Super Good Camping Podcast
Hi there! We are a blended family of four who are passionate about camping, nature, the great outdoors, physical activity, health, & being all-around good Canadians! We would love to inspire others to get outside & explore all that our beautiful country has to offer. Camping fosters an appreciation of nature, physical fitness, & emotional well-being. Despite being high-tech kids, our kids love camping! We asked them to help inspire your kids. Their creations are in our Kids section. For the adults, we would love to share our enthusiasm for camping, review some of our favourite camping gear, share recipes & menus, tips & how-to's, & anything else you may want to know about camping. Got a question about camping? Email us so we can help you & anyone else who may be wondering the same thing. We are real people, with a brutally honest bent. We don't get paid by anyone to provide a review of their product. We'll be totally frank about what we like or don't like.
Super Good Camping Podcast
Beauty Of The Backcountry drop by for a Super Fun Chat!!!!
We had so much fun on this one! We literally spent over 2 hours laughing our butts off, with a side of technical issues.
We're definitely having them back to tell us all about that Steel River trip & Jay's music.
Originally recorded on June 22, 2023
Check out the video version here for some behind-the-scenes: https://youtu.be/Rc3qAQBuEmo
Check their amazing content out here:
http://www.youtube.com/@UCwxe918_wWN97tshWM9aWIQ
https://www.jaycasemusic.com/
https://www.facebook.com/beautyofthebackcountry
https://www.instagram.com/beautyofthebackcountry/
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00:00 - 00:01
Hello, and good day, eh?
00:01 - 00:04
Welcome to the Super Good Camping podcast. My name is Pamela.
00:04 - 00:04
I'm Tim.
00:04 - 00:05
And we are from supergoodcamping.com.
00:06 - 00:10
We are here because we're on a mission to inspire other families to enjoy camping adventures
00:10 - 00:12
such as we have with our kids.
00:12 - 00:17
Today's guests are a pair of absolutely awesome people, which seems to be the norm for the people
00:17 - 00:19
we've met in the outdoor adventure community.
00:19 - 00:21
They hail from Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada.
00:22 - 00:26
They escape civilization at every opportunity and often do it in a canoe while experiencing
00:26 - 00:29
the breathtaking beauty of Northern Ontario.
00:29 - 00:33
They rack up plenty of hiking mileage and occasionally get out to their off grid cabin.
00:33 - 00:42
Nature, adventure, creating art, welcome Jay Case and Sherry Tuck from Beauty of the Backcountry. Welcome. Hey.
00:42 - 00:43
Hi, friends.
00:43 - 00:43
Hi, guys.
00:43 - 00:45
Thank you for having us.
00:45 - 00:45
Oh, thanks
00:46 - 00:47
for coming out.
00:47 - 00:49
We're excited. We're longtime listeners.
00:50 - 00:50
Yes.
00:50 - 00:56
Ever since we met you guys, we've been just we have your episodes just sort of going when we're
00:56 - 01:00
driving to a camp a camping trip or driving to work sometimes. Yeah.
01:00 - 01:01
Yeah. Cool.
01:01 - 01:06
We we were lucky enough to meet, Sherry and Jay at, after the outdoor adventure show here in Fremont.
01:06 - 01:07
2023 Yeah.
01:08 - 01:08
Because we
01:08 - 01:09
don't know when this one's gonna episode.
01:09 - 01:11
So get it again in the air.
01:11 - 01:13
Maybe next year around that time. Probably.
01:13 - 01:19
Yeah. And, I mean, we met all kinds of people at the show, which was just an amazing thing.
01:19 - 01:24
And we just my mind is still blown, not that it takes much.
01:24 - 01:26
And it felt it I don't know.
01:26 - 01:34
For me, if sitting there having a beer, wings, whatever, it just it felt like a very great connection right away. Just like, oh, yeah.
01:34 - 01:39
We're totally we love what you guys do and it's taken forever to get you here because you're so busy being outdoors.
01:40 - 01:43
Yeah. That's right. Yeah. We don't have many friends here.
01:44 - 01:46
Yeah. Not jealous at all.
01:47 - 01:48
What do you guys been up to lately?
01:48 - 01:55
What's what's what's been new and wonderful in, I guess, it would be the spring oh, no. Yesterday no. Today is 21st? This
01:56 - 01:57
so summer started today. Today.
01:57 - 01:59
Okay. So summer started yesterday. Yeah.
01:59 - 02:03
What's your spring been, for 2023? Oh, it's been interesting.
02:04 - 02:10
It is. We've had we've had a little bit of a family issues, so it started off slow for us.
02:10 - 02:16
But, it ended up plans got changed, and it ended up for the best.
02:16 - 02:24
I mean, we did a we did a really nice, we canoe locally on the river just for our mental health
02:24 - 02:27
break, which is nice, and it's just around the corner for us.
02:27 - 02:35
And then we did a beautiful, 4 day trip on the Sand River, which is located in Lake Superior Provincial Park.
02:35 - 02:42
Yeah. Yeah. We, we we get out as often as we can, but more recently, we've had, some we've been
02:42 - 02:45
having to travel more than we typically do.
02:45 - 02:51
And so we haven't been able to get out so we had to move this trip and when this is being recorded,
02:51 - 02:58
tomorrow we are driving north, we live on Lake Superior but we're driving north on Superior
02:58 - 03:05
for 5 and a half hours to start a a 170 kilometer trip that we were supposed to do last month.
03:06 - 03:09
So just we were supposed to do it just before bug season Yeah.
03:09 - 03:11
And now we're doing it right in front of
03:11 - 03:14
bug season. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
03:16 - 03:18
So we like to Yeah. Sorry?
