Having learned from the day before, we got up considerably earlier and were enjoying our scrambled eggs and hash browns on bread at about 7:45am. While making lunch and cleaning up we heard dogs barking and commotion and when we finally realized it came from the road we were just in time to see three dogs droving a flock of sheep up the road which was very cool to watch. The ranger had offered to drive our barrels back down the road on his truck and we gladly took him up on his offer. We were back on the river at close to 10am.
Today we met several other groups of canoers, including a group of ten people in their early to mid twenties doing a four-day trip together as well as two families in four blue canoes (one of the competitor rental companies) doing a three-day trip. We also caught up to Graham and Lisa and paddled alongside them for a while, had lunch together and chatted some more. Most of the time we tried to canoe by ourselves so as not to have to wait at rapids and such. Day three called for about seven hours of paddling according to our map, however the river must have been flowing faster as it did not quite take us that long even including a good break for lunch. We were at the John Coull hut around 5:30pm. Although there was a campsite as well, we had booked bunks in the hut as that seemed like a good idea at the time. The hut was nice enough with a large kitchen and indoor and outdoor tables to sit at, and the female ranger was friendly, however neither of us got a good night's sleep as the mattresses were creaky and everybody was very aware of another 16 (or so) people sleeping in the same room. Mind you, the tenters got pretty wet during an early evening downpour so from that point view we were happy not to be tenting. The ranger turned out to be married with two kids of eight and 10, and worked eight days on and six days off as a ranger. As the hut had no road access, it took her a good half day to get home as it involved travel by jet boat down the river and then several hours of driving. Wow; that can't be easy! She had been back working as a ranger at this hut for four months having not worked while her children were younger. Even though she had her own private quarters with small kitchen in one part of the hut, she, like the rest of us, had to use the four toilets located between the hut and the campground.
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