May 30, 2013: Lake Mackavoy to Mazinaw Dam

Travel Time: 2 to 3 hours

An intriguing sight was a helicopter pilot watching me from atop an 80 m hill to the south. Distracted, I nearly missed a beaver dam stretching in from the south side. The river narrows, wanders and then lazily spreads into a wide marshy area with lots of water fowl.

Passing under the Addington Rd. 5 bridge I stopped at Brown’s Camp on Upper Lake Mazinaw only to find I had taken on 15 gallons of water. With each stroke forward water had been sucked in. Manager Dana Richard, generously patched me up, and I was underway in three hours.

It was a lovely, though windy, paddle down Upper Mazinaw Lake to where I sat at the foot of a monster cliff only able to seek and admire a few pictographs –dead camera batteries. The pictograph cliff –very spectacular and once most sacred. Bon  Echo Park is on the right separated by the narrow few meters entrance into Lower Lake MazinawThe cliff at Mazinaw Lake is a sacred site to the aboriginal artists. There are some 160 odd of them. Nanabush was a mythical and mysterious being. Some believe it represented the spirit of a native Shaman and the “rabbit ears” emanating from it were thought to be power rays associated with the Shaman’s mystical powers.

After lunch and a 10 minute break at the beautiful Bon Echo Park point I thoroughly enjoyed a lovely, sunny, carefree the paddle down to Mazinaw Dam.

Read all Bob Kelly’s posts from his paddle of the Mississippi River Canoe Route in the spring of 2013.