03:18 - 03:23
It kinda worked out okay, though, because we were planning end of May to do this trip, and apparently,
03:23 - 03:24
the lakes were still frozen.
03:25 - 03:26
Oh, no kidding.
03:26 - 03:32
We ended up doing a 4 day low like closer and had a great trip there.
03:32 - 03:38
Yeah. I was I we reached out to John from, Lost Lakes and just asked him because he lives in
03:38 - 03:45
Marathon, which is near, where we are starting our journey and he's done the loop a couple of
03:45 - 03:46
times and he I just said, hey.
03:46 - 03:48
How are the conditions up there?
03:48 - 03:55
And he actually just happened to go out in his vehicle a few days before to just check conditions, and he's like, no. No.
03:55 - 03:56
There's ice still on the lakes.
03:57 - 04:02
So at the time we had planned, we might have we might have run into some adverse conditions,
04:03 - 04:08
more adverse than initially thought, so it worked out I think well. Mhmm.
04:08 - 04:15
Cool. Yeah. And if I'm not mistaken, I saw him duck out post post knee surgery recovery.
04:16 - 04:23
He just he just went off and did it like a down a logging road kind of a deal, and I saw him pulling up snow. I was like, what? I'm Yeah. Yeah.
04:23 - 04:27
Watch going, okay, down here in Toronto? Yeah. No. No. No.
04:27 - 04:33
Yeah. Up up there on the north tip of Superior, it's a bit a bit of a delayed onset of spring,
04:33 - 04:37
And that's we had reached him just after he had finished that little trip.
04:37 - 04:44
And, so he was kind enough to give us a couple of alternate options and we ended up just moving
04:44 - 04:46
it to, to this this week this week coming.
04:47 - 04:48
So walk us through your trip.
04:49 - 04:51
The trip upcoming. Yeah. Yeah.
04:52 - 04:54
Oh, it's, it's it's exciting.
04:54 - 05:01
So it's called the Steel River Loop, and it's been made sort of famous or infamous as the case
05:01 - 05:06
may be by few different authors and a few different YouTubers actually as well.
05:06 - 05:11
Most notably, I would say, like, Kevin Callan's got this, wonderful book. It's our little Bible.
05:11 - 05:15
It's the, a guide to, Ontario's lost canoe routes.
05:16 - 05:22
And so because we we tend to like to get off the beaten path and into the we don't mind bush bushwhacking.
05:22 - 05:26
We don't mind, unkempt portages and things like that.
05:26 - 05:34
So that and Cliff Jacobson is another guy who who's done it a 1000000 times, but we you start
05:34 - 05:42
just sort of east of Terrace Bay off the shore, the North Shore of Superior in this big huge
05:42 - 05:48
lake called Santoy Lake, And the very first thing that you do after paddling about 6 kilometers
05:48 - 05:56
on Santoy Lake, which can be a pretty windy windy time, is you do what's called the Diablo portage. Okay.
05:56 - 06:01
And for those of you who don't know, the devil. Right?
06:01 - 06:07
So it's it's a bit of a it's a bit of a hectic portage apparently, but it goes into Diablo Lake, so hence the name.
06:07 - 06:14
But it's it's 1200 meters, but it's apparently just straight uphill and a real challenge let's
06:14 - 06:21
say without the use of axplitatives that we will be using when we start the, I'm almost certain, we're not seeing.
06:21 - 06:21
Absolutely.
06:22 - 06:29
So then from there, it's 170 kilometers, so you go about 70 kilometers of lake travel with about,
06:29 - 06:35
10 portages sort of strewn between, and then you hit the Steele River, and then you start your
06:35 - 06:41
sort of southward travel and then there's some whitewater and rapids and, it's famous for its
06:41 - 06:49
log jams so which change seasonally, so there's not really established portages around log jams.
06:50 - 06:52
It's more of a bushwhack, which is fun.
06:52 - 06:55
How do you so how so is that what you how you deal with logjams?
06:55 - 07:02
You you bail out, you find a way a route on ground around and then jump back in again? Wow.
07:02 - 07:08
Yeah, absolutely. Like, some sometimes some logjams are there for long enough that there can
07:08 - 07:12
be a somewhat permanent route around it.
07:12 - 07:14
But typically, they're pretty transient. Right?
07:14 - 07:20
So, yeah, you just pop up, you check the terrain of what's next, like, which way the river bends
07:20 - 07:27
so you can find your shortest route to the next sort of spot of river, and we did this a lot Yeah. On the Nishtegadine River.
07:27 - 07:32
Gonna say we did the a ranger lake loop last summer and Spring. Yeah.
07:33 - 07:36
Ran into a lot of log jams coming down the river.
07:36 - 07:42
And literally, we went from one side of the river that was, like, tangled in alders.
07:42 - 07:44
We couldn't get through at all.
07:44 - 07:51
So we went to the other side of the river, and Jay literally carved a new portage so that we
07:51 - 07:53
could get around the log jam the log jam.
07:53 - 07:58
So we are not strangers to log jam, but it can get intense.
07:58 - 08:04
It can get intense, and I'm gonna say slightly demoralizing at times. Yeah.
08:04 - 08:06
But we we love it. That's our challenge.
08:06 - 08:09
We push ourselves, like, that's what we like to do.
08:09 - 08:11
Like, we have a saying, it's, like, do hard stuff.
08:11 - 08:15
There's a different word at the end, but I think you can it also starts with that.
08:16 - 08:20
Then you could surmise what we're saying, but we say we say that it's like, because we just
08:20 - 08:25
like to push, we like to to do things that are difficult because at the end of the day when
08:25 - 08:30
you're sitting around the campfire, you're just like, man, and you we're high fiving and it's
08:30 - 08:31
if we have the energy.
