tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18000717407822336252024-03-13T23:33:57.022-04:00Gone CanoeingA place to record our canoe trips.PineMartynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09513857282947052058noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1800071740782233625.post-78316153823009120542012-02-28T19:59:00.002-05:002012-03-05T20:03:07.052-05:00Solo Igloo Camping: A how-to series on winter camping<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/fvUusSijfjQ" width="430"></iframe><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/3kPmPvkohFo" width="430"></iframe>PineMartynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09513857282947052058noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1800071740782233625.post-78630623683681733102010-12-09T06:49:00.019-05:002011-01-16T18:01:14.230-05:00Why We Love Canoe Camping<span style="font-family: arial;">This is the first video on my new YouTube channel. It's a photo montage of some of our favourite camping photos which, I hope, will give one a sense of why we love it so much.</span><br />
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<div style="text-align: left;"><object height="250" width="400"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/U3Y8u5-Aywc?fs=1&hl=en_US&color1=0x006699&color2=0x54abd6"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/U3Y8u5-Aywc?fs=1&hl=en_US&color1=0x006699&color2=0x54abd6" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="400" height="340"></embed></object></div>PineMartynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09513857282947052058noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1800071740782233625.post-57559730048800846232008-07-11T14:13:00.041-04:002008-08-19T12:58:14.090-04:0011th: Blueberries and Bears - Ten Days of Camping in Island Lake Forest & Barrens Provincial Conservation Reserve<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfLSumFoejAg5FUS6qb4F89WI_CHF2T4aQnaDBh2x-K_tHvvZ0ln1gLr3fSgSjIUhLd2tnX1PsoXNZfIxPb3P5IZHJ39e6PEmIChyphenhyphenQ0xJOpTW3n_xqGdwn-tk-MCVW2U5K4jSXyZkUg_rN/s1600-h/01+-+Island+Lake+map.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfLSumFoejAg5FUS6qb4F89WI_CHF2T4aQnaDBh2x-K_tHvvZ0ln1gLr3fSgSjIUhLd2tnX1PsoXNZfIxPb3P5IZHJ39e6PEmIChyphenhyphenQ0xJOpTW3n_xqGdwn-tk-MCVW2U5K4jSXyZkUg_rN/s400/01+-+Island+Lake+map.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229237879101411474" border="0" /></a><br />Our second camping trip of the season was to the Island Lake Forst and Barrens Provincial Conservation Reserve. This is a magnificent lake system we have visited and camped in repeatedly in the past two years. As it is essentially crown land, there are no fees to pay, no reservations required, no schedules to keep to, and because this large network of lakes and creeks is only accessible by float plane or canoe, it is never crowded and one need never be concerned about being unable to find a place to camp even on the busiest of long weekends.<br /><br />We had intended to be there in early July so that our trip would coincide with someone else’s being there. Steve Galehouse is an American canoeing enthusiast and angler who is lucky enough to own one of the rare and precious pieces of land in the Island Lake system which has been designated as private property. He, his family, and their co-owning friends, fly-in to Island Lake a few weeks each year to enjoy this remote expanse of water and wilderness in their restored log cabin on an Island. Ilana and I have been the beneficiaries of Steve and Co’s hospitality and generosity on previous camping trips and we were looking forward to seeing them again on this trip.<br /><br />Unfortunately, our plans came to naught when Ilana’s recurring shoulder injury began bothering her greatly just before our planned 10-day trip to Island Lake. We would have to wait until her shoulder recovered before heading off. Delaying our trip by a more than a week meant our visit to Island Lake would not coincide our friends’ vacation, but we will have a chance to meet up with them there in mid-August.<br /><br />When Ilana’s shoulder seemed to be well enough to paddle we agreed on a tentative route and trip itinerary. The most direct route into Island Lake (short of flying in) is to drive to the boat launch at the southern end of Wah-Wash-Kesh Lake, paddle north across the lake, then follow the unromantically named Farm Creek north into Island Lake itself. We would make camp the first night on one of the smaller islands in the southern portion of Island Lake and from there we could paddle and portage into either nearby Loon Lake, Kelsie Lake or Dutton Lake, all of which we’d visited before on previous trips. How far we’d go and how long we’d stay on any given lake would be a matter of mood, weather and how energetic we were feeling on any given day.<br /><br />PREPARATION:<br /><br />As always our pre-camping preparation involved packing our gear, working out a meal plan, stocking the two food barrels with all we’d need to eat and making sure we were properly supplied with such things as stove fuel, biodegradable soap, sunscreen, toothpaste and other things in need of replenishment after each camping trip. Additionally, there were three new pieces of gear we would be bringing with us this time, two of which we had to buy.<br /><br />The first piece of gear was a small garden trowel and work gloves, which we already owned, and which we could use for many purposes while camping: digging small cat holes for a latrine, emptying a fire pit of old ash and coals, and most importantly, digging up edible roots and tubers.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqdDsMF1hitb-Ih_IqZTrcMmIJhM1YkOnDbjQBtvmuPRFjp18TKHc7bLQUhIvALsSYSv3d3U50xbl_iXl81bDZUQtOVKto3IuDu_jX4PBLzr7UscUIvqd09VTxmWFdFFnIxr6BUeee-qbp/s1600-h/Buck+Camp+axe.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqdDsMF1hitb-Ih_IqZTrcMmIJhM1YkOnDbjQBtvmuPRFjp18TKHc7bLQUhIvALsSYSv3d3U50xbl_iXl81bDZUQtOVKto3IuDu_jX4PBLzr7UscUIvqd09VTxmWFdFFnIxr6BUeee-qbp/s200/Buck+Camp+axe.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5228873912730995922" border="0" /></a>The first piece of gear to purchase was a hatchet. I have always carried and used a lightweight folding saw for cutting larger pieces of deadwood for burning, but larger pieces do not burn well when they are tossed in whole and round onto a fire, especially hardwoods, such as birch, maple and oak. Split wood burns better, but this requires one carry along a heavy axe or a hatchet into the bush. We are pretty much maxed-out when it comes to weight, so there was no way I was going to lug an axe around on portages, so a hatchet seemed like a good compromise. Unfortunately, an axe or hatchet is a very dangerous tool to wield in the woods. An accident with a hatchet (or an axe) is rare, but almost always serious, especially in the wilderness where one is hours or days from medical attention., and so out of concern for safety I never wanted to bring one with me. Ilana was especially worried, but she agreed to this purchase despite some misgivings. The hatchet I opted for was the Buck hatchet which is far from the best, but has the virtue of being very lightweight and durable. We would see if it would prove to be a worthwhile purchase at $44.99.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7xzTwsuDQ71TDzCdynxbzIDIwWMiCyE9stNbWiCoyP7qKhBb9ctmu5qFCcNTjzIPyANffUBmmSjhee7Gelgf0R8vHHrnbdgixeRNmwkgUwg8p_JBC_1O7qaSuarRurvbvUMCVzmNF1KDE/s1600-h/Silva+Ranger+compass.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7xzTwsuDQ71TDzCdynxbzIDIwWMiCyE9stNbWiCoyP7qKhBb9ctmu5qFCcNTjzIPyANffUBmmSjhee7Gelgf0R8vHHrnbdgixeRNmwkgUwg8p_JBC_1O7qaSuarRurvbvUMCVzmNF1KDE/s200/Silva+Ranger+compass.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5228873917669184242" border="0" /></a>The second piece of gear to purchase was a new compass. Ilana likes using a GPS device, but I am more old-school when it comes to orientation and navigating, so I like using a map and compass. The basic Silva compass I have used for many years had developed a large air bubble in the capsule housing, so it’s readings were no longer reliable. I replaced it with a more advanced Silva Ranger compass, which has two features I have long wanted in a compass: a sighting mirror and a simple mechanism for correcting for magnetic declination. It’s a pricey compass ($59.00), but I always hated having to correct for magnetic declination in my head or affixing an arrow-shaped piece of tape on the housing in order to correct for magnetic declination.<br /><br />The last preparatory task was obtaining the exact magnetic declination where we’d be camping so I could adjust my new compass accordingly. I did this as follows.<br />Using Google Earth (http://earth.google.com) I located the spot where I intended to camp on Island Lake and jotted down the precise coordinates which appear at the bottom of the screen:<br />45 degrees 47' minutes North<br />80 degrees 03' minutes West<br />Second, I enter these coordinates into the magnetic declination calculator found at: http://geomag.nrcan.gc.ca/apps/mdcal_e.php:, which yielded a magnetic declination for that location of: 10 degrees and 51 minutes West, or just under 11 degrees. Lastly, I took my compass in hand and set the little adjusting screw which turns the compass housing by that many degrees (just under 11 degrees West). With the compass set this way the needle would now point to true north while in that area, instead of being off by nearly 11 degrees.<br /><br /><br />DAY 1: GETTING TO THE ISLAND LAKE & BARRENS CONSERVATION RESERVE<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKJI4PEGLxK_lB2u0dHas3zbWm2aOpyrxVXnL275z4aGZ_a4wTUJtPbqqh-AbQupEfwXZN6N3X9ZFOvw4DJFzWX89yUKqMAceGCg5SFmsfwuAls4w9KsIiNbYUHywHHWjJ_Q1DeelEqenl/s1600-h/005-Wah-Wash-Kesh+Lake.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKJI4PEGLxK_lB2u0dHas3zbWm2aOpyrxVXnL275z4aGZ_a4wTUJtPbqqh-AbQupEfwXZN6N3X9ZFOvw4DJFzWX89yUKqMAceGCg5SFmsfwuAls4w9KsIiNbYUHywHHWjJ_Q1DeelEqenl/s200/005-Wah-Wash-Kesh+Lake.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5228874865652427858" border="0" /></a>We awoke at 5:30 AM on Friday morning (July 11th), had an unhurried breakfast with coffee, then showered and dressed. The truck had been loaded up with canoe, paddles, packs and barrels the night before, so our only unfinished business was dropping off a few library books in the nearby town of Burks Falls on the way. We were on the road by 8:00 AM. The drive from Burks Falls to the put-in is fairly simple and takes only an hour so we arrived at 9:00 AM sharp and quickly put the canoe in the water at the Bennett’s Bay boat launch and had it loaded up with our gear by 9:20 AM.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3EjK3PxaQGDLsp92m_4KAQwtPaujswLk-v1-2AaKdUm5icqD8l4lLJozsl7v_LcIcBz3ESnPgjd_XdRccU7G0nkRfsOqzuwGI21XkfV4Z97duQI3hsmY0xCwggF3jBhyphenhyphenTa3oerzJ3eJ6X/s1600-h/01+-+About+to+put-in+to+Wah-Wash-Kesh+Lake+at+the+Bennet%27s+Bay+boat+launch.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3EjK3PxaQGDLsp92m_4KAQwtPaujswLk-v1-2AaKdUm5icqD8l4lLJozsl7v_LcIcBz3ESnPgjd_XdRccU7G0nkRfsOqzuwGI21XkfV4Z97duQI3hsmY0xCwggF3jBhyphenhyphenTa3oerzJ3eJ6X/s200/01+-+About+to+put-in+to+Wah-Wash-Kesh+Lake+at+the+Bennet%27s+Bay+boat+launch.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5228874868948967058" border="0" /></a>It was a cool morning but by no means cold and though the sky was partly cloudy, there was only a slight breeze, so getting across this large cottage-lined lake proved easy. Finding the portage on the far shore is easy now because we know the route through the maze of islands and bays of this large lake, but the first time we came here two years ago we were somewhat apprehensive about finding the first portage. On that first visit we didn’t have any GPS coordinates (or a GPS device for that matter) and only a vague description of where the portage was located on the topographic map. Fortunately, on that first visit, a local cottager happened to be loading up his motorboat just as we were putting in and when we told him we were headed to Farm Creek he generously offered to let us ride with him right to the start of the portage while he towed our loaded boat behind. But today we just paddled quietly past the cottages and the occasional anglers in their bass boats without concern until we saw and heard the rush of a small waterfall as the water of Farm Creek emptied into Wah-Wash-Kesh Lake.