about drinking it. It tasted awful, but it hydrated us enough to finish the portage.

On the third day we were slightly ahead of schedule so we rested on White Partridge Lake (which was beautiful). Took the chance to relax and regain energy from previous portage's. Mostly just swam and slept in the lake. Once we had our rest we took off up north again and did a smaller 2.2 kilometer portage. After that we had about 8-12 kilometers of creek to traverse, which was a spectacular voyage.

There is so many living things in forest, I saw so many little bugs and insects, and as well as a majestic moose. Even though it was slow going through the creek it was a nice peaceful pace to kind of get a chance to really experience what the outdoors have to offer.

Thats just the first three and half days of my trip, next week I shall finish the trip off.