08:31 - 08:34
We may not get a campfire this time, but
08:34 - 08:34
Yeah. Good one.
08:35 - 08:39
Still be high fiving, and it gets you to places where not as many people can get.
08:39 - 08:43
So you get the experience also of being somewhere that's remote.
08:43 - 08:45
Solitude and remoteness. Yeah. Yep.
08:45 - 08:47
Where maybe nobody has ever been before.
08:48 - 08:55
Yeah. Exactly. It's on in the case of some of these logjams, it's it's entirely plausible. Yeah. Cool.
08:56 - 09:01
On the note of camping, just as a quick side, you you mentioned you just bought your first Yes.
09:01 - 09:06
Gas powered, like, what Yeah.
09:06 - 09:11
What did you buy and what made you choose that particular gas stove?
09:12 - 09:12
Oh, that's a good one.
09:12 - 09:15
I'll let Sherry take this because she did the shopping on this one.
09:15 - 09:20
Cool. Okay. Yeah. Like, generally, we use a BioLite stick stove, which we love.
09:20 - 09:25
And we recently just got a Soo Look stick stove, which we have yet to try out.
09:26 - 09:31
But, yeah, we'd like to have as little garbage as possible.
09:31 - 09:35
So the propane, gas stoves, we've never had to use.
09:35 - 09:39
We've always been able to do without until now where there's a fire ban.
09:39 - 09:43
And we do have, like, a a liquid, petroleum
09:44 - 09:45
Well, it's an alcohol stove.
09:45 - 09:49
Alcohol stove. But even those are not recommended, I guess, during a fire ban.
09:49 - 09:53
So what we got was we just got an MSR Pocket Rocket 2.
09:53 - 09:54
Yep. Yeah. And it
09:55 - 09:57
guys know the you guys know the stove? Yeah.
09:57 - 09:58
I have the same one.
09:58 - 09:59
Ah, okay. Okay. So it's good.
09:59 - 10:01
We haven't even tried it yet. We should try it.
10:01 - 10:05
We'll try it after we leave tomorrow. We should try it.
10:05 - 10:05
You
10:05 - 10:08
should. It it was, like, it was budget friendly.
10:08 - 10:08
Yeah.
10:08 - 10:13
It was budget friendly, and and we will probably go back to the stick.
10:13 - 10:17
So we really like the the less, garbage.
10:17 - 10:20
It doesn't impact as much the environment.
10:20 - 10:25
Although, we're afraid we might be spoiled by the speed at which it might boil some water.
10:26 - 10:32
It says it boils a a liter of water in 3 and a half minutes, so that would be unprecedented for us.
10:32 - 10:35
It's yeah. It's wicked fast. No issue there.
10:35 - 10:41
I would have one positive and one suggestion so that actually one negative one suggestion.
10:41 - 10:46
The suggestion to get a wind stop of some type. Right? Okay.
10:47 - 10:48
Because that makes a huge difference.
10:48 - 10:49
When it's blowing, you're Yep.
10:49 - 10:55
Trying to move and and it's it's a tiny platform to try to balance whatever it is that you're boiling on it.
10:56 - 10:56
Okay.
10:57 - 11:00
That we I I went 1 year and went, okay. No more.
11:00 - 11:03
And we we got the wind block for it. A shroud. Okay.
11:04 - 11:09
The other thing is, yes, for if you're boiling water like in your in your little kettle or or
11:09 - 11:15
in a pot or something like that, no problem because the water disperses the heat pattern in it. Yep.
11:15 - 11:22
If you're cooking a steak in your fry pan, your steak's gonna cook like this big of a pattern.
11:22 - 11:22
I get
11:22 - 11:26
it. Saying you gotta go as low and slow as you possibly can, and sometimes you're still picking
11:26 - 11:28
it up moving it around. Understand.
11:28 - 11:31
It is making efficient, but it's very small pattern to it.
11:32 - 11:34
That is a real that's really good advice.
11:34 - 11:36
Both of those pieces are good advice.
11:37 - 11:39
Maybe not super intuitive, so that's great.
11:39 - 11:45
I we don't typically we we dehydrate most of our food, our own, so it's mostly just boiling
11:45 - 11:51
water in order to rehydrate our food so the steak thing shouldn't happen on this trip unless
11:52 - 11:56
we drop our food bag in the water and we have to kill something to eat it. I don't know.
11:56 - 11:58
That's probably not gonna happen.
11:58 - 12:04
We dehydrate as well, but the but the big kid and I usually drag something something like big,
12:04 - 12:07
you know, meaty and potatoes or something for the first night. Exactly.
12:07 - 12:09
And and bake them for the next day.
12:09 - 12:11
And then, yeah, we're into the dehydrated stuff.
12:11 - 12:13
Do you have a favorite for deep bites.
12:13 - 12:13
Do you
12:13 - 12:15
have a favorite dehydrated rec recipe?
12:16 - 12:19
Oh, I don't know. What's what's our favorite?
12:19 - 12:20
We we just we just love to cook.
12:20 - 12:26
We cook most nights of the week, and then so sometimes we just go, oh, that's a really good one. That would dehydrate well.
12:26 - 12:36
So I'm gonna say for mine was one time we had a pulled pork that we so there's a local meat
12:36 - 12:40
market in town here that live it's just a kilometer from our from our home, like, a 5 minute
12:40 - 12:45
walk, and it's called city meat market, and they pre pre marinate this porchetta roast.
12:46 - 12:50
And so we just every now and again, we'll spoil ourselves and buy that and just cook it.
