Day 18: Burnt Church, NB to Miramichi, NB

Today was by far my longest day yet. It was also my first time to have someone kayaking with me. As usual, I got off to a late start (around 7:20 in this case), and then met up with Herman Koops on the water near the Burnt Church wharf. After praying our way past Burnt Church, we had a long haul past the peat bogs and forest to the summer cottage areas of Oak Point and The Willows. The sound of thunder made us hurry up our pace toward Sheldrake Island. Herman knew the man who has a cottage on the island, so we sort of made our selves at home and signed the log book that he keeps out for visitors. Some advantages of having a partner were that he brought me some nice sandwiches to eat and had a GPS mounted on the kayak to track our speed. He also had lots of local insight and stories about several of the houses along the way. The biggest challenge of paddling with him was just to keep up with his faster kayak. One interesting part of the paddle was when we happened to run into an old friend of his out in a kayak that he hadn’t seen in a couple years.

After lunch on Sheldrake Island, we continued pressing on toward Middle Island, which is pretty much the entrance to the city of Miramichi. There had been rumors that we might have a radio station meeting us at Middle Island, though the slightly inclement weather and a big rock’n’roll festival decreased the chances of it. In any case, we did meet up with another member from Herman’s church. Then we hurried up to shuttle the kayak up to Red Bank for another 10 mile paddle (which actually turned into at least 12 miles). Herman drove me up to where we could put in from someone’s back yard and begin fighting against the east wind. We’d planned to pull out at the Eel Ground First Nation Reserve, but I missed seeing where Herman pulled out and ended up taking out at the big highway bridge. So I ended up with well over 30 miles (or 50 km) for the day. We were both pretty worn out and ready for a rest. It was a huge blessing to have a nice place to sleep for the night in a church.
Partner churches: Sovereign Community Church