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkUVrIUhWkTb-QjHmsluJd2nRFM5H1-dpf0PjgOjr_RxVe8qsIELLl2OqHwwy9OxzVatpmDmGI5dZ2OTtqJXJhXjjh0M9azU1k-YiTQkSnpeCnsQ9j1QxAYGNkgEBcWSbl-So-2Ra8S9-M/s1600-h/006-Farm+Creek+route.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkUVrIUhWkTb-QjHmsluJd2nRFM5H1-dpf0PjgOjr_RxVe8qsIELLl2OqHwwy9OxzVatpmDmGI5dZ2OTtqJXJhXjjh0M9azU1k-YiTQkSnpeCnsQ9j1QxAYGNkgEBcWSbl-So-2Ra8S9-M/s200/006-Farm+Creek+route.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5228876085423724578" border="0" /></a>This first portage is only a 2 minute walk and we did it in two carries. As usual I carried the canoe while Ilana carried the heaviest pack, then we both went back for the second load with Ilana carrying the heaviest of the two food barrels and I carried the lighter backpack and balanced the lighter food barrel on top of the pack just behind my head. On the way back for the second load we stopped to rehydrate ourselves, have a snack and take a photo of the short falls around which we were portaging. It had rained recently, so the vegetation was still damp and the mosquitoes made their appearance, but not in great numbers.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwyAD8OE_WD273dvWZrH6HrfLZ9ud0uHo77JsLl5uix8jNlCjyaTe9t2lUncJ2uvwXzKwPAXdDHc6WaMQhRyJY2bq-oeBt-DOzQ4H4twne-m8iwvi_P7jMP4hys8X_0D_LJQVU8hHBLF5D/s1600-h/06+-+Loon+Lake+empties+into+Wah-Wash-Kesh.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwyAD8OE_WD273dvWZrH6HrfLZ9ud0uHo77JsLl5uix8jNlCjyaTe9t2lUncJ2uvwXzKwPAXdDHc6WaMQhRyJY2bq-oeBt-DOzQ4H4twne-m8iwvi_P7jMP4hys8X_0D_LJQVU8hHBLF5D/s200/06+-+Loon+Lake+empties+into+Wah-Wash-Kesh.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229222337168854818" border="0" /></a>Once the boat was loaded again we paddled for all of one minute across a small pond before coming to the beginning of the second portage. A deer stood right on the path looking out at us but it turned and bounded into the woods, flashing us it’s white tail as it went.<br /><br /><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk-rpOIHrZbUEkhg0SLAyEsAbbIZ1fj8On6ZkFCQARHV5JN8G2dClF3lRCmrcLyl40L3Pooo7cdvVwGmBAiWg2vbbPgQeOi_Ci13bztHX923FDsTzq1R7nmAUpsjjfhaE_aghwKQtrHXot/s1600-h/02+-+Taking+in+the+view+of+the+small+falls+at+the+first+portage+between+Wah-Wash-Kesh+Lake+and+Farm+Creek.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk-rpOIHrZbUEkhg0SLAyEsAbbIZ1fj8On6ZkFCQARHV5JN8G2dClF3lRCmrcLyl40L3Pooo7cdvVwGmBAiWg2vbbPgQeOi_Ci13bztHX923FDsTzq1R7nmAUpsjjfhaE_aghwKQtrHXot/s200/02+-+Taking+in+the+view+of+the+small+falls+at+the+first+portage+between+Wah-Wash-Kesh+Lake+and+Farm+Creek.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5228874870829857010" border="0" /></a>Having to get out and begin the second portage so soon after the first is a very dissatisfying feeling. The most bothersome thing about a portage is not actually lugging the gear, but having to climb out of the boat, empty it, pick up the gear and then put it all back into the boat at the end of the portage. Lugging gear is merely tiring and sweaty work, but bending to pick up and put down gear, including the canoe, strains the lower back and I dread it. Having to do this twice inside of ten minutes is a nuisance. I have to remind myself that every such nuisance serves to dissuade others from travelling this route and thus affords us more isolation. This second portage was perhaps three times as long as the first, but at least we’d have the satisfaction of paddling for a little while before having to get out again for the third portage. We noticed that someone here has been cutting trees and clearing a new trail and blazing it with fluorescent orange paint. Ilana worried that perhaps someone had bought this land and might one day block access through here. Let’s hope not.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUMna2cqSYdwdZY2LnrCJeo4H74Jtiz_JF8feuarlhx0aoM8PUDKHPiPdwIdqFhbFPMdzkyHRJmUgevrQ3KStmGS-3Wnhhj3YjRXANICZVbfrfaD9_0TuSGB7QcBDD42OFrpZ0lacvWubm/s1600-h/03+-+A+view+of+Farm+Creek.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUMna2cqSYdwdZY2LnrCJeo4H74Jtiz_JF8feuarlhx0aoM8PUDKHPiPdwIdqFhbFPMdzkyHRJmUgevrQ3KStmGS-3Wnhhj3YjRXANICZVbfrfaD9_0TuSGB7QcBDD42OFrpZ0lacvWubm/s200/03+-+A+view+of+Farm+Creek.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5228874874054494562" border="0" /></a>After this second portage we found ourselves paddling Farm Creek proper, having left behind any sign of cottagers and motorboats. Farm Creek is a long meandering creek which runs through broad floodplains in some parts or else is narrowly hemmed in by granite walls in other parts. The view changes constantly as one wends one’s way in a northeasterly direction and later northwest and ultimately north towards Island Lake. Along the way we enjoyed the sight of Wild Roses, Virginia Meadow Beauty, St. John’s Wort and Joe Pie-weed in flower.<br /><br />Within 15 minutes of leaving behind the second portage Farm Creek opens into a small lake. On the northern shore one can make out an old trapper’s cabin and along the eastern shore we could see water running down in a swift as the creek continued north beyond this area of open water. In low water one must portage around this tight, rocky spot, but with all the rain we have seen this month, water was pouring through at us fast. We tried to paddle against this swift but the current proved too strong as our paddles kept hitting large rocks in this shallow, rocky channel. After struggling for a minute or two and bickering about how to proceed I saw the wisdom of Ilana’s advice and we hopped out of the boat and used the bow and stern painters to track the canoe upstream together as we walked along the shore, hopping from boulder to boulder to keep our feet out of the water.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9nxQCnedSuKFelkHTsbHtVgq2Cl7VTMOKF80JmVsYzXAaG-o1BOqjaP1uCp4cN9g_H2KKQXAORlz7exofYVBZnQRXqYGn7BrodpNOPwFjU5eukVpT-AqVCPj1rN1f9HduCR7sNdHoT2cd/s1600-h/04+-+One+of+several+beaver+dam+lift-overs+along+Farm+Creek.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9nxQCnedSuKFelkHTsbHtVgq2Cl7VTMOKF80JmVsYzXAaG-o1BOqjaP1uCp4cN9g_H2KKQXAORlz7exofYVBZnQRXqYGn7BrodpNOPwFjU5eukVpT-AqVCPj1rN1f9HduCR7sNdHoT2cd/s200/04+-+One+of+several+beaver+dam+lift-overs+along+Farm+Creek.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5228874879771323154" border="0" /></a>Once past this little obstacle the creek opened up yet again into a tiny lake of fast moving water fed by a small waterfall to portage around. This is a short and easy portage, but we were surprised when we arrived at the end of it. We usually stop here for lunch at this point because it’s a nice open area of shallow water just above the falls, but today much of it was underwater. Nevertheless, we spent several minutes here to cool off as the clouds were becoming rarer, the sun higher, and the air warmer. We lunched on barbecued pork sandwiches Ilana had prepared the night before and kept in our yellow dry bag for ease of access. It was here that we became acutely aware of how bad the deer flies were. Mosquitoes were hardly to be seen, but the deer flies were buzzing around us incessantly.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwwr_pBdrQekzBveyK25l-hk8lIhSd8FawuZuHbJEsNjvy2a5wnjQftYjsgwXhofLIXqlSNdRNjanLHWfKDpypOrAWxxKIPP0uRyxrRhzWBXP93sM4ofZHZMs2BKaeIav0IRK0K-4-GDPn/s1600-h/06+-+Mermaid%27s+Hair+in+Farm+Creek.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwwr_pBdrQekzBveyK25l-hk8lIhSd8FawuZuHbJEsNjvy2a5wnjQftYjsgwXhofLIXqlSNdRNjanLHWfKDpypOrAWxxKIPP0uRyxrRhzWBXP93sM4ofZHZMs2BKaeIav0IRK0K-4-GDPn/s200/06+-+Mermaid%27s+Hair+in+Farm+Creek.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5228876089538319298" border="0" /></a>We continued along Farm Creek, enjoying the yellow Pond Lilies, white Water Lilies, purple Pickerel weed and the small red-flowered Water Shields on the surface of the water. Below the<br />surface we could see long thick rusty colored garlands of plants and green and yellow weeds undulating with the current. Ilana likes to call it to mermaid’s hair and that seems very apt. Occasionally we startled a heron into flight and at one point we inadvertently drove a white-tailed deer out of the creek and sent it loping across the floodplain grass for the trees.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRhH96lu75uaxX2uJ2OpdmbR2vtWn2_FooHurbvO4EUD-INhUEFQ0d46SyB4_95xAeQpTqyXNY1wGaUufHkIZbRuNBy8w11RAB4tnKJerCRl4lwcJNEKdMr8qhNNZOo-OpaX6m9PceZOUE/s1600-h/05+-+Dragging+the+canoe+over+a+beaver+dam+on+Farm+Creek.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRhH96lu75uaxX2uJ2OpdmbR2vtWn2_FooHurbvO4EUD-INhUEFQ0d46SyB4_95xAeQpTqyXNY1wGaUufHkIZbRuNBy8w11RAB4tnKJerCRl4lwcJNEKdMr8qhNNZOo-OpaX6m9PceZOUE/s200/05+-+Dragging+the+canoe+over+a+beaver+dam+on+Farm+Creek.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5228876084107727314" border="0" /></a>Then began a series of beaver dams over which we had to drag the canoe. The procedure is fairly easy. We drive the canoe up to the beaver dam where it lowest and closest to the water level on our side of the dam and Ilana climbs out onto it and balances herself there, trying to keep her feet out of the water as much as possible. She steadies the boat for me as I climb over the gear along the length of the boat and join her on the dam and together we lift and drag the loaded canoe overtop of it. Once it’s on the other side, Ilana climbs in while I steady it and then I get in. On the third lift-over Ilana stepped out onto a not-too-solid part of the dam and got a boot full of water because one of her hiking boots has started coming apart along the sole, letting water pour in. We’d meant to repair that before leaving. Oops.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx-H0jGi8vPE-aznHloj-DWGAX5T2cMSaIZPXmzB6-OdrclCR_WEq7Q7Dk38BuAEQwvQ9POwPx7mnPNOldoZ9HJTGkLQpIjMiYpOji6rde76LW9mKCNhXtY86Qe0SYVGS8oVFhr0Mj007W/s1600-h/10+-+Cooling+off+after+the+3rd+portage.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx-H0jGi8vPE-aznHloj-DWGAX5T2cMSaIZPXmzB6-OdrclCR_WEq7Q7Dk38BuAEQwvQ9POwPx7mnPNOldoZ9HJTGkLQpIjMiYpOji6rde76LW9mKCNhXtY86Qe0SYVGS8oVFhr0Mj007W/s200/10+-+Cooling+off+after+the+3rd+portage.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229222913646400786" border="0" /></a>After the first lift-over and before the second and third ones we’d been making our way northwest. Now we came to a T of water as another creek called Cramadog flowed into the section of Farm Creek we’d been paddling along. Here we made a sharp left turn and we continued to make our way upstream along Farm Creek following a roughly northwest course. We knew we were making good progress despite the strong current flowing against us when we came to the largest beaver dam on Farm Creek. This one beaver dam is best circumvented by carrying/dragging the canoe right over a small grassy island since the damn is too steep to lift or drag the boat over top of it.<br /><br />Another half hour of paddling took us within site of the fourth and last portage which we recognized at a distance because an old rusty-red logging bridge (now used by snowmobilers) spans the falls and ledges which necessitate the portage. The high water levels made taking out here easy. In low water, it’s a bit of a pain getting the boat close enough to the start of the portage without shallowing out on the rocky bottom here.<br /><br />This last portage would be the longest one of the day and we couldn’t wait to get it behind us. Part of our desire to get it over with was the knowledge that the bugs here tend to be very bad. I hadn’t applied any bug repellant today and didn’t want to, so knew I was in for some bites.<br /><br />This portage starts by crossing the snowmobile trail, passes through a forest of deciduous and coniferous trees, then across a short meadow of chest high grasses and shrubs and finally through a darker, denser stand of pines, some of which are impressively big, especially between the portage trail and the falls. The only thing to mar the beauty of this varied bit of wilderness is some litter at the very end of the portage where ATVers have stashed two or three overturned fishing boat here. Beer cans, old ropes, cigarette butts and other bits of junk are always lying about here. One would think that people who effortlessly drive in here on their ATVs (against expressly posted rules just a short distance down the trail) would not find it too hard to pack out their crap, but I have learned that ATVers are the most likely wilderness travelers to leave a mess. We hurried along and got through the first carry. As expected the bugs were pretty bad and I took a number of mosquito bites while encumbered with the canoe, but it was nowhere near as bad as it has been on some trips along here in the past. On the second carry Ilana pointed out a large patch of burdock right near the start of the portage and we resolved to return here in a day or two to dig up a few burdock roots to add to one of our suppers.