Road Trip - An interesting and long journey to find a suitable stove

Bad to the Beaulne (with loading dolly) in Val des Bois

A lengthy and enjoyable road trip with Pierre Beaulne last Friday-Saturday. (Round trip 750k).

   I picked up Pierre in Piedmont Friday am, heading up towards the club. We stopped in Labelle to rent a U-haul trailer and dolly and  continued up Rte. 117 to Mont-Laurier then south along the beautiful Lievre River on 309 to our destination at Val-des-Bois. With the help of my brother Bill we loaded the camps new acquisition into the trailer, a Gurney combo wood/propane stove for Camp 1. (As a bonus we managed to score a retro arborite kitchen table and 8 matching chairs, now installed in camp 2). Retracing our route we arrived at the zec around 5. On the side of caution we took a slow approach with our load over the gravel road and arrived around 6 at the lake.

As we had been on the road for 11 hours,  we simply enjoyed the last rays of sun with dinner and a glass of vino, then headed to bed to off-load the stove the following morning. Temperatures were around 15 overnight. Really sweet!

Pierre removing the ramp 

Finger dock camp 1

The T dock and one finger dock from Cabin 1 which Rod and Stan moved last week were secured with 40 feet of chain circling a sturdy cedar tree on the shore, and the chain then locked to the dock with a padlock. The key for this lock is the same for both the gate and main locker, no.1 in the boathouse. The whole process of assembling docks should go smoother next spring.

Flotilla in the boathouse

The boat house is pretty full, with one boat left on the beach for any hunting parties. As noted by Rod last week it needs a patch on its keel of about 4 inches square prior to use. I'll try and get Claude up to do that as the weather is nice right now, and he is supposed to clean all chimneys.

New wood/propane stove in Camp 1 kitchen

The stove we picked up needs connection so please don’t think of using cabin 1 until spring. Of utmost importance, we noticed the chimney section at the back is missing, which we will hopefully source, scavenge or manufacture this fall. The new cooker is a 'Gurney', combination wood/propane unit manufactured in the late forties and fifties on King Street in Toronto.


A check of the propane in all camps indicates we are still sitting pretty well with approximately 800 lbs spread over 12 tanks. We loaded two empty older tanks into the trailer and delivered them to Claude. These should only be used (filled) if we are running short. If the budget permits six new tanks could be purchased next year at some point adding to the six new ones purchased last spring. This would allow for the transport of four at a time, the max allowed by law in a trailer with two tanks hooked up at each camp.

Scenes from this trip