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Jay was really hung up on seeing the Albany. Maybe just to piss me off. One of us had to be the leader and show a little common sense. Problem was we both insisted that it be the other. Finally, after we had gone so damn far that it would take a helicopter to get us back before dark, I said OK lets do it!! Like I had a choice.

I should tell you that the river was now running pretty fast and the banks were vertical. Straight up! Well at a, probably 70 deg angle. They were about 80 ft high and all sand and boulders. Couldn’t get out of the water if we wanted to.         

At every turn I was looking for that damn Albany. Jay was setting facing rear and I was doing the paddling at this point. We came around a curve, between two vertical rock walls and I almost crapped my britches! There was the Albany!! About a mile ahead and about 50 or more feet below us. Now THAT mother was a rapids. Jay saw my face and I yelled for him to hold on! Man we shot down that rapids and I was scared. I didn’t think It was ever gonna end and just knew we were gonna go over. We were a beating the hell out of that canoe and ended up busting all the ribs out of it. We shot down that rapids and out onto the Albany. Jay was bailing the canoe out as we had taken a lot of water! What an awesome ride it was! I was so dang relieved when we hit that slick water. I started the motor and headed up stream a ways and put into the north shore.

We got out and broke out a beer. We were about out and maybe more than a little loose :0) Jay asked what we were gonna do now. I said we had to set up camp. With what, says he. Well we emptied the canoe out and drug it up and set it up so we could use it for some shelter. Flipped it over, between two rocks. Then the lad says," What we gonna eat??"

I guess this would be a good place to tell you a little more about Jay. He is a bit of a city boy. Never had much experience with wildlife. Food always was fixed for him. Always expected his food to be properly cooked and completely dead. He was teachable though. I always did all the cooking and he learned that there could be exceptions. Half raw is good, burnt is good, if it is organically sound, it is food!

When he asked me what we were gonna eat, he obviously wasn’t thinking. We had about eight fat walleye! Nice and fresh! He then gave me a look that reminded me of a calf lookn’ at a new fence. Sorta untrusting like. :0) He was wonderin’ just how we were gonna cook the things. I told him I had it all figured out! We gotta get some sticks.

We had a nice fire going. I was a boy scout and knew how to start a fire with one match and a cup of gasoline. It was getting pretty dark by now and hard to see. Didn’t help that my eyebrows were burnt off either! It was about 11:00 pm. We climbed up the bank and cut a couple willow branches. We got down to the fire and took the fish off the stringer. Dang thing was sure lively. Floppin’ all over the place. Jay started bellyaching about how we were gonna clean them. I had it all figured out. Weren’t gonna! Just took that stick and shoved it down its throat and out its rear. He whined, "Aintcha gonna kill it first?" I said, "Heck the sucker looks dead now"! Heck, he would be dead too, if he had a stick stuck down his throat and out his butt. Jay just wasn’t thinking! Had to do his too.

I stuck it over the fire and roasted it like a hotdog. Jay didn’t seem to think it was the way to do it but there wasn’t much choice. We cooked them up and then started to eat them. It ain’t as easy as it would seem to be. Specially in the dark! Got the scales and then the guts! Jay was doing OK until I happened to mention that he should be careful not to eat the guts. Hard to see in the dark and they were probably full of Hellgrammites! That is a damn bug. Fish eat them in northern Michigan. Sorta look like a darned centipede with claws! Don’t know if they have them up there but I convinced Jay the place was loaded with them. Told him how they were a problem, if they weren’t completely dead because if he should happen to eat one they would crawl under your tongue and when you went to sleep crawl down a person’s throat and build a nest. Upshot is, I now had lots of fish to eat. No wonder he is so scrawny. Not much of an eater.

It was a rough night. We were soaked to the bone from our day on the river and it got pretty cold at night. It was in early June and the ice hadn’t been out but for a few weeks at that latitude. Fire helped dry us some but it was miserable. The side toward the fire would be nice and toasty and the other freezing. Then we would turn around and toast the other side. Didn’t make for a good nights sleep. We were right at the base of the, last long rapids and the noise was deafening. For a city boy, Jay held up pretty well. I had been in messes like this before but it made for a long night.

We eventually did get some sleep. Next morning we woke up to a clear day. Wind seemed to be picking up a bit. I cooked up another fish and this time Jay joined me. Helped that he could see the fish, I expect. Least he could identify the guts! We then loaded up the canoe and tied everything down, as best we could.

We pulled the canoe over to the river and gave a look at the task we had. Man, what a task it was. We had a come down a very rough river and lord knew how many rapids. Turns out to be about 26 of them. Didn’t know how far. Around 20 miles! There were two guys up at the lake that didn’t know where we were, which added to the urgency of the situation.