<br /><br />At the end of the portage we loaded up the boat fast to get away from the mosquitoes that were now gathering in larger numbers because we were so much sweatier after two carries. The sight of Island Lake is always gratifying, especially after a large lake crossing, four portages and five lift-overs and four hours of paddling and suffering from bug stress.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7NVUvBzIzuk-Z-IB3WVMjHWF10Lk4rsMojFtBwdi76p1vrXa0IQF1ULolaGpU4Gimkgb_pWASDfVFCHgW3SRfVa-BV64hXZmhIg03NfxAV7R3ixln1mELpXeR2GI6xDcXsnT6gt6YwPtq/s1600-h/14+-+Island+Lake+route+to+Blueberry+Island.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7NVUvBzIzuk-Z-IB3WVMjHWF10Lk4rsMojFtBwdi76p1vrXa0IQF1ULolaGpU4Gimkgb_pWASDfVFCHgW3SRfVa-BV64hXZmhIg03NfxAV7R3ixln1mELpXeR2GI6xDcXsnT6gt6YwPtq/s200/14+-+Island+Lake+route+to+Blueberry+Island.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229223496250293298" border="0" /></a>As soon as we paddle into the open lake, feel the lake breeze cooling us and realize the work is all behind us, we feel the elation and gratification of having made it home. We have been here six times in just two years and home is exactly what this familiar body of water feels like to us. The first time we came here it took us nearly 5 hours and now we do it easily in 4 hours, but as soon as we paddle along the southern arm from the last portage to where the lake opens up I feel a rush of memory wash over me. I am immediately taken back to the first time we made it this far and Ilana said “Oh Martin…I think we’ve found someplace really special”.<br /><br />It takes us only a few minutes to paddle north and thread our way through some tiny islands until we see “our” island only three minute’s paddle to the northeast upon which we have camped several times before. The Island is small with two well-established campsites at the north and south sides, but we always camp on the smaller site on the south side. I believe the island is properly called Fire Island, but the first time we came here in 2006 it was blueberry season and the island, being covered in short blueberry shrubs and prickly juniper shrubs, was immediately and affectionately named ‘Blueberry Island’ by us. Our plan for now was to make camp here and move on after a recovery day.<br /><br />We beached the canoe on the shore and took a quick walk on the island, inspecting the two campsites. We were happy to see that ‘our’ site was in good order, with just a small bit of litter in the fire pit, but otherwise clean. The campsite on the northern shore of the island was not so tidy. The fire pit contained litter and crushed beer cans were strewn all around the stone fire ring. This site is bigger and more open and seems to attract the fly-in fishermen who arrive by float plane. Island Lake has two or three fly-in fishing camps with cabins on them and not all who come in this way are particularly cognizant of wilderness etiquette. One gets the impression these anglers are under the misapprehension that those who operate the fly-in camps make it their business to clean up after their customers. Unfortunately I had forgotten to pack a large garbage bag as I usually do on camping trips and so might not be able to pack out all these beer cans and litter. We gathered up some firewood that had been left here by the slobs and walked back to our side of the island to set up camp.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcX4bmhSjV041Ok_4Aybc5qxo1vtoUAf3IQa9_JHmm6MDry-bxWDxp_wzEfQdUOhDiTuosc50jkc-Viot1TRB8P9zTa8CiqO_1Br70sbWjX3taUeAnDKBPY8QsfdZAC1zq9wxy9HvNQQhI/s1600-h/16+-+Inflating+our+Therm-a-rest+mattress-chairs.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcX4bmhSjV041Ok_4Aybc5qxo1vtoUAf3IQa9_JHmm6MDry-bxWDxp_wzEfQdUOhDiTuosc50jkc-Viot1TRB8P9zTa8CiqO_1Br70sbWjX3taUeAnDKBPY8QsfdZAC1zq9wxy9HvNQQhI/s200/16+-+Inflating+our+Therm-a-rest+mattress-chairs.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229224121947144402" border="0" /></a>We made camp by the numbers. Ilana gathered firewood while I strung up the tarp and bug shelter and pitched the tent. Hanging the food barrels took no time at all as there is a big old pine tree on the eastern edge of the island with a good strong limb from which I could rig up a Marrison food hanging rig. With two full barrels of food on this trip, this sort of pulley system is necessary. The mechanical advantage gained makes hoisting up the two heavy barrels quite easy and the rope does not saw into the tree limb.<br /><br />There was no need to find or fashion a latrine because two years ago I placed two found lengths of two-by-six board which I positioned across a large depression in the middle of the island. Sitting on the boards made a suitably comfortable latrine. The boards were still where I’d left them ready to be used.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiH_tAArXwhpqtSaM0gzWE2LtM3nVYVY1eb0zZ1oIATlZRG5r3AYP25-JPDxht8hLpJt_jL6SElEMphDrQEUQf04odxG1J8jv17u4cjj0eweaIDndAjB1puYdHeoNHC-WOdBhQM4yEc5zO4/s1600-h/07+-+Ilana+preparing+to+cook+supper+on+Island+Lake.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiH_tAArXwhpqtSaM0gzWE2LtM3nVYVY1eb0zZ1oIATlZRG5r3AYP25-JPDxht8hLpJt_jL6SElEMphDrQEUQf04odxG1J8jv17u4cjj0eweaIDndAjB1puYdHeoNHC-WOdBhQM4yEc5zO4/s200/07+-+Ilana+preparing+to+cook+supper+on+Island+Lake.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5228876091868626946" border="0" /></a>With gloves and a trowel Ilana picked out the small bits of burned aluminum foil from the fire and dug out some of the clumpy ash to make room in the fire pit for building a fire for tonight’s supper.<br /><br />Her last chore was filtering nine litres of lake water into a water bladder and some Nalgene bottles so we would have plenty to drink for a couple of days. She was sitting at the water’s edge doing this when a man and a boy approached our site in their outboard powered bass boat. The man slowed the boat to a stop several meters from shore and began chatting with Ilana. His name was Ian and his young fishing companion was his son William. They were staying at the fly-in camp located less than a kilometer away to the west on Island Lake and they were just heading back to the log cabin after a successful afternoon of fishing. He offered us some of his catch, but Ilana declined as we had all we needed to eat at this point. Ilana learned that he was a regular visitor to Island Lake and had served as a guide in this very area years before. He asked if we knew Steve Galehouse and we were happy to say we did. Small world here. Ilana and Ian exchanged good-byes and the anglers sped off to their cabin for the night.<br /><br />My last chore was hauling the boat well up on shore, turning it upside down and tying it to a tree to secure it against big winds. With our campsite now setup we treated ourselves to a swim. One of the best features of this particular campsite is the swimming spot on the southwestern tip. There is a small rocky cliff here and the water is deep and free of underwater snags and deadheads, so one can just dive in. It even had a 2’ wide underwater ledge about a foot under the water’s level to make climbing back onto shore easy. We washed off the sweat, sunscreen and dirt from the day’s efforts and then retired to the shade and bug-free security of our tarp and bug shelter.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4cPGvKKRH_7L8Hdhg2p8d2lWAPQJN8B1UZe5YEzcmpwgdSPJA1F3z_wF_MS9S4bUi49L8ofY0ZaqkCBYL2PB-E7OBAanTaiyGdQ_qISJTXh3v0b_RIzeJ_PllrQsetfwL61HbDFm-49bw/s1600-h/08+-+Steak+supper+on+Island+Lake.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4cPGvKKRH_7L8Hdhg2p8d2lWAPQJN8B1UZe5YEzcmpwgdSPJA1F3z_wF_MS9S4bUi49L8ofY0ZaqkCBYL2PB-E7OBAanTaiyGdQ_qISJTXh3v0b_RIzeJ_PllrQsetfwL61HbDFm-49bw/s200/08+-+Steak+supper+on+Island+Lake.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5228878079431833906" border="0" /></a>By 7:00 PM we were pretty hungry and it was time to cook up that steak supper. We built up a fire in the fire pit, set an old rusty grate over the fire ring, and when the grate was scorched clean by the flames we set the large steak across it to cook. Supper consisted of grilled steak and mashed potatoes, followed by coffee. It proved to be a huge supper and left us feeling swollen and lazy in the evening heat. I did the supper dishes and then we spent the rest of the evening stripped down to our shorts to stay cool relaxing and reading in the bug shelter and watching a loon swim past us and a heron soar by. As dusk approached we came out just long enough to brush our teeth and hoist up the food barrel for the night. We returned to the shelter to read until the light completely faded, at which point we slipped into the tent for well-earned sleep despite the sound of booming bullfrogs close by.<br /><br /><br />DAY 2: CAMPED ON ISLAND LAKE<br /><br />We slept soundly until 7:00 AM. It was a clear, sunny, morning which slowly succumbed to slow-moving, smeary white clouds which threatened rain later in the day. This was exactly what the weather forecast had promised. The long-range forecast called for 11 days of uninterrupted sunshine with some windy days after today. It would be a minor miracle if that rosy, rainless forecast held up for that long, but the prospect of strong winds would mean we might be windbound on certain days.<br /><br />Breakfast consisted of bacon, eggs, tortillas and coffee. By the time we finished eating we could hear distant thunder. I took care of the breakfast dishes and shortly thereafter it began to spit on us. By 10:00 AM we were snug and dry under the taut rain tarp, sipping our second cup of coffee, as the spitting turned to a light summer rain. I love that secure, dry feeling of being under a tarp, listening to the patter of rain over my head and feeling the tarp shudder and bulge in the gusts of wind. It’s the feeling of being outside in a rain, feeling every gust, smelling the wet foliage and ground, hearing the rain and enjoying the occasional drop of mist on your face, without the usual attendant feeling of vulnerability and over-exposure that comes from wet hair and damp clothes when being outside in a rain. The weather did not look like it would improve, so we made plans to gather dry wood and kindling later and to pick blueberries. We looked over our topographic map of the area trying to make up our minds where we should go tomorrow if there were no winds..<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgF9aXLzN5glhjj3dL5xCmKjumunN_LcpL9HDrIAtPHbd4jtHdDPOhWXrSoRP8Ayb5rd3tmKhkYAiPyvwMXP_Uun0tBqrhI-M3oH4YOH3itDTqGsjwdxaWXTKczJTjkrIaGxusGmKvuTH8u/s1600-h/09+-+Collecting+burdock+roots.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgF9aXLzN5glhjj3dL5xCmKjumunN_LcpL9HDrIAtPHbd4jtHdDPOhWXrSoRP8Ayb5rd3tmKhkYAiPyvwMXP_Uun0tBqrhI-M3oH4YOH3itDTqGsjwdxaWXTKczJTjkrIaGxusGmKvuTH8u/s200/09+-+Collecting+burdock+roots.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5228878080914402034" border="0" /></a>By 10:30 AM the rain began to lighten up and the skies were not getting any darker. If anything, the sky was clearing a bit so Ilana packed a lunch to go, put the canoe in the water and paddled away from our campsite and down into the southern arm we’d come from just the day before to the portage we’d done yesterday afternoon. We walked the portage all the way to the other end, just past the old rusty, red logger’s bridge in search of that patch of burdock Ilana has spotted the day before. I had brought along the garden trowel and some heavy duty work gloves for the task ahead of me. There was a very large and dense patch of burdock – that thick-stalked, huge leafed plant that looks like rhubarb. I walked into the patch and crouched down to dig up several plants.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKifqV4KfAWudzL7dGWq1ByEexpvYPAkMn77_TnpfNXSZoo8SfP08xX_0Cc3aJtrXB8b52ii2iAIZNbSVyCvmk6yXycTa9jeLQIALAelKTG57si_6CPlesRZMyLnXPl2oTuvFQcVmffhRT/s1600-h/10+-+Burdock+harvesting.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKifqV4KfAWudzL7dGWq1ByEexpvYPAkMn77_TnpfNXSZoo8SfP08xX_0Cc3aJtrXB8b52ii2iAIZNbSVyCvmk6yXycTa9jeLQIALAelKTG57si_6CPlesRZMyLnXPl2oTuvFQcVmffhRT/s200/10+-+Burdock+harvesting.