12:50 - 12:55
And then if you if you just pull, you know, a pound of it or something like that, dehydrate
12:55 - 13:12
it, then when you rehydrate that it's absolute magic, use the extra water from that to make those powdered potatoes. Oh, great idea. Life changing. Yeah. It's so so good.
13:12 - 13:16
And then obviously add cheese. Obviously. And then it's yeah.
13:16 - 13:18
Like, my I'm salivating right now.
13:19 - 13:20
No. Yeah. So you're like
13:21 - 13:23
I think no. It's unbecoming.
13:23 - 13:27
The the camera adds yeah. That'd be mine. What's yours?
13:27 - 13:31
I think I think my favorite, we do, like, a chicken Thai peanut recipe with rice.
13:31 - 13:33
That's really nice in the backcountry.
13:33 - 13:36
It has the peanut butter flavor, and we add peanuts into that.
13:36 - 13:38
And it rehydrates really well.
13:38 - 13:43
But chili is literally the best rehydrated meal.
13:43 - 13:46
Like, it rehydrates the best, and it tastes the best.
13:46 - 13:47
Veggie chilies, specifically.
13:48 - 13:52
Yeah. But but I think in the backcountry, everything tastes better.
13:52 - 13:56
Like, even instant coffee just tastes so good back there.
13:56 - 13:58
So I I I totally agree. Yeah.
14:00 - 14:03
Curiosity, why why veggie chili as opposed to
14:03 - 14:04
Meat chili.
14:04 - 14:07
Yeah. Meat meats just don't rehydrate as well.
14:07 - 14:13
So what we'll typically do is they don't rehydrate at the pace of a vegetable, let's say.
14:13 - 14:16
So, like, we just keep our meats separate.
14:16 - 14:22
So we'll do, like, okay, here's a a couple of pounds of of roast or not roast beef, sorry, ground
14:22 - 14:27
beef, which people call gravel because it's like the worst of the worst in terms of rehydration.
14:28 - 14:33
So we'll do that and then we'll rehydrate that and then set it aside and then rehydrate the
14:33 - 14:40
chili and then put the beef inside of it and then it somewhat we did that on our Sand River
14:40 - 14:42
trip, and it it just yeah.
14:42 - 14:43
Meat just doesn't rehydrate as well.
14:43 - 14:45
It doesn't reconstitute as well.
14:45 - 14:51
I I I up until the time I bought Kevin Ride's Backcountry Eats book, I would totally agree with you.
14:51 - 14:56
It was I I never had a good experience with it other than doing like, jerky was fine, but trying
14:56 - 14:58
to do ground beef or something was just terrible.
14:58 - 15:01
Gravel is is the exact word to use.
15:02 - 15:09
He's got he's got a technique where you it's about it's about rinsing, like literally kind of
15:09 - 15:15
hot water boiling after you've cooked it but getting all the all of the oil off and then dehydrating it.
15:16 - 15:22
I'm telling you, it de it rehydrates just like it it would be if you made it in your kitchen, period.
15:23 - 15:25
This is interesting. We have that book. We love Kevin Wright.
15:25 - 15:27
We follow him, and we have that book.
15:27 - 15:30
I didn't realize about so you're probably washing the fat.
15:31 - 15:33
Exactly. That's that's that's often Yep.
15:34 - 15:34
Okay. Yeah.
15:34 - 15:36
So it's an inconvenience.
15:36 - 15:38
A strainer. We should just read that book again.
15:39 - 15:40
We both skipped over that part.
15:40 - 15:43
We interviewed him. That's when I went, but I already have the book.
15:43 - 15:45
Oh, I I didn't notice that either. So
15:46 - 15:49
he should put that in bold in 2nd edition 7.
15:49 - 15:52
Put that in bold because I missed that.
15:53 - 15:55
It's all good. We're learning as we go.
15:55 - 15:59
Yeah. How boring would it be if you don't continue to learn?
15:59 - 16:01
Like, what's what's kinda what's the point? Right?
16:01 - 16:02
I'm doing the same same.
16:02 - 16:03
No no no good for that.
16:04 - 16:07
Exactly. If you know what to expect around every corner, it's like, why
16:07 - 16:08
are you even doing it? Yep.
16:08 - 16:11
Although I don't I don't wanna bushwhack.
16:11 - 16:12
I I just I'm I was
16:12 - 16:15
gonna say some really likes to plan and know what's around every corner.
16:15 - 16:19
Yes. I I try. I would yeah.
16:19 - 16:20
You do your best. Right?
16:20 - 16:25
But even the best the best laid plans of mice and men, as I say, like, no matter how hard you
16:25 - 16:29
plan, something's gonna come up and gonna surprise you and it's about being prepared for that
16:29 - 16:31
and like how you deal with it in
16:31 - 16:32
the moment. Yep. Agree.
16:32 - 16:34
We just love doing that.
16:34 - 16:35
I say we love doing that.
16:35 - 16:38
We love doing that later. Can't
16:38 - 16:41
I use bad words when it's happening. Yeah.
16:41 - 16:42
Yeah. Yeah. Retrospectively. It's just,
16:42 - 16:43
like, wasn't
16:43 - 16:51
that fun, honey? Like, wasn't that 3 kilometer portage single carry? Wasn't that single carry? Awesome? Yeah. It was like, no.
16:51 - 16:52
That's gonna make.
16:53 - 16:56
Yeah. I think we got great footage of it, said we.
16:57 - 17:03
Okay. Perfect segue. So so you guys you guys have a a amazing, YouTube channel.
17:04 - 17:06
Post all kinds of cool Instagram stuff.