The rapids were not huge. We couldn’t walk the banks, so we had to wade all the way. There were stretches up river that we could use the motor for short runs, but that proved to be a long way off. The river was full of boulders and rocks of all sizes. Miserable to walk on. I was wearing boots and found early on that once they filled with water, they felt like they weighed a ton. I took them off and cut a golf ball sized hole in the side of each one at the instep. This allowed the water to shoot out with every step.

What we decided to do is tie a long rope on the bow of the canoe and a shorter one on the stern. I took the bow and Jay the stern. I did the pulling and he did the steering by keeping the bow aimed into the current and guiding it around the boulders. By letting out or pulling in line, he could guide the canoe around the boulders and snags. There had to be a million of them in that river!! I did the bull work and he did the guiding. His job was as tough as mine was. It took a mile or two to get the system down so we could make some decent headway. Not fast but steady. We were constantly falling and stumbling but there was nothing we could do but keep going. Hour after hour. The trek seemed endless. We would always be on the verge of killing each other, as it was hard to work in unison. He would stumble or fall down and the canoe would come charging into shore or threaten to capsize, causing me problems and when I would have a mishap, he would have to bust his butt to save the canoe. Endless!! We growled a bit but we managed not to get too upset. We needed each other!

About 2 or 3 in the afternoon, we took our first break. The rapids were a little farther apart now and on occasion, we could use the motor! :0) We came to a sand bar, on a bend in the river, and it sure looked inviting. We stopped and I just fell down and lay there. Exhausted! Jay did the same, of course. We just lay there with our own thoughts. I was wondering just how far the damn lake was and if I had the strength to make it. I have always been in pretty good shape but wasn’t no damn Mule!! I fell asleep! Only for about 10 minutes, but it sure helped.

We left that sand bar and headed up river, once again. After a while, all the rapids started looking the same. Just work! All of a sudden I looked up and saw one that picked at my memory. It was the one that we had had our lunch at, the day before! We had made it to the lake!! Home free!! We had been coming up that river for about 10 hours!

We hauled the canoe over that rapids and set down for a rest before heading across the lake. I gassed up the motor, as I knew that we used a little more than a half tank, coming to the river. Didn’t want to run out of gas crossing the lake. The motor was one of those old ones, a three horse, that had the gas tank on top of it.

We got the canoe ready for the crossing and happily started for the lake. As mentioned before, we could not see the lake from the river mouth because of all the brush growing at the mouth. We had to pick out way through it to get to the lake.

There seemed to be a wind picking up that we hadn’t noticed before. Seemed we could hear a bit of surf up ahead. Came through the last of the brush and damn near shat!! Dang hurricane and it was coming straight from the north! We were at the south end of the lake!! Those waves were a sight. Coming right at us. We went back into the brush and collected our thoughts. I would have stayed right there if it wasn’t for the other two at camp. They had to be worried sick!

We decided to go for it. Tied everything down we could and with Jay facing me in the rear, headed out. The waves were huge. Anyone that knows lakes knows that the shallower the lake the more treacherous it can be in high winds. I don’t care if it is only 5 ft deep. Half a mile from shore and huge waves and the old butt muscles clench up real tight. We found out later, from the pilot that the winds reached 45 miles per hour in that storm! Try that in a damn canoe, if you want an adrenalin rush! Jay was terrified and the little sucker didn’t even have to look at the waves! I was too but had to keep grinning and joking, just to keep him from flipping out. That false bravado seemed to help my mood too. I was a laughing and singing every stupid song I knew, just to keep my own spirits up. It really helped me and I think it helped keep Jays mind off the fix we were in.

It was odd but it seemed that most of the waves were comparatively a constant size and since we were going directly into them, got to be almost fun to blast through. We would ride up the face of the wave and then bust through the crest with a splash! Every 5^th or 6^th wave seemed to be a third larger than the others and pretty frightening! Ole’ Jay was a watching me and starting to relax and then one of those big suckers would come along. I must have gotten a look on my face when I saw it coming because he would just hold on and close his eyes. He said that when he saw the fear in my face he could have crapped!

Going down the river, coming back and now fighting the waves had taken a toll on the canoe. All but a couple ribs were broken and as we busted through those waves the damn canoe flexed like it was made out of paper. It was a 16 ft aluminum canoe.

