Paddling Plaisance

If you look at my YouTube channel—and I really hope that you'll visit it and even subscribe—you'd think I didn't do much this year.

There are a few videos of DW's and my trip to Portugal, but that trip was almost a year ago. It just took me several months to edit the video footage and put stories together, with the final video coming out last July.

There are a couple of videos of our trip to Mexico, which was in 2023 but all the way back in January. Oh, and there's a hyperlapse video of me shovelling my driveway.

Exciting stuff, that video.

But there are no videos of me riding my bike, no videos of us camping (I've gone twice, this year). And, I haven't posted a video of any of the kayaking treks that DW and I have done.

Until now.

True, I haven't been in my kayak as often has I had been last year or the previous two summers. July was pretty much a write-off for me, health-wise, and August flew by. But I did get in my kayak in May and June, and I was paddling on two different rivers in two different provinces, on two different days over the Labour Day weekend.

DW and I have wanted to paddle in Québec's Parc de Plaisance, which is along the Ottawa River, across from Wendover, since we first acquired our kayaks, in 2020, and had paddled the South Nation River from Jessups Falls to Wendover.

We had, at that time, considered crossing the Ottawa River and linking up with the Rivière de la Petite Nation, but we've learned that the current in the Ottawa River is strong at that point, and crossing might leave us too tired to return. So we decided that some day, we'd drive to Plaisance and start our paddle in the park.

Our goal was to paddle the Rivière de la Petite Nation from the park's interpretation centre to the Chutes de Plaisance and back, a 10-kilometre round-trip trek. Last Sunday, we packed up our gear and did just that.

The trek is fairly easy, though you are paddling against the current. If you stop paddling for some length of time, you will eventually start to drift downstream, slowly.

Very slowly.

It's only when you get within a few hundred metres of the base of the falls where you actually feel the current. But you also reach a rocky, shallow stretch of the river where you can't paddle, anyway. There's a muddy shore where you can get out of your kayak and walk, uphill, to spots where you can get breathtaking views of these grand falls.

I've put together a video of our trek, which you can watch here:

I don't think this will be our last visit to Plaisance Park. There are other areas to explore by kayak or canoe, as well as some cycling trails.

I have kayaked less frequently than in previous years but more often than this one paddle. I have three or four other outings that I've recorded but I haven't really looked at most of them. I have cycling footage, too, that I'll eventually get to.

I'm currently working on the video footage of our trip to Rock Lake, in Algonquin Provincial Park. I'll have that video ready in the next couple of weeks.

And I have more videos planned soon, when DW and I head out for vacation.

Stay tuned.