FAMILY AND FRIENDS

CANOEING, TRAVELING AND MORE

 

WELCOME!

Sharon and Bill welcome you to our 'Digital Scrapbook'. As with any scrapbook, it is a work in progress. Some chapters are finished, some are being worked on and some probably will never be "finished". Like any scrapbook, some are set out on the coffee table for all visitors to see while others are kept on the family room bookshelves to be shown once and awhile. So whether friends, family or someone just stopping by, we hope you enjoy.

SCRAPBOOK
Boundary Waters Fur Trade Route (2000)
Elk-Thelon Rivers, NWT (2001)
Peace River (2003)
2008 David Thompson Brigade
Blue Lake Provincial Park (Old Guys Trip) (2012)
Churchill/Sturgeon-Weir River (2013)
Barren Lands, NWT (2013)
March Canoe Trip (2014)
North Saskatchewan River Canoe Trip (2014)
Missouri Canoeing (2015)
White Otter Wilderness (Old Guys Trip) (2015) 		Headwaters Missouri River (2016)
Canoeing Pictures (2016)
Celebrating Canada's Sesquicentennial (2017)
Canoeing Montana's Yellowstone River (2018)
Habitat for Humanity on PEI, Labrador Coast and more... (2019)
New Mexico Scout History Projects
  • Los Alamos Scout History
  • Order of the Arrow Lodge 66 Patches
  • Lodge 66 Trails Program
  • Troop 22 Northern Tier High Adventure Base Canoe Trips
    • Family Stuff*
    *Password required (uses pop ups)

    Sometimes we, and others, wonder why we love canoeing so much. Douglas Wood in his book Paddle Whispers (Pfeifer-Hamilton Publishers, 1993, p 107-115) states that a canoe trip can be "an endlessly repeated exercise in various modes of misery [portaging, paddling, pull-overs, wadding, lining, the list goes on], each one a contrast--therefore, a relief, albeit tempoary--to the misery preceding it." He then asks "So why . . . why go through it? Why even be here?"

    Wood says "The second answer is easy. Because 'here' is where the beauty is. Here is where the sunsets are. Here is where the campsites and campfires are, and the clear, deep waters and the loons, and the pines, and the islands. And yes, the storms and the big winds and the rapids. Here is where the journey is.

    "But why go through it? Why do I . . . why do I go through it? I think because no one else can go through it for me. And because the modern city-world system uses people to get work done. Important work, supposedly. That's the whole idea. That's why we get paid. But here--here I'm using work . . . to get myself done. What better work is there than that?

    "Or maybe . . . maybe it's enough to say that I am here, as another voyageur once put it, 'to iron out the wrinkles in my soul.'

    "And maybe it is only on the trail to nowhere-in-particular that you find the most important thing of all. Yourself."

    Camper on Trans Labrador Highway
    Log book for oldest active geocache in the world at Colby, Kansas
    Lining canoe around Churchill River's Grand Rapids
    Taken from where we got married on
    the Blaeberry River, British Columbia
    Yellow River from cabin porch
    PICTURE CAPTIONS
    David Thompson/Charlotte Small statue
    Invermere, British Columbia
    Rideau Canal on Canada Day 2017
    North Canoe Missouri Headwaters
    Barren Lands, NWT lake
    Barren Lands' rainbow

    Can You Canoe?

    "Everyone must believe in something. I believe I'll go canoeing." (Henry David Thoreau)

    "I PADDLE because the voices in my head tell me to" (Adobe Whitewater Club of New Mexico t-shirt)

    "Canoes are like good friends, you can't have too many" (Cliff Jacobson)

    "You can't buy HAPPINESS, but you can buy a CANOE...and that's pretty close" (From decal sold by Northern Tier trading post, Boy Scouts of America)

    "What sets a canoeing expdeition apart is that it purifies you more rapidly and inescapably than any other. Travel a thousand miles by train and you are a brute. Pedal five hndred miles on a bicycle and you remain basically bourqeois. Paddle a hundred miles in a canoe and you are already a child of nature." (Pierre Elliot Trudeau...display at Canadian Canoe Museum)

    "The paddle whispers, the canoe glides. So much water, so little time" (Bill's e-mail signature)

    On 2008 David Thompson Brigade