I had headed directly north, into the waves so I could get into the shelter of the trees on the far shore. Slowly we battered our way across. As we approached the shore the wind calmed down considerably. Once we got there we had to head south toward camp. This would be done with the waves, of course. I planned to get the canoe up on a crest of a wave and try to adjust the speed of the canoe to ride it all the way. Great plan!! Problem is that the ice water must have frozen my brain and I forgot one important thing. We will get to that! :0) We bailed out the canoe and made sure everything was secure and off we went. I got out in the wind and the waves were picking up. I had to sorta crab the canoe a little to the east so I could edge toward the camp as I was going down wind. The wind was getting even worse!! I slid that canoe right up the back of one of those waves and with Jay in the bow setting in air, just rode that wave. Easy as pie!! That is until I ran out of gas!!! :0(

I had made it to the river from camp on less than ¾ of a tank of gas. Figured I could do the same on the return trip. Problem is a motor uses a lot more gas fighting the waves. I had forgotten this. Moron!

There we were, waves 4 ft or more and floundering. I grabbed a paddle and try to swing the bow down wind and look for something that would help us. Just ahead there was a sunken island. Thing was that it was not sunken with these waves! I could see it in the trough of a wave dead ahead. I yelled to Jay to get ready to jump out when I told him to and to hold onto the bow rope. Course he thought I was nuts! But he got ready. As we got to it, I yelled for him to jump and to his credit, he didn’t hesitate. Out he went and hung on to the rope. The canoe swung around until it was facing upwind and I jumped out. The scrawny little sucker did a yeoman’s job that day! Dang wind and waves was threatening to drag him off his feet but I jumped behind the canoe, and held onto the motor. This took some of the pressure off Jay and he grabbed the bow. With the canoe, somewhat secured, I started gassing up. The wind and waves were beating the crap out of us but I managed to get a half tank of gas in motor.

He jumped in the bow, after shoving it around with the wind and I jumped in and started the motor. Off we went for the safety of our shore. I looked up and saw Ray a running down the shore and just a yelling his lungs out. He was pissed but elated that we were alive. I think! The wind and waves were still a building and it was a jumble of noise from the wind and surf. We came to the top of a wave and slid down in the trough and I’ll be damned if we didn’t hit the ground! No water in the trough! We stuck to that ground and the next wave, which was huge, came over the stern and filled the canoe. We were still a couple hundred yards from shore but I yelled to Jay to jump out! We had to wade the rest of the way. Waves beating the crap out of us all the way. Jay got knocked flat on his face a half dozen times.

Ray came a charging out into the lake to give us a hand. Cussing and a yelling all the time. He had thought we were dead and wasn’t all that sure that he didn’t prefer it that way. He had a rough night and day, worrying about us. We hauled the canoe up on the shore and since we had overshot the camp by about three hundred yards, just left it!

When Ray had heard the boat motor he had immediately put on a pot of chili and a pot of coffee. By this time he hated my rotten, disgusting, inconsiderate, miserable ass, but he didn’t want me to starve or freeze to death. He laid all the blame on me. I tried to explain that it was all Jays fault but he wasn’t buying it. He had made a number of trips with me in the past and figured it was probably my fault. He said that when he saw the beer we were taking with us that there would be trouble. Neither Jay nor I were really drinkers and Ray had been my friend long enough to know that strange things tend to happen when I get into the grapes! :0)

Ray and the hairball he was with had decided we had drowned and the other moron was already composing our obituary and trying to decide what to tell our wives. Seems like when we failed to come back on the previous day, Ray wanted to come out and do a search. This fine gentleman didn’t want to as he was afraid of the lake. This was on the calm day. Ray threatened to strangle him or something and they went out. Then he wanted to stay in the middle of the lake, where nothing could be seen because he was afraid of hitting a rock!

This guy should never have come on such a trip. Some can’t handle the isolation and really get into a depression. That is what happened to this guy. He folded into himself and really was useless. Most of us love the isolation and chance to be just a little nuts. I would hate to take such a trip with a lady. I mean, hanging your butt across a log, tied between two trees isn’t the type of toilet that is acceptable to some ladies. Having your buddies spray your butt and with bug spray, before making your trip to the facilities isn’t something any lady I would want to be associated with, would consider great fun. This is something that must be done in the spring up there because of the black flies, horse flies and mosquitoes! A person that hasn’t spent time at that latitude, in the spring can’t really imagine what it can be like.

I loved the trips and the time with friends, some of which have now passed. Ray now is gone. He was a joy to know and I have many memories of my adventures with that crazy sucker.

I realize that this story is not about treasure hunting but it is adventure. Most of us have been attracted to the MD hobby because of the adventure and excitement of it. I hope that you enjoyed it. This was only two days out of a 7 day trip. Many things happen on each trip that were exciting. Because of the size of this thing, I had to cut a lot out of it. I enjoyed reliving it as I was telling it. I hadn’t thought about this two days in my life for a long time and loved to enjoy it again. Thanks!! Royal---RO