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5228878086683014850" border="0" /></a>The soil here was impressively deep and rich, despite how rocky and granitic this whole area is. It was sweaty work and the deer flies were bad for Ilana who was standing around identifying the local flora, but the deer flies seemed unable to find me with my head hunkered down below the level of the tall plants. Within half an hour I had dug up about ten of the slender, white, carrot-like roots. While I foraged for these Ilana happened to find several wild mint plants and she gathered a few stems from a few plants. When we had gathered what we needed we placed our burdock roots and wild mint leaves in one broad burdock leaf and rolled the leaf up, tying the bundle of edibles with a few strands of wild grass into a neat package.<br /><br />I should mention here that whenever we forage for wild edibles in this way we take pains to damage as few plants as possible and we never completely denude a patch or a plant of all it’s leaves. We are selective in which plants we pluck (in the case of roots and tubers) and gather only a few leaves from several plant specimens so as to leave the patch of plants in question able to persist and replenish itself in time.<br /><br />On the way back down the portage to where we’d left our canoe we kept an eye out for completely dead and fallen trees and limbs of about 4 or 5 inches diameter. This was a very dry part of the woods and so was a good place to find very dry lengths of wood that we could bring back to our camp in the canoe so that I could saw them into 1-foot lengths and then split with the hatchet. We found one very nice barkless pine log that was perfect, though because it happened to be in the midst of a small birch stand I thought it was a good hard birch log. I should have realized immediately from how light it was that it was pine and not birch. I only realized my mistake when I was putting the log into the bottom of the canoe. I had hoped to get a nice slow-burning piece of hardwood, but I didn’t feel like enduring the deer flies any longer. This would have to do.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLqwfEI2OyEi5exSTgS-gdJj8p6JhyHb4JM1KgiARwvmRT5y5Z-Gk0D27-bOgl-XxDiS-g_OF8fOxEdUiq3osVNYQUVPw1N9edU5MT-V4UtFIst2KMcG1vpUgw06RqCl1I5BuxsMVMKYQt/s1600-h/12+-+Taking+a+breezy+break+for+lunch+on+Island+Lake.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLqwfEI2OyEi5exSTgS-gdJj8p6JhyHb4JM1KgiARwvmRT5y5Z-Gk0D27-bOgl-XxDiS-g_OF8fOxEdUiq3osVNYQUVPw1N9edU5MT-V4UtFIst2KMcG1vpUgw06RqCl1I5BuxsMVMKYQt/s200/12+-+Taking+a+breezy+break+for+lunch+on+Island+Lake.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5228879366693616994" border="0" /></a>We paddled away from that portage and set out in search of a breezy place to have lunch. We could have paddled back to our site of course, but we wanted to eat ‘out’, just for a change of scenery. We paddled straight east past our sight to the 2nd island after our own. The clouds were largely gone now and the sun shone brilliantly and there were occasional strong gusts of wind from the south east to cool us down on our way. When we got to our lunch spot I left the canoe in the water on the leeward side of the island and tied it securely to a tree. We walked to the very southern tip of the island so that we could sit on the big rocky point there and bask in the sun and let the wind gusts keep the deer flies at bay as we lunched. Lunch today was as easy as it gets, peanut butter and jam spread on tortilla and washed down with lemon-flavoured Gatorade and some gorp and granola bars.<br /><br />Now happily fed we gathered a few pieces of driftwood and some cut birch logs we found lying about on the shoreline here. Because our campsite is on a small island we try, whenever possible, to find our wood fuel on other shores. A small island can be quickly picked clean of deadwood and left looking unnaturally bare and overly trampled and gathering firewood from other shores helps us avoid contributing to that overly used look of a campsite. With the boat now quite loaded with driftwood we headed back out into the water in the general direction of our site. We’d paddled several hundred meters on our way when Ilana happened to look back and saw our 20 litre dry bag (which held our lunch, water bottles, camera, snacks, first-aid kit, etc) sitting on the shore. We paddled back to get it and went back out on our westward way.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9V6-88PpmgqcJFPirIyKCDJb66aia8ybzjyukcoqkdUbjmUFaowvi35yr7mgkrc3C0ovAadmw59Tt5liDvtNu7X8HTg4FG-952gTbAJSmW6EgYtoCJ_kdQHghOvuQiwlO96YcnB25GOjg/s1600-h/21+-+A+view+of+our+campsite+on+Island+Lake.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9V6-88PpmgqcJFPirIyKCDJb66aia8ybzjyukcoqkdUbjmUFaowvi35yr7mgkrc3C0ovAadmw59Tt5liDvtNu7X8HTg4FG-952gTbAJSmW6EgYtoCJ_kdQHghOvuQiwlO96YcnB25GOjg/s200/21+-+A+view+of+our+campsite+on+Island+Lake.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229225268665159650" border="0" /></a>We were paddling past the big island just east of our small island when we decided to take a little walk on this large island. It is called Tower island. Tower Island features one huge hill, making it the highest point of land in the Island Lake system and from it’s summit one can get a nearly panoramic view of Island Lake. We paddled close to the southern shore of Tower Island looking for the tiny rock cairn at the shore that marks where the obscure trail to the summit begins. We hauled the wood freighted canoe up onto shore, tied it up. and trudged up the hill. The view from the top is impressive and satisfying, since there are few places on Island Lake itself which offer such views from on high and big open areas. All of the Island Lake & Barren Conservation Reserve is quite flat and Island Lake itself is densely wooded, with trees growing right up to the shores all around with few exceptions. Here was an opportunity to walk around in a large open space of tall grasses, short shrubs and see white oaks and sumac trees. We also found more wild mint here. At the very top of the hill is a large rock cairn, about four or five feet high which marks the location where an old firewatch tower once stood. There are no physical remains here of that structure that we could see, but several meters away from the cairn, at all four compass points, lay large heavy rocks with old rusty wire around them. These would have served as anchors for guy lines to support the tower which once stood where the cairn is now.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBejfhp61uImzknngWYHMAdziT_asIa-B6GtHH6NC0UyNqy_PFmLXW6OAN35DO2g2VssHPVXRTVqQ_KwEe99Xrz9dgeBcXMMB0ww1iOyv9KmVmTkVZ063HAoDFQ0gxJcpVWIZipw_mRVtO/s1600-h/13+-+Cleaning+the+burdock+roots+back+at+camp.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBejfhp61uImzknngWYHMAdziT_asIa-B6GtHH6NC0UyNqy_PFmLXW6OAN35DO2g2VssHPVXRTVqQ_KwEe99Xrz9dgeBcXMMB0ww1iOyv9KmVmTkVZ063HAoDFQ0gxJcpVWIZipw_mRVtO/s200/13+-+Cleaning+the+burdock+roots+back+at+camp.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5228879366312864386" border="0" /></a>Having stared off into the far distance and stretched our legs enough for an afternoon we walked back down to the canoe and returned to camp by 2:00 PM. Ilana immediately sat down at the water’s edge and began washing the dirt off the burdock root and using the course, gritty sand to scrub off the thin brown skin of the root, exposing the white meat inside.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNDx9WhE_KrbStHwP-ygnGemrv-617-ld2cKtHXDEi9hiFIp7cZS2wJjmWHxFGuceEzEE6Tdu4lP8mf6egAj84ymiCiORUg8aiYhyphenhyphenE4u0hFFS0UJ6AUyYSwK5PmXrey2Y9FNOZyYIG2-tS/s1600-h/23B+-+Saw-Vivor+Camping+Saw.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNDx9WhE_KrbStHwP-ygnGemrv-617-ld2cKtHXDEi9hiFIp7cZS2wJjmWHxFGuceEzEE6Tdu4lP8mf6egAj84ymiCiORUg8aiYhyphenhyphenE4u0hFFS0UJ6AUyYSwK5PmXrey2Y9FNOZyYIG2-tS/s200/23B+-+Saw-Vivor+Camping+Saw.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229582587270869538" border="0" /></a>In the meantime I broke out my folding camp saw and bucked some of the larger pieces of driftwood into suitable lengths for burning. If anyone wonders what sort of saw to bring on a camping trip I can heartily endorse this one. It’s extremely lightweight, folds down to a very small size and it works very well. When I’d bucked enough pieces I split the one-foot lengths into halves and quarters with the hatchet. To avoid a potentially serious injury I use the hatchet more like a splitting wedge instead of like an axe: I sink the hatchet into the end of the wood with a short quick whack and when it’s just barely stuck there I raised both the hatched and the piece of wood and bring them down together while holding the wood with my other gloved hand. When the butt end of the wood hits the ground the head of the hatchet sinks deeper into the wood and I slowly split the wood this way instead of with large axe swings which could miss. If the wood seems like it will split easily I sink the head into the end as described above and then use another piece of wood as a mallet and drive the hatchet deeper into the wood to split the wood. Within 20 minutes I had a good sized pile of split and quartered wood and fine kindling. Seeing me use the hatchet this way put all of her fears to rest.<br /><br />It was now late afternoon when Ilana heard human voices – singing voices in fact. We looked to the southwest in the direction leading to the portage to Farm Creek and we saw two canoes rounding the point and heading our way. There were three people in each boat, loaded with camping gear and the 3 girls in the last boat were singing. They were all young people, in their late teens and twenties and certainly a lot cheerier and energetic after a sweaty portage than we had been the day before. We greeted them from shore as they paddled past our campsite and they told us they were cottagers from Wah-Wash-Kesh embarked on a loop trip beginning on Wah-Wash-Kesh, then here to Island Lake, then west into Wolf Lake and from there through a series of lakes to the south leading to the Magnetawan River which would lead them back to Wah-Wash-Kesh. An ambitious loop with lots of portaging. This would be the last contact we would have with anyone else for the next 9 days.<br /><br />They moved on to the next island (Tower Island) and made camp on a large and heavily used camping spot on a point on its western shore. We would have neighbours, but they proved to be respectfully quiet. Their timing had been lucky, as the skies were darkening with clouds and the wind had been picking up in the last couple of hours and rain was clearly coming at any time.<br /><br />We decided to use what little time we had before the rain came to take our daily bath at our diving spot. We didn’t luxuriate this time. We just stripped down, dove in to wet ourselves, climbed ashore to soap ourselves up with liquid bio-degradable soap and dove back in quickly to rinse off. The wind was strong now so drying off happened quickly.<br /><br />Now refreshed, Ilana started a fire to boil the cleaned and sliced burdock root which we would eat as a side dish with tonight’s supper. She was delighted with how fast the fire got hot and stayed hot using the split wood. This was the reason for buying and bringing a hatchet. Round sticks and logs just don’t burn very well compared to split wood, and hardwoods tend to smolder rather than burn hot unless they are fussed with. The result of my chopping and splitting efforts was a less fussy fire that burned hot and produced long-lasting embers. We agreed the hatchet was worth it’s weight and that we’d bring it along on subsequent trips.<br /><br />Our neighbours on Tower Island in the meantime had been pitching their tents and the rain began to fall right after they finished doing so. The wind was now from the southwest and the rain was coming down hard, but it coincided with happy hour, so it was of no concern. We broke out the plastic flask of Jamieson Irish Whiskey and poured ourselves some modest drinks as thunder, lightning, and driving rain happened all around and over us. There’s something satisfying about knowing that all of one’s gear is dry and secure under a broad tarp. Even if the rain did not abate we would be able to cook at ease in dry comfort on our little Trangia stove. I felt a bit sorry for our neighbours on Tower Island though. They either had no tarp or hadn’t had time to string one up, meaning they were all stuck inside, three to a tent.