Canoe Trip 2009 Day 4

After eating breakfast of scrambled eggs, ham, and red and green peppers, right from the package they came in, not bad for a dehydrated breakfast. We packed up and got underway fairly early. Today we would be travelling north for awhile on Mistinikon Lake, there are a few motorboats around today mostly fishermen. We travelled up the west side of Bell Island as the east side showed there were a few camps along shore where there is road access.

Further up the river we crossed highway 566 out of Matachewan, a bailey bridge crosses a lets vehicles and trucks travel further to the west. Lots of vehicles and more camps. We stayed pretty much to ourselves on the opposite shores.

A little further up we started into The Great Northern Bend where the Montreal River finally turns and flows south. This bend is all deep sand areas as the Matachewan dam holds the river back from the Upper Matachewan Lake. Here we portaged about 300m.+ to a campsite on the edge of the Upper Matachewan Lake. At the campsite the fire was still smoking as we had just missed it's former occupants who had left quite a mess. We cleaned up the site quite a bit before setting up camp and getting supper started. Again the night ended with a good fire.