Beginning the Missisquoi Upstream

June 15, 2024

Mile 174.4-189.6

Henry woke up with his hand pain around 6 am and crawled out of the tent so he wouldn’t keep me up. He laid in the shade of a tree in the grass, took some Aleve and was able to fall back asleep. I woke a hour or so later to see him sprawled out using a towel as a blanket. I wondered what the normal people at this campground thought of us 😆

I tried to fall back asleep but the sun was heating the tent like a sauna and shined right in my eyes no matter how I tried to hide. I crawled out on my hands and knees and into the shade where Henry lay. Eventually he walked down to the store and bought me a breakfast sandwich and a Body Armour and I gobbled them down before going and taking another shower to see if I could breathe some life into myself.

Back to life after a shower

Back at the campsite we laid around until noon trying to find the energy and motivation to get up and finally found it when we looked at the map and decided to get a hotel for the night in Swanton, 7 miles away.

Back on the water by 12:30 and immediately into the brutal wind again with 2-3 foot waves as we tried to paddle out of the bay and towards the mouth of the Missisquoi River. My arms were so sore and we were making no progress. I could feel tears welling up in my eyes, I was so tired and irrationally angry that it was so hard, I thought we’d finished with this lake. I cried and paddled, waves knocking into us so hard I almost lost my balance a few times. I fought to kneel down on the bottom of the boat and dug deep, time seemed to crawl and then finally, finally we were turning into the channel of the Missisquoi. Ahhhhh, relief out of the wind. Now to be rewarded with 70 some miles of upriver paddling.

The big wide Missisquoi

Henry played music on the speaker to cheer me up and it worked. There wasn’t much current and it felt more like paddling on flat water than paddling upstream. We made it to Swanton pretty quickly, unloaded the boat and carried everything up to the road. Swanton where we met the NFCT for the first time. Back in the winter when we’d decided to paddle it, we were living in Vermont and went to Burlington for Valentine’s Day. We looked up the closest NFCT road crossing and found it in Swanton. It was crazy to be back on the shores of the river in that same spot.

Henry called the Swanton Motel and his face fell- they were full for the night. And they are the only hotel in town. Womp womp.

So plan B became resupply at Hannaford and paddle another 6.5 miles to the next campsite. We pulled the canoe down to the put in in the shade and I sat with it and all the gear while Henry walked the mile or so to resupply. I felt tired and out of it and almost fell asleep on my foam pad when he reappeared with bags of groceries and a large BBQ chicken pizza.

I ate 3 big slices and rallied, pulling myself together, organizing our resupply and the canoe. We set off with only an hour and forty minutes until sunset. The river was beautiful in golden hour, we saw two beavers and a raccoon along the shores. We had about 3 miles left when I started fading fast. So. Tired.

Pulled up to the campsite around 9 with the light fading quickly. Mosquitoes swarmed as I set up the tent and Henry organized some gear but I turned on the Thermacell and created our little bug free bubble. I ate some leftover pizza for dinner, smoked a bowl to try to help my aching body and fell right to sleep when my head hit the pillow.