<br /><br />Fortunately for our neighbours the storm passed over by 6:00 PM, leaving a bright blue sky with only scattered clouds. We emerged from under the tarp and immediately began making supper over the fire – pasta noodles with spaghetti sauce (re-hydrated) and instant coffee. We ate it outside by the fire, sitting on a makeshift bench - a wooden board resting on two short stumps of cut wood. As usual Ilana had prepared and cooked the supper so doing the dishes was my job.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRF0X6tYochvjo_tGTjLVYXHpxsE2xQMbsNs2ZEDSypoh64wAGGNtz0VA3zCljVSVlxENEm4VD1zXM2F2SmXkRc87vYSBNlTCJiuCqWl-zJvuJnU8aEVlIRf65VN0d7fYTliLKl1HXLV1U/s1600-h/14+-+Ilana+reading+in+our+shelter+after+the+rain+on+day+2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRF0X6tYochvjo_tGTjLVYXHpxsE2xQMbsNs2ZEDSypoh64wAGGNtz0VA3zCljVSVlxENEm4VD1zXM2F2SmXkRc87vYSBNlTCJiuCqWl-zJvuJnU8aEVlIRf65VN0d7fYTliLKl1HXLV1U/s200/14+-+Ilana+reading+in+our+shelter+after+the+rain+on+day+2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5228879370359628162" border="0" /></a>After supper we reclined under the tarp in our camp chairs sipping coffee, reading and making plans for the following day. Our intention was to break camp after breakfast tomorrow and paddle northeast to where Farm creek spills into Island Lake from Loon Lake and paddle upstream into Loon Lake to camp there for a few days. Then we would paddle back down into Island Lake to its northernmost bay and make camp on a spot we’d examined the year before and deemed suitable for a campsite. We referred to it as ‘oil can site’ because the spot had been used long ago by others who’d left behind some ancient rusty oil cans. Having made camp there we would locate and walk the portage into Rat Lake to the north of Island Lake and make a day trip into Rat Lake with a view to making camp there on another day. Once we’d had our fill of that lake we’d portage back into Island Lake and portage into Myrtle Lake and then Dutton Lake, which we’d camped on last August and which we’d found lovely and quiet. With these ambitious plans in mind we prepared for bed – brushing our teeth, hanging up the food barrel, and drowning the fire pit. We were asleep in our bags by 10:30 PM.<br /><br />DAY THREE: A CHANGE IN PLANS<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaNzxgduna-pMnTs88lfoRj-xBP62Sz0fCmJyrgpn3QMKFH14857tvkMGzsDzeXIXPzDJEdtaREI5m0rtHkVRtIcrVduJXMzaY6SvL9-0MCaJvbqgKadmdnAz3QJmVf5GGBoxven8pY20o/s1600-h/15+-+Ilana+rearranging+her+food+barrel.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaNzxgduna-pMnTs88lfoRj-xBP62Sz0fCmJyrgpn3QMKFH14857tvkMGzsDzeXIXPzDJEdtaREI5m0rtHkVRtIcrVduJXMzaY6SvL9-0MCaJvbqgKadmdnAz3QJmVf5GGBoxven8pY20o/s200/15+-+Ilana+rearranging+her+food+barrel.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5228879373717681794" border="0" /></a>We awoke at 6:00 AM, fully rested after a solid, uninterrupted sleep. Ilana crawled out first, fetched the food barrel, started the fire, and made a breakfast of hot oatmeal and coffee. I began preparing for our move to another campsite by staying in the tent and deflating our mattresses, rolling them up and stuffing our sleeping bags into a compression sac. I then crawled out of the tent to lower the other barrel and retrieved the rope used for hanging the barrels. Lastly I removed the fly from the tent and hung it out over one of the tarp lines to dry in the sun and breeze. We were headed for Loon Lake and eagerly breaking camp on this beautiful, sunny, sparsefly clouded and windless morning.<br /><br />We sat on the crude bench by the fire, transfixed by an enterprising gull or tern. It was putting on an impressive aerobatic display over the water right in front of our campsite, soaring, swooping and diving into the water after fish. We had front-row seats as it plunged under the water from a great height and came up with a hapless fish in it’s beak, which it swallowed whole after circling round over us. We watched for a good 15 minutes as it wheeled about in the air and made multiple dives.<br /><br />It was right around this time that Ilana stood up and complained of a very sharp twinge in her lower back. Ilana and I both suffer from acute back pains from time to time. Mine tends to come on me when I have been sitting for long stretches of time, but Ilana’s back troubles are less predictable. Earlier that morning she had been stomping on some long thick branches to break them into proper lengths for the fire and she had stomped very hard on one branch that would not yeild. This shock on her leg and spine might have been what did it this time. With every passing minute her lower back pain grew more painful and she was walking more stiffly.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-yqbrROSve7dX9sDAMlivQqszVh97tqZU7tAVrDaKATmbVmJirxDt_i-frHOLjOkd4g7x-3winA9tLxk1DVhDuvapgwyUdnblNWrtx4g9WOIttziSmYQZ9bmbZ_XQOP-JhNqagQ-06BOC/s1600-h/16+-+Ilana+recovering+from+a+sore+lower+back.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-yqbrROSve7dX9sDAMlivQqszVh97tqZU7tAVrDaKATmbVmJirxDt_i-frHOLjOkd4g7x-3winA9tLxk1DVhDuvapgwyUdnblNWrtx4g9WOIttziSmYQZ9bmbZ_XQOP-JhNqagQ-06BOC/s200/16+-+Ilana+recovering+from+a+sore+lower+back.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5228879374048099362" border="0" /></a>Within 30 minutes the pain was so intense that even walking slowly was painful. Sitting, lifting, and paddling were absolutely out of the question. She needed to lie down right away so I unrolled the mattresses and inflated them and put one atop the other to make it comfier for her under the tarp. She downed a couple of Advil tablets and lay there motionless waiting for the pain killers to do their work. We would not be travelling anywhere today since these occasional crises of back pain can last hours or days. As bad as the pain was, she agonized more about how this episode might spoil our trip. How long would we have to stay camped here? Should we just abort our plans and go home when she felt well enough to sit in the canoe, or should we just stay camped here until she made a complete recovery? I tried to console her, but she couldn’t help feeling a bit guilty about possibly cutting our trip short.<br /><br />Since we were not going anywhere today I put the dried tent fly back on the tent and rehung the food barrels and unstuffed the sleeping bags. We would be staying here at least one more day, no matter what. We would just have to wait and see how long this back pain would last.<br /><br />To our delight Ilana seemed to be feeling significantly better by 11:00 AM. The pain killers were doing their job and lying flat for a few hours seemed to be safeguarding her against further aggravating her injury. She was still stiff and could only walk slowly and carefully, but experience has taught her that her condition improves if she engages in whatever activity doesn’t hurt her after the initial acute pain abates. Paddling, lift-overs, and portages were still out of question for today, but she was able to walk about our small island, gathering small handfulls of branches and gathering blueberries. While on the north side of the island I found a good quality pocket knife sitting in the grass. I seem to find such treasures on most camping trips. As it turned out, the wind had been picking up steadily since we awoke and it would not have been a good day to be paddling. By 11:00 AM we were in fact windbound, so we had not wasted a day at all.<br /><br />I must say Ilana was remarkably high spirited and cheery about the whole thing after her initial dissapointment wore off. I would have been whining the whole time if I’d been in her shoes.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsjCeB_3l1DXm9pGtUbsZ2BXg_dWIYAJ4HL2Y_npRRyQ5GIsMGCPiQMbnPf7kDBI1QwNOaiJKEx5a2ra2NVvVK9-XtJgHjul_92_iNPwG8zX4yQ0MyMywcdBDQsAW17mJ27Z1itPLNOaac/s1600-h/17+-+Martin+skinny-dipping.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsjCeB_3l1DXm9pGtUbsZ2BXg_dWIYAJ4HL2Y_npRRyQ5GIsMGCPiQMbnPf7kDBI1QwNOaiJKEx5a2ra2NVvVK9-XtJgHjul_92_iNPwG8zX4yQ0MyMywcdBDQsAW17mJ27Z1itPLNOaac/s200/17+-+Martin+skinny-dipping.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5228881106377858994" border="0" /></a>We spent the day lazing about, picking berries, reading, filtering a bit more water. I carried on as usual – chopping wood, bathing, shaving, washing my dirty clothes in our large cooking pot and hanging it to dry on our tarp lines. During the hottest part of the afternoon Ilana rested in my lap and napped – the best treatment for back pain is sleeping through it.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-p1NbDeyh3quWJIlOCyWuvTbukx9jxfomF_Ml_ye8yf2YAk2T7yExHNHAK8zkLvqXUOfSQumYhGaGY9odfoIQAUCjOnXfe6HLqnfUgcPpgoisCdwSPlCS7EDbGOrfIFsEI8hwZi-OLgzB/s1600-h/18+-+The+creature+from+Island+Lake.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-p1NbDeyh3quWJIlOCyWuvTbukx9jxfomF_Ml_ye8yf2YAk2T7yExHNHAK8zkLvqXUOfSQumYhGaGY9odfoIQAUCjOnXfe6HLqnfUgcPpgoisCdwSPlCS7EDbGOrfIFsEI8hwZi-OLgzB/s200/18+-+The+creature+from+Island+Lake.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5228881115781540978" border="0" /></a>By 5:00 PM Ilana was feeling markedly better. The back pain was much better. The fact that she’d been able to nap in the afternoon was very reassuring to her, since it meant she could lie comfortably enough to sleep through the night.<br /><br />The wind had been worsening all day and I was worried about it. I had to restring the tarp to prevent it from flapping loudly from the stronger wind gusts. I had a bad feeling a serious storm might be brewing. The wind was so strong that making a fire was unwise, so this meant we’d be cooking under the tarp on our stove. To my surprise and pleasure the wind died down very quickly in the span of half an hour.<br /><br />It was about this time that we realized that the six young canoeists on Tower Ilsand were no longer camped there. They’d been there that morning, but had quietly broken camp at some point and moved on. Paddling in the high winds would have made for heavy going, but with keeled canoes and three paddlers to a boat they would surely have been fine.<br /><br />Supper that night was pasta and spaghetti sauce. Ilana finds it easier to make the same meal two nights in a row. It makes menu planning and meal preparation easier. For desert we sipped hot chocolate and toasted marshmellows over the fire. The evening proved to be cool compared to the evening before so we donned our polar fleece jackets and sat close together under the tarp and read until light failed.<br /><br />That night we both slept soundly without interruption.<br /><br /><br />DAY FOUR: A BETTER DAY<br /><br />We awoke at 6:30 AM and were both out of the tent by 7:00 AM. It was cool and cloudy and there was a strong breeze. Ilana was feeling somewhat stiff and we agreed to wait until after breakfast to see if her back was well enough to paddle. Breakfast was hot oatmeal with freshly picked wild blueberries and hot coffee.<br /><br />As we ate Ilana suggested we test her back by trying to paddle a short distance from our campsite and back. After breakfast dishes and morning ablutions we put the canoe in the water and Ilana climbed gingerly into her bow seat and we pushed off from shore. We paddled straight south to the shore opposite our campsite. So far so good. Paddling was fine. It was causing her no pain. From there we paddled over to the site where the six young people had camped the day before. We climbed out onto shore to see what sort of condition they left their campsite in. We were gratified to see that they were conscientious and left no litter behind. We then paddled back to shore. The verdict was in. Ilana’s back was well enough to paddle, though climbing in and out of the boat was still difficult for her, so wherever we went, Ilana was to do no unnecessary bending, though she was confident she could portage the packs provided I picked them up and put them on her. With any luck, her back would loosen up still more with a bit of exercise.<br /><br />Back at our site we broke camp. 90 minutes later we had the packs, barrels and our yellow dry bag all packed up and in the boat. We did a last inspection of our site to ensure we were leaving nothing behind and the site in better condition than we’d found it and off we went for Loon Lake at 10:40 AM.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXdvGzZEuij-scfjMO70mhFwcZi00l1f3j9zwA4PQGOCIttruIgvVwQ7zTMkqZIbz2bNGR59JIspInED0rDyyhOeF53PBqeffv70D2g4gxsvkevBvthThs6wYFX8T6aphWsdXtZKNkNVZS/s1600-h/28+-+Blueberry+Island+to+Loon+Creek.