17:07 - 17:12
The newest thing that I've been watching of yours is is your drone shots.
17:12 - 17:20
And tell, tell me how you, well, again, how did you choose that specific drone and how how it's
17:20 - 17:26
opened your artistic palettes maybe for for doing for doing video stuff.
17:27 - 17:29
Yeah. So I guess I'll field this.
17:29 - 17:32
Sherry Sherry's still too nervous to to run the drill.
17:32 - 17:33
I don't wanna break it.
17:34 - 17:40
I whereas Whereas I don't have a problem almost breaking it, which we can go through several times.
17:40 - 17:50
But, so we chose the DJI Mavic Mini 2, which it was not the newest at the time, so it was a little bit less expensive. Yep.
17:50 - 17:55
Now the the Mini 3 was out, so it was a little bit more affordable for us.
17:56 - 18:02
And so one of the reasons we like the mini is because it's under 250 grams, which is the cutoff
18:02 - 18:08
point at which it's considered an aircraft and therefore you have to register it with the Canadian authorities or whatever.
18:08 - 18:13
And not not that we're like, you know, off grid, whatever, but, it's like we just less headache,
18:13 - 18:18
we don't wanna have to, you know, do do any paperwork basically to go camping. Yep.
18:18 - 18:26
So, but with that comes some of its challenges, which are no object avoidance or obstacle avoidance
18:26 - 18:33
so the machine itself doesn't know where it is in space so you have to, the operator, when the
18:33 - 18:37
operator is a rank amateur it it can be interesting.
18:38 - 18:45
So a few weekends ago on a river trip we have a river that's nearby that, is super close to
18:45 - 18:47
my heart and Sharon and I love it so much.
18:47 - 18:53
We take a trip at least once a year down this trip, down this river, and we had stopped at a
18:53 - 18:55
beautiful island campsite that we like to stop at.
18:55 - 19:00
And I was trying to I've got a bunch of beautiful shots, and we have some of the shots on my
19:00 - 19:01
Instagram and actually or our Instagram.
19:02 - 19:07
And, actually, this is, one of the things that's on there is I was trying to get a sort of like
19:07 - 19:13
a a side slipping view of this beautiful island, and I was just looking at the screen and not
19:13 - 19:19
looking at where the heck our drone is, and it ran into a cedar and then just literally just
19:19 - 19:24
popped around that cedar and plopped into a raging springtime river. Oh, cool.
19:24 - 19:27
So we were pretty sure are we? So Sherry's walking
19:27 - 19:34
I was wandering around, checking out rocks and frogs, and and I heard this weird buzzing noise
19:34 - 19:39
ahead of me in the cedar tree, and then I saw the drone just, like, drop into the river.
19:39 - 19:40
And I was like, oh.
19:41 - 19:47
Oh, and here I am running upriver now, like, trying to boulder hop, ripping off clothes, knowing
19:47 - 19:53
I'm going for a swim, and then jumping into the water. And Sherry's going, no. It fell here. No. It fell here.
19:53 - 19:57
So it was still, like, on when we picked it up. But here's to DJI.
19:58 - 19:59
We just sat it out.
19:59 - 20:05
We took the battery out, sat it to dry for about a week, didn't run it for about 2 weeks.
20:05 - 20:06
We just fired it up yesterday.
20:06 - 20:07
And it
20:07 - 20:08
all did. Oh, excellent.
20:08 - 20:17
We got lucky. But, I know that Jay loves the extra dimension of the drone shots in the videos.
20:17 - 20:19
So It's an extra depth.
20:19 - 20:23
That's a beautiful way to use that dimension because it's like, okay, everything is pretty hyperlocal
20:23 - 20:28
whether you're focused on your your own self or something immediately in front of you, or if
20:28 - 20:34
you're, like, you're seeing wildlife, you're you're zooming in on it to try to get a clear shot of it.
20:34 - 20:41
But then to add that extra depth, that extra dimension of panning back and and seeing the landscape.
20:42 - 20:47
Landscape shots are just magical, and you don't have to climb up a mountain in order to get them. Right?
20:47 - 20:54
So it's it's so so nice, and I think I was saying offline, Sherry is really, really good at
20:54 - 20:56
keeping me from when we edit.
20:56 - 21:01
Just editing in a tight it could just be all drone shots for me because I'm I'm still enthralled
21:01 - 21:08
with that view that you cannot get unless you're a bald eagle or in an airplane. Right?
21:08 - 21:10
A helicopter pilot or something.
21:10 - 21:16
Yeah. Helicopter. Yeah. So it's like that's cost prohibitive and biologically prohibitive respectively. Right?
21:16 - 21:21
So, but just getting that extra dimension of shots and even just for fun to see it.
21:21 - 21:25
I just watch our drone footage of places we've been a few times.
21:25 - 21:28
I just drone footage, like, our own neighborhood.
21:28 - 21:33
Just be like, oh, that's a cool view of this or that's a so nice. So cool.
21:33 - 21:35
Without being intrusive.
21:35 - 21:40
But without being intrusive, I'm I never I hardly ever look in my neighbor's, windows or
21:40 - 21:42
Hardly ever. Yeah.
21:42 - 21:43
Yeah. A respectful amount.
21:44 - 21:50
When you when we think back, like, our first our first video was just last spring that we did
21:50 - 21:57
a trip around the Ranger Lake Loop, and we did that whole video using our phones. That's all we had.
21:57 - 22:00
Yeah. We didn't even have GoPros at that time. So nothing even waterproof.
22:01 - 22:09
So now we have our phones, our GoPros and then the the drone, and then we have the, Canon.
