Canoe trip, day 3

I forgot to mention in the previous post that Eric and I decided that conditions at the school were good for an exercise: canoe-tipping. Since neither of us has experienced this directly, we thought it might be a good idea.

All I'll say is I hope it doesn't happen, it'd be an incredible inconvenience, especially with 80 pounds of watertight bags clipped to the rails of the canoe (which we did not have in the exercise).

After saying our goodbyes to the fine folks with the bible camp at the Old Luomen School, we again took to the water. We passed onto a small but apparently deep lake, on which we caught sight for the second time of some loon:


This one was much more skittish than a whole family of them that we happily followed around for 30 minutes or more when we canoed in Minnesota. We never got within 50 feet of this one before he dove, and then eventually took off.

Late afternoon on this day found us back at Rasua Camping, with decisions to make. Do we camp at Rasua, or in free land further down the lake (which is increasingly built-up as you near Jämsänkoski)? Do we canoe further the next day, or make tracks for Tampere? In the end, we spent the rest of the afternoon canoeing around the lake, found a lovely free camp site on the far side.




We also decided to continue on the next day, doing the river portion of a route leg that ends with a large open lake traverse. This required negotiating transport with the Rasua folks, since one cannot canoe through Jämsänkoski due to the mill works.