Your first canoeing or canoe trip memories

My first canoeing was in a tandem Grumman at my grandparent's summer camp on North Pond, Oxford County, Maine, when I was eight years old, but I don't have a specific memory of a first time.

I do, however, have a vivid memory of my first canoe trip on a river. I was 12. It was on the East Branch of the Penobscot River in northern Maine, beginning about 15 miles north of Grindstone and ending at Grindstone. I paddled bow, my grandfather sat in the middle, and the fellow who we were visiting guided us down the river and through some rapids from the stern. We took out at his house in Grindstone.

I thought the river paddling was exhilarating—the sun, wind, wilderness, bouncy waves . . . and the physical and mental chess match of avoiding rocks and aiming for downstream Vs. This thrill was imprinted into my young lizard brain, and exploded into an immediate whitewater addiction 25 years later when I took paddling lessons in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of northern California.

I have no memory of it but I have a picture of my parents and siblings unloading our canoe, it's marked July 1954, I'm not in the picture nor is my sister who probably took the photo. For sure I, at 1 - 4 weeks old was in a basket and no doubt was taken for a ride.

The first one I can remember well was at Picton Provincial Park (Eastern Ontario), it was an overnighter, we (my mother and I) slept on a beach underneath the canoe and endured a massive thunderstorm and lots of bugs joining us. I was probably 5 at the time.

My first time in a canoe was a day trip in what is now the BWCA in 1965, I have done an overnight trip every year since starting in 1966. Dad rented a canoe in Ely, MN and we paddled across a lake looking for a trail that Dad used when he was a kid in the 1930's. We found the trail, hiked up the river a ways that was flowing into the lake and caught our limit of crappies - I was hooked, bought a canoe before I had my first car.

About 10 years old in the old cobbled together Grumman. Friends mom dropped us off at a bridge. We floated down the river (wasn’t too far) to an area somewhere behind my friends house. Camped there one night and was terrorized by creatures of the night. We’d hear them sliding down the bank and splashing in the river. We never slept nor dared to leave the safety of the tent to investigate. All night was constant ‘Did you hear that?’. Later learned it was just otters and they really had no intentions of raiding our camp and murdering us.

We used to light off some fireworks before bed in the belief it’ll scare away all the skunks, bears, sasquatches and chupacabras. Must of worked because we never once got accosted by any of those things.

All we packed for food was hot dogs, marshmallows, Doritos and Pepsi. The river is tiny but it widens out here. Found a deep hole loaded with bass, walleye, musky, etc.

This campsite eventually became our go-to campsite..it was like Shangri-La to us. The land was owned by a corporation who would just log it off every few decades. So we had the run of the place. Eventually we cut some trails to this area. Lived out there most of my childhood like my own version of ‘My Side Of The Mountain’.

Off to college and into adulthood that land got sold off. Now under private ownership and I haven’t been back there in 30+ years. It’s still undeveloped woodland and I’m real tempted to knock on the current owners door with my tale of nostalgia and a suitcase full of cash.

I grew up paddling, camping, fishing in the ADK's with my father, uncles and an occasional cousin.
The fishing was drudgery, at least for the 4 year old me...Fishing was an all day affair, which I never cared for, but the paddling and camping I liked quite a bit.
Can't remember the earliest trips too well, never knew where we were going.
But I do clearly remember paddling by one of the tent platform campsites when I was maybe 10 or 11 years old. There were rusty LP tanks half submerged, rotting refrigerators, discarded outdoor furniture, sunken beer cans.
I can clearly recall thinking at the time "What a sh!thole".
Many years later, I realized the mess was the fantastic site on Little Long Pond (St Regis Canoe Wilderness Area).
By the time I was 14 years old, I was working and no longer had the time or inkling to go on those death march trips.

My first trip on my own, was with a fellow apprentice when we both were 20 years old. We used my (and my father's) Sportspal, it went as fast sideways as it did going forward. We went from Old Forge to Tupper Lake, the long diagonal. We took a week, stayed in lean tos when possible, my tent when not, and I rekindled my love for the ADK's and for paddling and camping. I even kept a little spiral bound notebook with trip notes. Found that notebook a few years ago when we moved into our new house.
Amazing how so many impressions from more than 45 years ago still ring true. I built my first stripper soon after, and never paddled a boomalum canoe again!!

My first experience in a canoe was in 1955, shown in the picture below on Muskrat Lake, Cobden, Ontario. I’m 7 yo, in the bow with my two older brothers behind me.
My first canoe camping experience was about 5 years later, same lake, same canoe, with a local boy my age. We paddled down Muskrat Lake and camped on a point, using a tarp off his dad’s hay mower to build a leanto. We slept on pine bogs in our blankets, ate home made bread with jam his mom gave us and roamed the bush with an antique single shot .22.

The pictures below show how my oldest cousin got started with canoes in 1942. I expect that my introduction was at a similarly young age but I haven't found any pictures to prove it.

Benson

Boy Scouts in 1960. Up the C&O Canal and down the Potomac River in Maryland.
Second one I remember was the Ausable River in Michigan a little later on vacation.