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXdvGzZEuij-scfjMO70mhFwcZi00l1f3j9zwA4PQGOCIttruIgvVwQ7zTMkqZIbz2bNGR59JIspInED0rDyyhOeF53PBqeffv70D2g4gxsvkevBvthThs6wYFX8T6aphWsdXtZKNkNVZS/s200/28+-+Blueberry+Island+to+Loon+Creek.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229226227689001842" border="0" /></a>We paddled north and then east around Tower Island and to the north shore of Island Lake to the mouth of the north arm of Farm Creek, which folks in these parts prefer to call Loon Creek. We were assisted across the open water by a wind from the southeast and we found ourselves at the mouth of Loon Creek and paddling past a hunting camp cabin. From Island Lake the creek goes straight north a very short distance and then turns sharply east.<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1aUozyGgW1LKuiivFAbw3InoO12c_aNGBB9_BIFu5Bhky35SUwvoX4h-0PVw1nzUKD6FmPllSlGfuTjrGQTxHo8Yjl079RNPA3AIdPe9-Vwnhg4Af7Jj2bVDjdHUe_A-YKQiTxzcOOONS/s1600-h/29+-+Loon+Creek+to+Loon+Lake.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1aUozyGgW1LKuiivFAbw3InoO12c_aNGBB9_BIFu5Bhky35SUwvoX4h-0PVw1nzUKD6FmPllSlGfuTjrGQTxHo8Yjl079RNPA3AIdPe9-Vwnhg4Af7Jj2bVDjdHUe_A-YKQiTxzcOOONS/s200/29+-+Loon+Creek+to+Loon+Lake.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229226233058349522" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIBCvt12DVJ7_WRl5gEzjtdFBX45ynZGcfTi_oMYJbm_NX1LeXU_2z-6h7xUGM8nOd8id7u-yzdDKxtSLW4DU4K-Ebkj0a9MaA82fhoi-7DQhYTkz1heH_epGaKQPZAsqb2X5BD8Z54Afb/s1600-h/30+-+A+lift-over+along+Loon+Creek.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIBCvt12DVJ7_WRl5gEzjtdFBX45ynZGcfTi_oMYJbm_NX1LeXU_2z-6h7xUGM8nOd8id7u-yzdDKxtSLW4DU4K-Ebkj0a9MaA82fhoi-7DQhYTkz1heH_epGaKQPZAsqb2X5BD8Z54Afb/s200/30+-+A+lift-over+along+Loon+Creek.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229226231189037794" border="0" /></a>About 15 minutes later we came to the first of about 5 lift-overs on Loon Creek. This first one is very high and steep and one must land the canoe on the right shore, empty the boat and portage around it. Ilana snapped a few photos of me as I carried the canoe around the dam. Despite her stiff back she gamely helped me move the packs and barrels.<br /><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSCHCVLyhhCeu-w6D1oQ5c4hc5bH2iIfK37TsIypEgXgBsf6nd9mjRiAJ9r-AfmM717bALVueD_wbQcVI2DDi7Iyg1S4FMTRLLJYXRpTl56CzzWafYxzDwF-pdToN4g0fO6jjm4q5c3iiE/s1600-h/31+-+moving+around+a+beaver+dam+on+Loon+Creek.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSCHCVLyhhCeu-w6D1oQ5c4hc5bH2iIfK37TsIypEgXgBsf6nd9mjRiAJ9r-AfmM717bALVueD_wbQcVI2DDi7Iyg1S4FMTRLLJYXRpTl56CzzWafYxzDwF-pdToN4g0fO6jjm4q5c3iiE/s200/31+-+moving+around+a+beaver+dam+on+Loon+Creek.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229226238169089106" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghnEJbIVhT3TijEDmPcOkuVsh8FUpkV97c4xSOJfXuGyjGZXsEIcl6zRwZhRlWawGA_epcghpRQCkW0ECbde2pcXkZ4w2hlML-QMyLrqGzUaBWa2mquA39IKNjKyqt2LCEqHfGzS73o6LQ/s1600-h/32-+Me+and+the+water+lilies+on+Loon+Creek.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghnEJbIVhT3TijEDmPcOkuVsh8FUpkV97c4xSOJfXuGyjGZXsEIcl6zRwZhRlWawGA_epcghpRQCkW0ECbde2pcXkZ4w2hlML-QMyLrqGzUaBWa2mquA39IKNjKyqt2LCEqHfGzS73o6LQ/s200/32-+Me+and+the+water+lilies+on+Loon+Creek.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229226240133486674" border="0" /></a>The flora on Loon Creek is a bit different than the arm of Farm Creek that flows out of Island Lake. Here there was far more pickerel weed and the water is densely filled with water lillies which line both shores for long stretches like a bridal path.<br /><br />The other beaver dam lift-overs were very straight-forward and with a bit of assistance from Ilana (whose back seemed to be getting better as the morning wore on) we easily dragged the boats up and over one dam after another.<br /><br />I wish I could say the portages were so easy. The first portage is not long, but it was harder this year than it was last year when we paddled to Loon Lake on a day excursion from our campsite on Blueberry Island. Very high waters from spring flood had moved dozens of very large rocks downstream blocking the place where we usually landed the canoe for the portage. As a result we had to land the boat sooner, making the portage a few dozen meters longer than before. It was no great hardship, but it’s mildly discouraging when mother nature makes a short portage a tiny bit longer.<br /><br />As if to balance things out for us, the second portage was shorter. The second portage happens to be at an an old logging bridge and last year we had to take out on the left shore and walk across the old log bridge to the right shore and finished the portage on the right shore. But with water levels being higher at this time of year we were able to take out on the right shore just before the bridge and portage along the right shore, thus avoiding having to carry the canoe across that old log bridge. At the put-in we stopped for a snack. The cool of the morning had given way to clearing skies and heat. It felt good to sit on the big granite slope and cool off and replenish ourselves before moving further upstream.<br /><br />The third and final portage was necessitated by shallow water. The creek eventually gets too shallow and so we landed the canoe in the grassy floodplain on the right of the now narrow and shallow ribbon of creek and we portaged along this shore to the southern end of Loon Lake. This was the longest portage, but it was in an open grassy floodplain so bugs were not a problem because of the nice breeze blowing through here. We had arrived at Loon Lake at 1:40 PM, three hours from when we left our site, fully half of this time had been spent on portages and dragging/lifting over beaver dams. As if to greet us, we heard a loon’s tremolo as we paddled into Loon Lake proper.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHBQQ02xe3aCupzG6mbvWpfJKdbXDqVQowyHYOLM93g3B_QACFPE6_sP33aw9JTy_jibGZpYm-8hgY0EEv6HQ2bXNggdJ5eNWMOmfUJZ66fl46xNO_KgmW_2s0QDe1dPYWpNUjrF0wYyV8/s1600-h/33+-+Map+of+Loon+Lake.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHBQQ02xe3aCupzG6mbvWpfJKdbXDqVQowyHYOLM93g3B_QACFPE6_sP33aw9JTy_jibGZpYm-8hgY0EEv6HQ2bXNggdJ5eNWMOmfUJZ66fl46xNO_KgmW_2s0QDe1dPYWpNUjrF0wYyV8/s200/33+-+Map+of+Loon+Lake.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229227605321733314" border="0" /></a>Loon Lake is an uncommonly beautiful lake. The water is orangey with tanins. The shoreline is very different from the shores of Island Lake where the trees grow densely right up to the very edge of the water. Here the shores are more open, with more bare rock showing, covered with mosses and lichens, more brush and scrub as the rocky shores slope up and away gradually from the water’s edge until they come to the tree line, which is overwhelmingly made up of jack pine instead of Island Lake’s white pines, birches and maples. As we paddled north along the western shore looking for a good spot to make camp we were impressed with how the granite here was rich with thin pink veins and great chunky veins and blocks of gleaming white quartz, which in places looked like ice. The gently sloping rocky shorelines and open areas reminded us of canoe trips we’d taken in the Kawartha highlands.<br /><br />On the west shore, only halfway up to where the lake suddenly elbows towards the east we saw an old stone fire ring on the western shore. Where possible it’s always best to camp on an established campsite so as to restrict and minimize one’s environmental impact, so we beached the canoe on the smooth gentle slope of stone shore and climbed up to a flat green plateau of grass and moss covered ground which had been used as a campsite by previous visitors. The fire ring appeared not to have been used in many years and there was no other recent sign of human activity on the plateau either, but there were clear signs of recent bear visitations. Moss and large chunks of spalling rock were overturned where a bear had searched for grubs and there was recently dropped bear scat in a few places. That’s never a great sign when looking for a campsite, but then it might be hard to find any bit of waterfront real estate on this lake that wasn’t regularly visited by black bears. Blueberries bushes, which bears like as much as we do, were growing everywhere around this lake and they were in season. We had decided against this site because it was quite buggy when we noticed a recently disarticulated animal leg -possibly a young deer’s leg - lying on the very spot where we’d have liked to have pitched a tent. The femur and lower leg bone were still connected to one another with gristle. This was likely dragged here by coyotes, but it was sufficiently macabre to make us keep looking for a better spot to camp.<br /><br />When we’d come here last year on a day trip I had made note of a good potential campsite along this shore, near where the lake bends to the east, so we resumed paddling north, hugging the western shore and looking for a good spot. As we were approaching the last stretch of this shore before it turned east we spotted a fire ring. A moment later I spied an old wooden picnic table a few meters away from the fire ring. When I announced this to Ilana she was delighted. A picnic table is a real luxury on a campsite and although I prefer a site free of such constructions I couldn’t deny how practical and comfortable a table like that is on a site. One gets tired of doing all one’s cooking and eating low to the ground.<br /><br />We paddled a few meters past the fire ring and around a rocky point into a shallow bay and beached the canoe. The site in question was on a point and east-facing, which meant it would get a good breeze and lots of light throughout the day. We walked over to the fire ring and table and we were delighted at what we found. The sight had been used as a campsite in the past, obviously, but not in a long time. The fire ring was grown over with vegetation. An old pine had fallen some years ago and it’s branches crowded the fire ring. The picnic table was old, but solid enough to use. It was no doubt flown in here by the owners of the fly-in camp. The site itself was sparsely treed with jack pines, except for one white pine by the shore close to the fire ring and the ground was covered in pine needles, moss and thigh-high ferns. Access to water was easy as the flat plateau we were standing on eased gradually down to the water’s edge. Best of all, although we were on a point, there were plenty of trees throughout the site to break up strong winds and behind the site (to the west) was higher ground covered in denser jackpine, completely protecting us from western winds. Here was a nearly ideal site: established, but with all the aesthetic appeal of a virgin bush site.<br /><br />The only downside was all the bear scat. In surveying the site for where we’d string up the tarp and pitch the tent we came across three mounds of bear scat, and just to the south, along the shore were recently overturned rocks. Clearly one or more bears passed through here with some regularity. Oh well, you can’t have everything.<br /><br />This fuelled my concern about where we’d hang the food barrels. There was no shortage of mature trees, but they were all jack pines, which have branches shooting out horizontally all around their trunks from the ground up, making it impossible to string a food-hanging rope without first cutting branches and limbs from the tree. I was not about to do anything of the sort. I don’t even like snapping off dead branches from a living tree for firewood, collecting fallen branches and driftwood only. The only suitable tree was the lone white pine by the shore, close to the fire ring and so all too close to where we’d be eating, sleeping and living. The point of hanging one’s food is to make it hard to get for critters, including bears, and if possible, a short walk from one’s site so that if a bear finds the barrels, he’s not in one’s camp. I searched for quite a while for a suitable tree further from our site, but there were simply no other candidates.<br /><br />We were almost giddy from the beauty of the site. Because it was on a point right where the lake bends it offered a beautiful view of both arms of Loon Lake and there was so much light and air moving through this sparsely treed area that there were no bugs to harrass us. That, along with the other practical considerations above, made it just about the best camping site we’d ever happened upon.