Memories

Over the years a large number of memories have been gained concerning the He-Man canoe trip. This page contains a memory that they have from a past trip that they would like to share.

Kent Zoya - Canoe Barge

My favorite time this year (1998) was on the last day just before lunch. The water was very low and things were going slowly. I was in one of the last three (of eight) canoes, the other five having long ago disappeared ahead of us. After pulling the canoes though yet another shallow stretch, we linked the three canoes together, side by side, into a "canoe barge" as I liked to think of it. The guys in the middle canoe held on to the other two canoes while the guys in the outside two canoes did the paddling. Down, or rather up, the river the six of us went: Boyd, Scott, Ship, Mike, Kenny, and me. We had lots of fun moving the "barge" up the river. We took it easy (we certainly didn't break any speed records) and it was lot of work for us paddlers, four guys paddling three canoes, but we had a great time talking, joking and laughing, and (of course) splashing each other. As for the other five canoes? They got to the lunch site long before we did.
But we had the food.

Dave Becker - The Last Day

The last day of the first He-Man (1984) with Boyd is filled with memories for me. We camped on the East shore of Island Lake the night before. There was a strong West wind all night that made sleeping difficult. The waves were really high. Boyd was steering and wanted to stay close to shore and keep the canoe pointed into the waves. This meant that we had to inch our way along the shore line, moving ever so slowly sideways. I got impatient after about a half hour of this and wanted to just cut across the lake. This is probably the only time that Boyd and I had some cross words with each other. We stuck with Boyd's plan and did eventually make it to the West side of the lake but it seemed to take forever. Boyd and I had never canoed this area before and had to follow the shoreline very closely. We unnecessarily went into a number of bays and dead-ends. We finally found what we thought was the entrance to Trout River. As we canoed up the river I began to lose confidence that we were on the correct river. The current was strong and it seemed that the river was much longer than it was on the map. I even gained less confidence when we came across a golf course, and the map that we had did not have a golf course on it. I can remember how numb my feet got walking up the rapids (this trip was during the second week of May). I was relieved when we finally got to Trout Lake around sunset. In my mind I decided that the trip was a great adventure, but I would never want to repeat it again.

He-Man Canoe Trip Web Pages