22:10 - 22:14
We have a nice Canon, like a DSLR. DSLR. Yep. Yep.
22:14 - 22:16
So we're growing. We're having fun. We're learning.
22:16 - 22:18
We're growing, and then sometimes we shrink.
22:18 - 22:23
So I noticed it was, distinctive you said GoPros. Oh.
22:23 - 22:25
But we only have just one now.
22:25 - 22:33
So because when we were at the, paddlers coop a couple of weekends ago, we were on the white
22:33 - 22:37
water and learning how to sort of navigate, pretty torrential white water.
22:38 - 22:43
There's a place called Jessup shoot and they sort of this is where you learn to turn into and
22:43 - 22:46
peel out of of rapids and stuff. And we dumped.
22:46 - 22:49
We only dumped 2 times the entire weekend, and we didn't take it easy.
22:49 - 22:50
But we dumped 2 times.
22:50 - 22:57
And the first time we dumped, I had a GoPro on my helmet, and it just so we lost that sucker.
22:57 - 23:02
Wasn't a lot of footage we lost, which is more important, the footage, the memories is most important, but
23:03 - 23:10
Agree. Yeah. That looked like a I've been watching, Riley Outside has been putting up some of that stuff. Who else?
23:11 - 23:16
Might have been Christina, and I think, Evan Lafevre has has put up a a very small one that I
23:16 - 23:23
caught of his, and it's like, I'm I'm I'm terrified of Whitewater, but maybe that looks fun.
23:23 - 23:25
Yeah. Look. Under the right conditions. Right?
23:25 - 23:28
So Sherry can speak to that because she's been pretty
23:28 - 23:35
The re the reason for the trip is that, we've ended in some rapids, not like probably class
23:35 - 23:38
1 or class twos, by accident.
23:38 - 23:43
And I actually have a huge fear of water, believe it or not.
23:43 - 23:47
And it's hard for it's hard for me to trust Jay.
23:48 - 23:54
Just like, I trust Jay, but it's hard for me to learn from him because he's my partner.
23:54 - 24:00
So when the opportunity came up for us to take a course, I was like, I think we should do this.
24:00 - 24:08
I think we should do this and dump in a safe environment so that I can kinda get over the fears
24:08 - 24:09
that I have of the water.
24:10 - 24:17
And I think by the end of the weekend, I was like, let's do that again. Like, we did. We had fun. I felt safe.
24:17 - 24:20
The water was warmer down on the Matawaska that it
24:21 - 24:22
We lost pretty damn way
24:22 - 24:23
down this way. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
24:24 - 24:30
And we've and we've also met, like, some fantastic people, and our instructor was phenomenal.
24:30 - 24:33
So, yeah, it was a really good weekend for us.
24:33 - 24:36
A lot of driving, but worth it. Worth it for sure.
24:36 - 24:42
Yeah. 8 hours of driving there on a Friday after work, showed up after dark, everybody was there
24:42 - 24:46
already in sort of like relax mode around the faux campfire.
24:46 - 24:51
And then, yeah, 8 hours of driving after after a day of white water water paddling was, like,
24:51 - 24:53
that was a long drive home. But Yeah.
24:53 - 24:56
It was okay. We saw 3 moose and 1 bear.
24:56 - 24:59
Cool. Nice. All all in no. Not all in.
24:59 - 25:02
So the 3 moose were in Algonquin Park on the highway.
25:03 - 25:08
We've seen more moose this year in Algonquin Park, and we haven't camped in Algonquin Park than
25:08 - 25:12
we've seen in the wild north, bush
25:12 - 25:13
so Yeah. Yeah.
25:13 - 25:14
That's wild.
25:14 - 25:21
Yeah. So we definitely we would definitely, recommend the paddler co op in, palmer rapids.
25:22 - 25:27
It wasn't super expensive and everybody's just really cool really chill you can camp right on-site
25:27 - 25:32
it's a great community that they have there and it's it's awesome. Very accessible.
25:33 - 25:37
There's no, it's not like they throw you over a waterfall to begin with.
25:37 - 25:42
It's it's very it's step based and, and it's great. So yeah.
25:43 - 25:49
Yeah. We we at the Outdoor Adventure Show, we had a chat with, with them about We're trying
25:49 - 25:50
to get them onto the show.
25:50 - 25:52
It's a matter of when they when they've got time.
25:52 - 25:57
But but just, man, I wanna say we probably spent about half an hour just yacking with them.
25:57 - 25:59
And and it's a great vibe.
25:59 - 26:01
Sounds like a really cool thing.
26:01 - 26:06
If anything was gonna lure me out to some whitewater, it's probably probably those guys.
26:06 - 26:13
Yeah that's that's what, that's where we've got we've been looking for like a while and the
26:13 - 26:19
the the next closest one would be like Hap Wilson out in, out in Temagami. Temagami. Yep. Yeah.
26:19 - 26:21
He runs, a course out that way as well.
26:22 - 26:28
So we were like, well, 8 hours here, 8 hours this way, but then yeah Riley grabbed us, we had
26:28 - 26:35
expressed interest and this is the thing that they always say that Riley always says about themselves like I'm an insigator.
26:35 - 26:40
If you mention that you're interested in something, I'm going to, like, make you follow-up on that.
26:40 - 26:41
It's like sort of poke you.
26:41 - 26:46
So they just reached out to, like, this group of people who showed interest and just poked and
26:46 - 26:50
poked and poked and put together a really great weekend, and we had an absolute blast.
26:50 - 26:56
And I think we still don't wanna dump because we're we like to get way out in the in the forest,
26:56 - 27:02
and there's consequences to dumping your gear in your canoe when you're 80 kilometers from the
27:02 - 27:08
nearest highway, but, but maybe we're a little bit less nervous if we do.
