The Best Solution

Do you recall us being concerned about the amount of stuff we had to portage? If you’ve ever carried a gallon or a few litres of water, you know it’s heavy stuff. So, there had to be a better way to keep hydrated while canoe camping. It was interesting because each of us addressed the problem, and came up with a different solution.

All of the solutions used the lake water of course. Mike would fill his water bottle and add Tang to cover up any of the undesirables. I suspect this wasn’t sanctioned by the Health Unit, but I think from time to time, we all shared in Mike’s orange juice and there were no reports of any short coming.

Joe had a handy dandy filtering system. It included a manual pump with double filtering, carbon and paper. It took a couple of minutes per litre and for the gadget inclined, seemed to get the job done. Though, we reminded Joe, that it was another thing he had to portage.

My solution was a Micropur MP1 water purifier tablet. These little white tablets came individually sealed in a foil packet. The instructions for use called for 1 tablet per litre, however, I threw one into my water bottle which was probably only 750 ml. The result was a slight chlorine taste. I have to admit, ignorance is bliss because according to the packet, the tablet contains sodium chlorite and sodium dichloroisocyanurate dehydrate. I haven’t had the nerve to Google them.

Of course, we boiled water for soup, coffee and tea, but firewood wasn’t easy to come by, and the result was hot and usually contained a few ashes from the fire. I think the jury is still out on the best solution, for a drinkable solution.

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http://travellingwithsteveandmarlene.blogspot.ca/2011/09/no-tent-for-us.html