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/

Transcript

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.