A Journey in Pictures

I've waxed lyrical about my trip down Maine's St. Croix River in this space previously, so I'll spare you the deep meaning and purple prose. Just the facts after this, my third trip down the 40-ish mile paddle from Vanceboro to Princeton, ME with the U.S. on one side and New Brunswick, Canada on the other (with a 75+ mile paddle up the Allagash River Waterway thrown in for fun).

We put our canoes in the water in Vanceboro and paddled about five hours to our first campsite at Little Falls. Couple of cool views here, one of the falls, and one of the view from my tent the first morning on the river.

Rolled another five hours or so down to Loon Bay on day two. The river was running on the low side in places, so the eagles and fish heard a good number of creaks and groans - both from our bodies and from the undersides of our canoes scraping the riverbed.

Dealt with some headwinds on day three as we paddled through a wider section of the river, but made it to Turtle Point on the Canadian side without much incident. We did meet one of the locals after we pulled into camp, which was cool.

Just a short four miles across a lake took us to our takeout spot on the final day. Little bit of breeze made it a modest challenge, but the paddle took just over an hour. Caught this sunset at my uncle's brother's compound in Grand Lake Stream - not a bad coda to a serene and timely break from the world.

Just five us on this trip down the river. From left to right, Jason (he's a middle school principal in Massachusetts and my cousin Steve's cousin from a different side of the extended family), Sean (who works on the facilities team at a prep school in Massachusetts and is also a cousin of Steve and Jason's), me (who you know all too well), my cousin Steve (who teaches at a prep school in Connecticut - that's a theme in our family), and my sister's husband Scott (who works for CSX Transportation in Jacksonville). An excellent blend of dudes who enjoy dishing out a good ribbing and can take one in return and who don't shirk the necessary work that accompanies a few days in the wild. I consider myself blessed to have these opportunities.