Day 1 - Little French River (5 km)

Maps provided courtesy of Toporama which contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Canada. I have marked my route in blue and portages in red. 

Dad and I left Peterborough at 9:30 AM and pointed our car northward. There was no need for an extremely early start to the road trip since we had planned a very short paddling day. Our first day of the trip would be about getting our shuttle completed, getting on the water, and setting up camp. We had no aspirations about covering any distance on the water. 

The drive north to the French River area was uneventful, and we were pulling into Cedar Village and Marina at about 1:30 PM. 

Rob met us in the parking lot and let us know that his mother, Andrea, would be shuttling us to our put-in about an hour away. We unloaded our vehicle, parked it in a safe location, and got everything into their pickup truck. We were on the road within a half hour of arriving. 

 The shuttle took just under an hour and went smoothly. Andrea was lovely, and we had a good chat about the French River on the way to our put-in. She dropped us off, and not long after saying our goodbyes, we were on the water and paddling. I would definitely recommend using the services of Cedar Village and Marina.

Our put-in location was right where the Little French River, a northern channel of the French, began. There were some cottages and cabins adorning the shores in the area, and a few boats were darting to and fro on the water. 

We paddled westward for a few kilometres through a channel that eventually opened up into a wider bay. Three islands were located in the western corner of the bay. Our booked campsite, site 164, was on the western side of the middle island. We headed in that direction against a minor headwind. By 4:30 PM, we had arrived at our site. 

We were immediately happy with the site we had booked. It was spacious and had an amazing rocky shoreline, looking west toward the sunset and the Little French River on its westward trajectory. Within an hour, we had made camp with Dad's tent situated at the back of the site under some trees, and my hammock between two perfectly placed trees at the front of the site. 

We scrounged up some firewood, got a small cooking fire going, and made dinner. Dad brought along a couple of marinated steaks that were delicious. We washed them down with a couple of tasty beverages. 

We sat back and watched some fishing boats milling about the island throughout the evening. We thought about jumping in the canoe to also try our luck, but not seeing anyone having much success, we decided to just to hang out on the site. We were happy just to ease into the trip, catch up on things, and relax. Besides, it was almost too hot to do anything. The temperature was in the 30s, and it was humid. To assuage this, we went swimming in the lovely deep-water dropoff at the front of the site. 

As the evening wore on, the views got better when the sun began to dip over the treeline to the west. 

Despite not travelling far that day on the water, we were both tired and called it a night soon after sunset. The first day of a trip is always a little tiring from the packing, driving, unloading, and generally just getting mentally settled into transitioning into canoe tripping mode. A good rest to start the trip is always wise. It was still too hot to hang out later into the evening by a fire, anyway.

We both slept reasonably well throughout the night, despite the temperature being a little too hot for comfort.