27:08 - 27:10
We know that things can be okay and
27:10 - 27:13
Yeah. I think we picked up some really good skills.
27:13 - 27:18
And, I we generally use common sense out in the bush, but
27:18 - 27:19
it's nice.
27:21 - 27:22
It's nice to have those skills.
27:22 - 27:25
When you mentioned in your upcoming trip, there may be some white water.
27:26 - 27:33
That's right. Yeah. I'm gonna say the back half, has probably which is the river portion has
27:33 - 27:37
probably a day and a half worth of worth of some whitewater.
27:37 - 27:43
The last bit of the river is pretty meander y and that's where you run into the logjams so they'll
27:43 - 27:49
present their own unique challenges, the white water is like okay if it's you know low water
27:49 - 27:53
are we smashing off of boulders or are we lining or what are we doing?
27:54 - 28:01
But then with the meandering section, it's like every corner you round, at least for me, every
28:01 - 28:05
corner you round, you're kind of wincing going, is there a kilometer long log jam here that
28:05 - 28:09
we have to portage around and bushwhack portage around?
28:09 - 28:12
So, yeah, we're we're we're really looking forward to it.
28:12 - 28:15
And, actually, that's one of the things that we were thinking about.
28:15 - 28:18
We recently purchased a RoyalX canoe.
28:18 - 28:25
We we've historically had a an Algonquin style swift canoe, which is very much a flat water boat.
28:25 - 28:29
There's no rocker, meaning there's no difference in height between the bottom and the and the
28:29 - 28:33
bow and the stern and that is certainly not a white water boat.
28:33 - 28:34
Don't take it anywhere near white water.
28:34 - 28:37
If you get any sort of standing wave it's coming into the boat.
28:38 - 28:43
So we've got a Royal X canoe, and now we're debating, do we take the Royal X canoe?
28:43 - 28:47
Because there's 15 portages on this route, give or take.
28:48 - 28:49
That's a heavy boat to lug, man.
28:50 - 28:56
It's a 65 pound boat, and I just I just double carried for the first time, or we just double
28:56 - 29:03
carried for the first time in our lives, just doing the Sand River trip that we did in Lake
29:03 - 29:08
Superior Park and that was a learning curve, like learning how to, like, not just power through
29:08 - 29:15
everything like an ox in a in a China shop. But, so yeah.
29:15 - 29:23
But my goal, our goal, my goal is to to single carry the Diablo Portage, and we will report back.
29:23 - 29:29
By the time this video airs, we're getting pretty slow with our, editing, so this might air
29:29 - 29:32
before our documentation of of our route.
29:32 - 29:41
But, yeah, my goal is to do the Diablo Portage single carry with the pack and the canoe, and
29:41 - 29:42
we'll see how that goes.
29:42 - 29:45
So 1200 meters essentially straight up.
29:45 - 29:51
Thomas and I did one, oh, in Killarney and it wasn't it's not that bad.
29:51 - 29:56
It was it was it was up and then down but not not the Diablo.
29:56 - 29:59
We got to the end of that, and it and it was I think it was a little bit longer.
29:59 - 30:02
I think it was around 1615 something.
30:02 - 30:07
We got to the end of it. Thomas Pute. Like Oh, gee. Oh god. That's awesome.
30:07 - 30:10
So that's that's, like, testing those limits. Right? It is.
30:10 - 30:17
But you but I because I want him to continue to be my my backcountry partner, we've backed off.
30:17 - 30:18
We double carry and stuff
30:18 - 30:19
now. Yeah.
30:19 - 30:19
I don't care.
30:20 - 30:24
No. But I mean, it's cool that one that moment of, like, okay. That's my limit. Alright.
30:24 - 30:25
Well, we'll just Now we
30:25 - 30:26
know what the limit is.
30:26 - 30:28
We're gonna back from down from that. Yep.
30:28 - 30:31
Fair. Yeah. How heavy are your packs?
30:32 - 30:33
Oh, dear. We're so bad at this.
30:33 - 30:34
Pamela.
30:34 - 30:36
No. Yeah. Great question, Pamela.
30:36 - 30:38
I am working on getting them.
30:38 - 30:38
I thought thought
30:38 - 30:38
you guys are
30:39 - 30:40
really, like, tweaking that. No?
30:40 - 30:48
Oh gosh. Trying, but but the lighter the weight of anything is, like, the expense quadruples.
30:49 - 30:49
Yeah.
30:49 - 30:50
So we're slowly working on it.
30:50 - 30:55
We just got some, sleeping bags that are like half the size of the ones we had.
30:55 - 30:57
So I'm super excited about that.
30:57 - 31:02
But then I keep adding in clothing, comfort. This is the one.
31:02 - 31:07
Generally, I think my pack is probably 60 pounds or more.
31:07 - 31:12
And you're Sometimes. It's like it's probably between 50-60 in Sherry's, and mine's probably
31:12 - 31:14
the same or maybe a little bit more.
31:14 - 31:17
I've got a 115 liter for our canoe trips.
31:17 - 31:23
So we have, like, backpacking backpacks, and we have, canoe tripping backpacks.
31:23 - 31:27
So our dry sacks, Sher's is a 65 liter. Yeah.
31:28 - 31:33
And, so, yeah, it can get up upwards of 50 to 60 pounds, which is no joke because she typically carries
31:33 - 31:37
the food and some of the heavier stuff just because her pack is a bit smaller.