<br /><br />Ilana set about, with trowel and work gloves in hand, to dig out the old fire pit of grass and debris (mostly faded beer cans and rusty old food tins) as I snapped off some of the dead and punky limbs from that fallen tree which crowded the fire ring. She then built up the fire ring to her satisfaction. The only thing missing was a fire grate to put over it which she found about a half hour later hanging on a tree limb.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcVIhAKeNwtfMj9hWCQDwaFFORaA1HlCL3ozG_u1qbE4o7HYIYJnLZnKtUXJA3QEZ-8ie0BRF64WykvPWkxbH4Fo6K-cHpBfMFZ_suf2ViLD8XNCj756yLdDTtNMO-7oEd0N2FKYE-viYx/s1600-h/34+-+Stringing+the+tarp+on+Loon+Lake.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcVIhAKeNwtfMj9hWCQDwaFFORaA1HlCL3ozG_u1qbE4o7HYIYJnLZnKtUXJA3QEZ-8ie0BRF64WykvPWkxbH4Fo6K-cHpBfMFZ_suf2ViLD8XNCj756yLdDTtNMO-7oEd0N2FKYE-viYx/s200/34+-+Stringing+the+tarp+on+Loon+Lake.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229227606669294546" border="0" /></a>Before long the tarp and bug shelter was strung up, the tent pitched in an open grass patch surrounded by ferns, the food barrels hung up from a high limb on the white pine. The next order of business was finding a good spot to make a suitable latrine. Immediately behind our site, just a few meters from our tarp and pitch ran a long 10-foot high ridge of moss-covered granite. Over and beyond it was a small open meadow of grass and ferns. There we found ‘crack rock’ a rougly cubical granite boulder, approximately two feet high. The rock was split in two clean halves, as if some massive axe had cleaved it vertically all the way through to the bare ground it sat on. Ilana took one look at it and was inspired to sit on it, resting her bum over the crack. She declared it to be the perfect size. There would be no need to dig a cat hole or fashion some crude thing to sit on. One could just sit there and toss a bit of dirt into the crack when one was done – a natural thunderbox. And as if this didn’t look comfy enough, there was a tree behind the rock with a horizontal limb stretching out over the rock, from which I could hang some mosquito netting to make the user safe from distracting bites. It was all getting a little too good to be true.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLCErY-Y59EIPwUJbjqQOPjmKPOP9hTx04WVgrqmmZ2XRUGPdawWkwPPGJlpPwCjH3Pbo6tjlWBp4hcGjXTSab9DtKo3kMlKZT_l-WTOTMfSJi30i2i0z0d5JY-SFIbzd0Et4wxERDRCZ5/s1600-h/35+-+Our+tent+among+the+ferns+on+Loon+Lake.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLCErY-Y59EIPwUJbjqQOPjmKPOP9hTx04WVgrqmmZ2XRUGPdawWkwPPGJlpPwCjH3Pbo6tjlWBp4hcGjXTSab9DtKo3kMlKZT_l-WTOTMfSJi30i2i0z0d5JY-SFIbzd0Et4wxERDRCZ5/s200/35+-+Our+tent+among+the+ferns+on+Loon+Lake.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229227612716593810" border="0" /></a>By now it was late afternoon and we were tired from the trip here and sweaty from making camp during the hottest part of the day. We walked to the point of rock where we’d landed the canoe for a swim. The rocky beach here is nice, but the rocks in some places are dotted with dried bear and beaver scat. Ilana went in first (as usual) and using her swim googles she looked about underwater to see if there are any underwater snags, deadheads and rocks we need to avoid bashing into.<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfGhNzux_M2HA3VEiXAJoJYzjl9bHXiUHU1c7qBkbJ1A3VITspz2VmTIhi_Z-srBqtwrieNprE6QwE3IXKcaVfbePQmZwMibKYK_zCIrmMFiQPqXYK1RifoVO87vOFfgbf_rML1YtyBL2O/s1600-h/36+-+Ilana+swimming+on+Loon+Lake.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfGhNzux_M2HA3VEiXAJoJYzjl9bHXiUHU1c7qBkbJ1A3VITspz2VmTIhi_Z-srBqtwrieNprE6QwE3IXKcaVfbePQmZwMibKYK_zCIrmMFiQPqXYK1RifoVO87vOFfgbf_rML1YtyBL2O/s200/36+-+Ilana+swimming+on+Loon+Lake.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229227617225689682" border="0" /></a>After snapping a few photos of her swimming in the orangey water I dove in after her for my bath. We sunned ourselves dry in the hot breeze and enjoyed how the low hill behind (to the west of) our site was not so high as to block the sunset. We would be able to see the sunrise in the morning in front of our site, enjoy it all day long until it settled behind the gently rising slope behind our site.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUvik6wixHuZYJjjiUI6k-JPocC7UmGUya0mVcv4c_GLTOMDTsNPL5qb-vK8QAnQ0BI-m6NGqro6LOYjLQAh4IaeEhLCZNYriGNnj0LXrHz2lVf2q7enMJUdwn-xAIrVA_hXyaK46-K7fX/s1600-h/37+-+Ilana+enjoying+a+sip+of+Irish+Whiskey+on+Loon+Lake.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUvik6wixHuZYJjjiUI6k-JPocC7UmGUya0mVcv4c_GLTOMDTsNPL5qb-vK8QAnQ0BI-m6NGqro6LOYjLQAh4IaeEhLCZNYriGNnj0LXrHz2lVf2q7enMJUdwn-xAIrVA_hXyaK46-K7fX/s200/37+-+Ilana+enjoying+a+sip+of+Irish+Whiskey+on+Loon+Lake.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229229212584341218" border="0" /></a>It was now happy hour, so we settled under the tarp in our Therm-a-rest chairs, sipping a few ounces of Irish whisky and congratulating ourselves on a good day’s work and Ilana’s fortitude in achieving this much with a troubled back.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><br /></span>For supper that night Ilana made shepherd’s pie – a platter of mashed potatoes, ground beef and corn and gravy (all rehydrated), followed by coffee. It was a hearty and tasty meal and she managed to put it together in just minutes. After doing the dishes we spent the rest of the evening admiring our view of the lake, enjoying the loon calls as they plowed gently along on water as we indulged in fantasies of somehow acquiring this tiny patch of paradise and living hear in a tiny two-room cabin.<br /><br />By 9:30 PM the sun was setting and the mosquitoes were out in force so we called it a night and slipped into our tent. The night sounds here were different than they had been on Island Lake. There were fewer frogs, but frequent and loud loon calls and a numerous Whippoorwills calling all around us. I had a hard time falling asleep from the racket. I could also make out the unmistakeable sound of a beaver gnawing away at wood. I couldn’t help worrying that he was chiseling away at some tree that would come crashing down on us. This irrational concern was brought to mind because on Blueberry Island there were several birches that had been brought down by beavers, including one full grown birch that is half-eaten through and leaning perillously over an established tent pad. The night was cool and windless and our blue tent was lit up from the outside by a big bright gibbous moon. The moon was waxing so within two nights it would be full.<br /><br /><br />DAY FIVE: PADDLING EAST ON LOON LAKE<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKFgd8SxREQBzvXXADYcnZL0OhfikauBE6OvQ0QNiU8JGsJ2_4OHlBsNvjIhM1jTEOk25si2YzICMRiqkwxkc237_2WsgkaVW1FCEI7ATZ6YHS8eOopLDxUHYYe9nhJbbrzzb7Quo2jyyS/s1600-h/40+-+Oatmeal+with+freshly-picked+blueberries+for+breakfast.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKFgd8SxREQBzvXXADYcnZL0OhfikauBE6OvQ0QNiU8JGsJ2_4OHlBsNvjIhM1jTEOk25si2YzICMRiqkwxkc237_2WsgkaVW1FCEI7ATZ6YHS8eOopLDxUHYYe9nhJbbrzzb7Quo2jyyS/s200/40+-+Oatmeal+with+freshly-picked+blueberries+for+breakfast.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229229222674276818" border="0" /></a>Ilana had a fitful sleep and tossed quite a bit overnight, which affected my sleep as well, so we slept in until 7:00 AM and crawled out of the tent some time after that. Breakfast was our usual hot oatmeal with blueberries freshly picked from the evening before with coffee. It’s hard to tire of oatmeal when it’s loaded with brown sugar, raisins, chopped walnuts and fresh blueberries.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />It was laundry day for Ilana so she took some of the clothes she’d worn in the last couple of days and let them soak in our big cooking pot full of lake water before changing the water, adding biogedgradble soap and scrubbing the clothes the old fashioned way in the pot. Meanwhile I decided to try out our solid stone latrine. Alas, our all-natural mini outhouse did not prove as comfortable to me as it had for Ilana. Seems that a boy’s bits and pieces get in the way in such a setup (I should have realized it upon looking at it), so I would need to contrive something more comfortable for myself.<br /><br />As Ilana was nearly finished doing her laundry she needed to hang up her clothes to dry, so I took an old abandoned length of nylon rope I’d found when we’d arrived the day before and strung it up between two trees for her.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9KfEBic1_9ubUJgWrp_yfrs97aLq3HczWQ5X9HnEMaH5pPQbT5DEllUX3Pt8NVjeAR5E9MBB-Ywi16eLfQD53KPi7wW4ODHO50W3J5QwrKVLnPe43cs4SGLpOnPJkXg0eFj-xh8ujKZWB/s1600-h/35a+-+Ilana+gathering+driftwood+for+the+fire+on+Loon+Lake.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9KfEBic1_9ubUJgWrp_yfrs97aLq3HczWQ5X9HnEMaH5pPQbT5DEllUX3Pt8NVjeAR5E9MBB-Ywi16eLfQD53KPi7wW4ODHO50W3J5QwrKVLnPe43cs4SGLpOnPJkXg0eFj-xh8ujKZWB/s200/35a+-+Ilana+gathering+driftwood+for+the+fire+on+Loon+Lake.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229227614866476098" border="0" /></a>With breakfast, ablutions and chores out of the way, we were ready to do a little exploring of Loon Lake. Whenever we are camped on a lake we like to paddle it’s entire circumference to get a feel for the whole lake, but also to identify plants, discover wild edibles, enjoy some wildlife sightings, and look for potential water and portage routes into nearby lakes and ponds.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOjxmEF9PXSxTowqFpe31DWoKQXlgnw4xX9ThQtU4MEFUrqYM0Drsdas1uMYLDgbCse84vKByhW9gf_KEXAFZ-XfCSsZLkIx-gvtTmIcPdJBXrrecgyW_5VkxGHcEiBFZjB9O7_D_S4J2U/s1600-h/44+-+Exploring+Loon+Lake+1%262%263.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOjxmEF9PXSxTowqFpe31DWoKQXlgnw4xX9ThQtU4MEFUrqYM0Drsdas1uMYLDgbCse84vKByhW9gf_KEXAFZ-XfCSsZLkIx-gvtTmIcPdJBXrrecgyW_5VkxGHcEiBFZjB9O7_D_S4J2U/s200/44+-+Exploring+Loon+Lake+1%262%263.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229230020211127362" border="0" /></a>The main part of Loon Lake is like an upside down L, with one arm running south from our campsite and a longer arm running east from our site The longer east arm narrows and shallows in two places where beaver’s have made small dams across these narrows, effectively dividing the lake into 3 parts. We were camped in the large main portion (Loon Lake 1), but we were eager to paddle into the two other sections: Loon Lake 2 and 3. When we visited this lake last year from Island Lake we never got into the 2nd and 3rd parts because we were pressed for time and water levels were so low it would have meant a long dirty wade through a mud flat just to get to the beaver dam. There would be no mud flat in the way this year and we were not pressed for time. We would begin at our campsite and move clockwise all around the lake. We packed a lunch since this would take several hours.<br /><br />Just before we climbed into the boat Ilana spotted a lovely blue-tailed Five-Lined Skink. Regrettably it did not stay long enough to be photographed, but we at least saw a few more of these tiny lizards in the days which followed. The western shore immediately north of our site was a high rocky sloping hill, covered in moss, wild grasses and shrubs. Right along the shore here we found an uncommon wild orchid called a Grass Pink, (though this variety was purple, not pink) and a yellow Fen Orchid.<br /><br />We followed the shoreline as it turned abruptly east. Here on the north shore, almost directly opposite the point of our campsite, were two overturned aluminum fishing boats which had been stashed. The operators of the fly-in fishing camp on Island Lake stash boats like this for their clients to use (along with picnic tables). This allows them to fish on the lakes surrounding Island Lake without having to portage their large boats out of Island Lake. They just park their primary boat or canoe at the start of the portage, walk the portage into the satellite lake and hop into one of the boats stashed on the shore of that lake. But the boats are always stashed where the client would first come out onto the lake. There were two boats stashed at the southern tip of Loon Lake, exactly where one would expect, close to the portage from Loon Creek into Loon Lake, but the two boats before us now were much too far from the entry point into Loon Lake. We had puzzled over this last year as well. We shrugged our shoulders and continued following the shoreline eastwards.