My first 'trip' was on the Allagash in 2007 at age 53 and I figured out what was missing in my life

A small kid away at a summer camp in the Ozark's of SW Missouri, I somehow ended up in the stern of a tandem canoe on a very lazy stream. It is a foggy but fond memory and probably planted the seed. I didn’t canoe again until I was a young adult.

My first experience is a little hazy, but I can remember paddling around the lake we lived on a lot as a kid. I’d usually take it over to my friends homes on the other end of the lake instead of biking around. Which was never a faster route because I’d always end up fishing along the way and be a lot later than I said I’d be. Sometimes we’d throw some camping gear in and set up camp across the lake from my house in the woods. Which is now a private subdivision with big homes. We did a lot of one night’ers.

I didn’t do any true paddle trips until later in my life. Although, we did a lot of one night trips, it was always near home. So I’m not sure that counts. I was probably ~25 when I did my first overnight trip, down the Walnut Creek in Groveport and into the Scioto river in Circleville Ohio. There was about 6 or 7 of us, mixed between canoes and kayaks. We mapped out a camp spot on a tiny peninsula midway which turned out to be better than we expected. I remember a few of us were swimming and out of nowhere a helicopter was right above us. We never even heard it until it was there, unsure if it was a Blackhawk or Apache. Probably Blackhawk? They were mere feet above us, just hanging out the side as they hovered for a few seconds then left.

It wasn’t until a few years later that I truly got into paddling for more than whitewater. And I haven’t wanted to do anything else since.

This is the only photo I have from that trip. Myself and Ethan cooling off in that summer’s heat

Boy Scout camp in the Pocono Mountains in eastern Pennsylvania in 1958. First overnight canoe camping was a few years later down the Delaware River starting above Skinner’s Falls. I was hooked and soon talked my Dad into buying a 17’ Grumman, which still resides in my brother’s barn.

I was 10 or 11 for my first canoe trip, a day trip with my scout troop up the Wood River and back in a 17' Grumman. It was the first time I had been in any boat, or in water deeper than a pool. It was fascinating, and a lot of work, especially paddling up a couple small, rocky rapids. The trip back to the take out, running my first rapids, was exhilarating. It opened a whole new world for me.

My second trip was also with the scout troop, a year later, but this time it was an overnighter on the same river with loaded canoes. Between a couple fallen trees, and no fewer than 6 dams to portage around, we were all exhausted by the time we reached camp as the sun was disappearing. We cooked dinner and set up camp (those of us that didn't pass out sitting against a tree, anyway) in the dark. The next day we cut the trip short due to rain. But from that trip I was hooked on paddling (mostly canoes, but I did have a whitewater kayak phase I went through).

My first canoe experience was in 1999 or 2000 when I was 4 or 5 years old, a creek trip somewhere in northwest Ohio with my dad in his brand new red Coleman 16-footer. I don't remember many details other than my the presence of my brother and some cousins around my age being present, and a clumsy portage around a log jam that involved my cousin Joe, 6 or 7 at the time, falling face-down in the mud.

My first canoe trip happened to end 14 years ago today, a week in the BWCA on a Youth For Christ Trip. We went in through EP 14, Little Indian Sioux River North, and spent the week on Lynx Lake, a route I've taken several times since.

That trip planted a seed inside me that lay dormant for nearly a decade until it stirred in the midst of my second deployment on USS Wasp, a grueling affair which left me starving for the freedom that I had experienced paddling through the wilderness.
On that deployment, I read every trip report I could get my hands on from this site and similar sites. I read books, studied maps, dug through every post on this forum, and when I got out of the Navy a few years later, my first purchase was a Royalex Old Town Penobscot which has been my vessel on many trips in the last few years.

My first experience in a canoe took place when I was about 10 years old. We lived on Long Island but my Mom had friends "upstate" in the Hudson Valley. We'd go up there to visit and they lived in what today would be called a golf community. There was a small lake that we could swim and fish in while there as guests. I ended up meeting another kid my age who lived there and he invited me to go canoeing with him. My Mom said it would be OK so I walked around the lake to his house and we paddled all around. I was hooked. The best part was he even let me take the canoe out solo. Of course, I sat in the stern with the bow high out of the water, acting like a weather vane with every puff of wind but it was the most exciting thing just being out there and paddling all alone. I couldn't wait to do it again.

As for my first trip; I was pressed into service by the BSA camp I worked for to take over for a staff member who had to leave for a family emergency. I typically worked on the waterfront but my new position was with the Adirondack Canoe Trip program. I remember leaving the Catskills in an old International that required double clutching to shift the gears. It took us almost 6 hours to drive what would take 3 in today's world. Anyway, we paddled upstream from Long Lake back to Old Forge over the course of 10 days. We went in this direction because our camp didn't want to pay to shuttle canoes. This economy move meant that the first & third session trips went downstream while the 2nd & 4th sessions headed upstream, back to Old Forge. Honestly, I didn't care. I was in the most beautiful place on Earth and that was fine with me.

That's all for now. Take care and until next time...be well.

snapper