31:37 - 31:44
And then I've got this Brutus, I literally call it Brutus because it's a 115 liters, so it can
31:44 - 31:51
get it can get really heavy, but I think the the max I've had it at is about £70, and that's
31:51 - 31:57
when we carried, 2 bags of wine with us and a and and a liter of whiskey.
31:58 - 31:58
A bad idea.
31:58 - 32:04
So that's right there, 25 pounds just in and that was a year ago. We're much smarter now.
32:04 - 32:07
We don't we don't bring booze into the backcountry anymore.
32:07 - 32:08
And we don't bring extra.
32:08 - 32:17
Like, I think our most luxurious item are our, camping chairs, and we really, really like having those in the backcountry. We like the back.
32:17 - 32:21
It's nice to at the end of a day to sit down and have something to lean your back on, definitely.
32:22 - 32:24
But, I mean, we don't pack extra food. We dehydrate.
32:25 - 32:28
We like, I literally pack by day and menu.
32:28 - 32:33
Like, I don't just throw in a bunch of food and say, hopefully, we have an like, I'm very, like,
32:33 - 32:35
specific because I don't wanna carry extra.
32:36 - 32:42
So we're working on getting lighter packs, but it it it definitely you have to save up for that.
32:42 - 32:47
Like, it's it's, the lighter that you go, the more money it seems to cost. So we're slowly
32:48 - 32:49
We're getting there.
32:49 - 32:52
Trying to get lighter. I'm working on a lighter tent next.
32:53 - 32:57
She's working hard on it. Yeah.
32:57 - 32:59
No. I totally totally agree.
32:59 - 33:01
Who do we I think it was no.
33:01 - 33:10
It was it was somebody on one of the Cool Quests live casts and and it was a back backpacking
33:11 - 33:22
duo and they got custom packs made and it and it I think it quartered the weight of the packs. Yeah.
33:22 - 33:29
But the number I can't my brain refuses to retain the number that they said the packs cost just because I went, okay.
33:29 - 33:34
That's the end of the conversation. No. Thank you. Sorry. I'm done. Oh. Yeah. K. They love the packs.
33:34 - 33:35
They're all they're bomb proof.
33:35 - 33:38
They're they're amazing, and they're they're so light.
33:38 - 33:42
Like, it saved them so much weight, but nope.
33:42 - 33:46
I I would just make more of the weight go in the kids pack, and then we're fine.
33:47 - 33:50
Make them puke twice as hard at the end of the night, Portage.
33:50 - 33:53
You're gonna puke. You might as well carry a bunch stuff. Yeah. Who
33:53 - 33:58
who was it? Was it, Henry Thoreau or someone that wrote about you pack?
33:58 - 34:04
When you pack for a trip and then you come back from the trip, all the items you didn't use,
34:04 - 34:06
don't pack those the next trip.
34:06 - 34:10
Anything you didn't pull out, contingency items, we'll call them.
34:10 - 34:16
So it was actually Stuart Edward White, he's the author from, yeah, back in the early 1900s.
34:16 - 34:20
And, yeah, like, anything that's contingency that you take that you didn't even pull out of
34:20 - 34:24
your pack or you pulled out and put right back in, never pack the next time.
34:25 - 34:30
But he said every time you re like, go on a new trip, you end up sneaking that stuff back in
34:30 - 34:32
because you're like, I might need that.
34:33 - 34:36
So Last time doesn't mean I won't need it next time.
34:37 - 34:38
Exactly. This is the thing.
34:38 - 34:40
And that's why it's so difficult because the unknowns.
34:40 - 34:49
And so Sherry is trying her best to sneak her rain suit into, her pack and I'm gonna try my
34:49 - 34:53
best not to let that happen, but we'll see.
34:53 - 34:54
It's a push and pull.
34:54 - 34:59
We'll put it in the car and then when we drive to the put in, we'll see if it makes sense.
34:59 - 35:01
Does it come out? Yep. Yeah.
35:01 - 35:03
That's a fair that's a fair deal.
35:03 - 35:06
I know that, we the rain suit is a perfect example.
35:06 - 35:12
We because I've got a but it it's heavy as all get out, but it's it's great because I can we can paddle all day.
35:13 - 35:17
We've we've traded off for for ponchos because we can spread them out.
35:17 - 35:19
It covers our legs and stuff like that.
35:19 - 35:23
I get a little sweaty inside of it or whatever, but it does what we need it to do, and it weighs,
35:24 - 35:27
you know, a a quarter, a third of the of the weight of the reins.
35:27 - 35:31
Yeah. Yeah. Good one. I always find that rain suits, unless it's really expensive, like Gore
35:31 - 35:36
Tex that breathes, it doesn't breathe, so you're just as wet inside, only it's your sweat.
35:36 - 35:43
So I'm like, I just wear a really light, base layer, and it's just like whenever we get to camp
35:43 - 35:48
and you're under your tarp, you're in your tent, whatever, within 10 minutes you're dry again
35:48 - 35:54
and you didn't have to lug that god darn rain suit around.
35:55 - 35:56
I hear you. I hear you. Yeah.
35:56 - 35:58
Alright. That's it for us for today.
35:58 - 36:01
Thank you so much to Jay and Sherry from Beauty of the Backcountry.
36:01 - 36:03
Check them out on YouTube and
36:03 - 36:04
Instagram.
36:04 - 36:11
And and Instagram. And, otherwise, check us out on YouTube and and Instagram and Facebook and Twitter.
36:11 - 36:14
And we will talk to you again soon. I'm still Pamela.
36:15 - 36:17
That's my line. I'm I'm Tim.
36:17 - 36:18
And we are from supergoodcamping.com.
36:19 - 36:22
We will talk to you again soon. Bye. Bye.