And so it begins..

Hey, I am Jim and the picture below is Gerry. This is my first attempt at logging everything that goes into planning our annual canoe trip through Algonquin Park, located in Ontario , Canada.

I live in Newcastle, Ontario with my wife of 8 years and our 3 kids. Newcastle is a small town and I would not have it any other way. My canoe partner and best friend Gerry is also my neighbor. He is also married and has 3 children of his own. Having my buddy live as close as he does is very cool and that is just another reason why I love my little piece of suburban paradise.

It was Gerry that first introduced me to what canoe camping was all about. The fist time I went on an Algonquin trip was in August of 2005. We spent five days on an island on Cedar Lake and on day 3 we did a portage up the Petawawa River to see the small and large waterfalls. The portage was a smaller one (715 m) , but it gave both Gerry and I a taste of what doing a "real" canoe trip would be like. As we returned from the falls and dipped our 75 lb Gruman aluminum canoe back into Cedar Lake, both of us vowed that next year we would plan + complete a serious interior canoe trip and along the way, earn back our camping self respect. We then paddled back to camp, plugged the radio into our portable power generator, pulled our lawn chairs up to the Coleman coolers and started to plan.