<br /><br />It took only a few minutes to reach the end of the first part of Loon Lake. We paddled towards the low beaver dam until the water grew too shallow, at which point we stepped out of the boat into the water and waded it to the dam and lifted the empy boat over it and into the deep water on the other side. We climbed back in and paddled east, still following the north shoreline. After the narrow part, the lake opens into a round expanse contained by slightly higher elevation than contains Loon Lake 1. As we paddled into this round part I saw a very large turtle, perhaps 15” across, sunning itself on a large rock in the water, but before Ilana could get a good look at it, it heard us coming towards it and slid beneath the water.<br /><br />We landed the canoe on the north shore near the opening of the round lake to climb up the hill. From here we could get a good view of Loon Lake 1 and 2 with their open slopes of granite and gleaming white quartz veins. While up here we identified several species of plants, including Serviceberry bushes which still had some berries on them.<br /><br />Once back in the boat we paddled along the north shore and into the long, rocky narrows. The water levels here were low but didn’t require any wading. We poled our way along with a bit of effort and lifted the canoe over two small beaver dams and one high one until we came into the 3rd part of Loon Lake. Loon Lake 3 is a very different place. The lake sits in a deep bowl of granite. The hills surrounding it are steep and these soon rise higher and turn into sheer vertical cliff walls. There is less wind here as a result making for a flatter and unnaturally quiet lake. This deep bowl is by no means featureless though. The steep high walls are full of differently colored quartzes and brown and rusty lichens. There is a large low island near the western part of the lake and it is nearly completely burned over, so the limbless, barkless scorched trunks give this part of the lake a graveyard feel. There are two deep bays in the eastern portion and thin, high, little waterfalls trickle down from on high into the basin.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4E2UanaCrBdj_dM4ZuN3U2PzCHtrcrSBn8WwaOlgjf9HzCD0D4BrYcASdzPScRUYxSKlOqhKmEvQQl1vtpfqYmpo7zJrB9heJw1ZxN9FRBP7aN6YuJjLiQgjp_Fhtiit3OmttVTZIKcTL/s1600-h/42+-+Martin+climbing+down+from+a+beaver+dam+with+pond+lily+buds+in+hand.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4E2UanaCrBdj_dM4ZuN3U2PzCHtrcrSBn8WwaOlgjf9HzCD0D4BrYcASdzPScRUYxSKlOqhKmEvQQl1vtpfqYmpo7zJrB9heJw1ZxN9FRBP7aN6YuJjLiQgjp_Fhtiit3OmttVTZIKcTL/s200/42+-+Martin+climbing+down+from+a+beaver+dam+with+pond+lily+buds+in+hand.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229230018317220642" border="0" /></a>At the far eastern end of the lake we could see a narrow ribbon of water flowing into the lake through tall swamp grashes and shrubs. We forced the canoe through this part until we came to a completely overgrown 8’ beaver dam. We tied the canoe here and climbed up onto the dam to look over the small deep pond. Ilana spotted yellow pond lilies here and she leaned out over the water to pluck some flower buds. These contain yellow seeds which apparently can be roasted and popped like popcorn seeds. After gathering a handful we climbed down the dam and back into the boat and began the return journey following the south shoreline now.<br /><br /><br /><br />It had been sunny all morning and I’d been paddling shirtless and in shorts and sandals most of the time, but now the sky was clouding over and we were paddling into a minor headwind. The temperature dropped markedly and I had to roll down my sleeves in order to paddle comfortably whenever the sun wasn’t breaking through the clouds. We were back in Loon Lake 2 when hunger set in for both of us and we left the south shore to paddle across to the north one where there was a high, raised rock upon which we could have our lunch of peanut butter and jam tortilla wraps and Gatorade.<br /><br />We resumed our westward course along the south shore after lunch when Ilana had us beach the canoe on the shore where she spotted an unfamiliar plant. She was on shore with her plant identification guide in hand and I was sitting in the boat watching her when I spotted small red berries growing amidst a cranberry bush. I told Ilana, but she was incredulous. Cranberries? Now? Impossible. That would be months too early, yet there were bright red marble-sized berries there. Upon closer examination they were in fact wintergreen berries (even better!) growing beneath a cranberry bush. They were completely out of season and huge for wintergreen berries and so were likely left-over from the late fall and winter crop of last year’s berries. These are among our favourite wild edibles. They taste like sweet, minty pears with the texture of soft mealy apples. The leaves are also minty and make a mouth-freshening tea. After harvesting this rare find we returned to camp around 2:30 PM.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivKA5vR9n67-h7QLUTpDgazQhdMoqG6JKc3peSSEqFYh60vPQUMkVoXbJ4QSUA3Qg6WqowebnRvsTfirkv_lbPvjbgXirIJQ917yy_nFATOi9Lz7PSiaGGDF3YWj88mHfEl7kqHZahPCIX/s1600-h/43+-+Ilana+trying+to+make+pond+lilly+seed+popcorn+and+sweet+fern+tea.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivKA5vR9n67-h7QLUTpDgazQhdMoqG6JKc3peSSEqFYh60vPQUMkVoXbJ4QSUA3Qg6WqowebnRvsTfirkv_lbPvjbgXirIJQ917yy_nFATOi9Lz7PSiaGGDF3YWj88mHfEl7kqHZahPCIX/s200/43+-+Ilana+trying+to+make+pond+lilly+seed+popcorn+and+sweet+fern+tea.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229230016714266066" border="0" /></a>Ilana extracted the seeds from the pond lily bud and tried roasting them in a pot with a little oil to see if they would pop like popcorn, but she had no luck. The seeds are soft and have a slippery coating. We’ll have to try this again another time after letting them dry out and harden like popcorn kernels. She also gathered some leaves from a fern-like plant that grew all over our campsite – sweet fern (not an actual fern) and steeped them in hot water to brew an herbal tea. It proved delicious.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaCEeI8VDery_zFcLgVjjCpQSKABS2HZP1mobMtTjm27UrDgsQ_p1lFmRzwzBPqrMq4BHN1AaIPxTyr-5SECzslmpWw39zqVyxdHYSVH3Om-VExFr6PSsf3WOsTMdVsI9Q_ymaH6Z6yUGI/s1600-h/41+-+A+quick+and+easy+latrine+setup.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaCEeI8VDery_zFcLgVjjCpQSKABS2HZP1mobMtTjm27UrDgsQ_p1lFmRzwzBPqrMq4BHN1AaIPxTyr-5SECzslmpWw39zqVyxdHYSVH3Om-VExFr6PSsf3WOsTMdVsI9Q_ymaH6Z6yUGI/s200/41+-+A+quick+and+easy+latrine+setup.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229229222258328210" border="0" /></a>While she was busy with her wild edibles I got down to fashioning a simple latrine setup for myself – tying three smooth, solid lengths of driftwood together with bungie cords into a kind of small travois configuration. I then dug a small cat hole in our latrine area and rested the simple contraption over it, resting the wide end on higher ground. It was perfectly comfortable to sit on. It proved so comfortable and practical (it’s even portable) that I’m thinking of patenting the idea – the CHEEK-SPREADER 2008 (registered trademark) ! Okay, so it’s not a great invention, but it sure beats squatting uncomfortably every day. The name says it all. ;-)<br /><br /><br />My next afternoon chore was sawing the lengths of driftwood we’d gathered from the shore and halving and quartering them with the hatchet so we’d have enough firewood for a day or two. The site was so lovely and comfortable that I was prepared to stay here the rest of the trip and Ilana, who usually pushes to break camp every few days to move on, was coming on board with me.<br /><br />The mid-afternoon sun was still beaming down on the east-facing shore in front of our campsite and at Ilana’s suggestion we tried swimming here instead of the north-facing shore we’d used the day before. It was a far better spot for swimming. The bottom was sandy, unslippery and shallow diving was safe. Oh…and there was no animal poo on the shore.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEii3UWRQmKyj_cZcWKl1aLspuUPAtcURAytZWKaiNZYbvGAvbz_oZwAFIvG0S39zfsQwuwTJnz8TMq-VHC0j8NKcwGT8lMrEm_-l_SqQhPMG-uxuFZLxYls8dARnQphncUzHD7loq8MOwCv/s1600-h/39+-+Ilana+looking+up+plants+in+our+bug+shelter.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEii3UWRQmKyj_cZcWKl1aLspuUPAtcURAytZWKaiNZYbvGAvbz_oZwAFIvG0S39zfsQwuwTJnz8TMq-VHC0j8NKcwGT8lMrEm_-l_SqQhPMG-uxuFZLxYls8dARnQphncUzHD7loq8MOwCv/s200/39+-+Ilana+looking+up+plants+in+our+bug+shelter.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229229215502172210" border="0" /></a>After sun drying ourselves we withdrew to the shade of our tarp for happy hour. We were sitting there reading and listening for bird calls (we’re trying to learn to identify birds by their calls) when I spotted some movement on the eastern shore directly opposite our campsite. I turned to look and saw it was a black animal – large and moving casually southwards along the rocky shore. “Bear” I whispered to Ilana. Excitedly, I jumped up and told Ilana to get the camera from the yellow dry bag as I fumbled about for the binoculars in the pocket of my PFD. I grabbed the camera from Ilana's hands and raced out as quietly as I could towards our shore for a better look. This was a big deal for us. We have done a lot of camping and seen a lot of evidence of bears, but have never seen one in the bush. Ilana followed me out to where I was crouched down on one knee and I pointed it out to her. After getting a good look through the binoculars I handed them to Ilana. It was a beautiful thing to behold – a huge, full grown male. Nothing cuddly about this fellow. His coat was rich black and shiny and he moved fluidly from blueberry bush to blueberry bush delicately grazing for berries. He moved up down from the shore to the tree line and back again, slowly pulling further away from us to the south. Sometimes he was on all fours with head low and sometimes he lay stretched out on his belly to get the lowest berries. We watched in awe for a solid half hour.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4Z1ZX_6h4DyLmNWMdxpdqGd3WckuQg5RHIG1YJxAWX42QXJqgeQdYs0GO9X2a0RyQiPEtLLHTq3UDkhrofC8ETLVCiuG_ZcYq_GoNNlOLPh2_skEJgLiR_NC-gGjkBikd6UnZs3UmwxmP/s1600-h/45+-+A+black+bear+on+the+opposite+shore+from+our+campsite.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4Z1ZX_6h4DyLmNWMdxpdqGd3WckuQg5RHIG1YJxAWX42QXJqgeQdYs0GO9X2a0RyQiPEtLLHTq3UDkhrofC8ETLVCiuG_ZcYq_GoNNlOLPh2_skEJgLiR_NC-gGjkBikd6UnZs3UmwxmP/s200/45+-+A+black+bear+on+the+opposite+shore+from+our+campsite.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229230025854312690" border="0" /></a>We spoke softly, not wanting to startle him or pique his curiousity. I tried taking photos, but they all made him seem tiny at this distance and he was moving further away with every minute. The highlight of that sighting for me was when Ilana said something to me as I was staring at him through the binnies and he heard something from our direction and turned to look at me. Through the binoculars I was eye-to-eye with him. After a moment of staring directly at one another he turned his brown face away as if if completely unconcerned and went back to his blueberry bushes.<br /><br />Eventually he made his way round a point on the eastern shore and we lost sight of him. We were on a high from having had this remarkably long viewing opportunity when I suggested we get in the canoe, paddle out into the lake around the point and see if we could get a closer look at him from the water. Chances are he was still feeding along the shoreline just out of sight around that point. Ilana nixed that idea, but she changed her mind minutes later when I suggested it a second time. We both sprang into action. We sealed up the open food barrel, hoisted it up into the air, then Ilana fetched the binnies and camera while I carried the paddles and PFDs to the canoe. We were in the boat and paddling across towards the eastern shore in no time flat.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVNP8ZchN9fPkh8ix6-JzAsoTRUt07PlS9ZEadXLiEfWyiXHOvXsi7bzKJMkjM3ebiHb6z-SZb4KLIjDMQBgqn10k0vvz1UVwSVQfxiGmwmAMoBT68dld1EMIq6G6oHJrhnCq2xv_sZBLC/s1600-h/46+-+A+black+bear+looks+at+us+from+behind+trees+on+Loon+Lake.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVNP8ZchN9fPkh8ix6-JzAsoTRUt07PlS9ZEadXLiEfWyiXHOvXsi7bzKJMkjM3ebiHb6z-SZb4KLIjDMQBgqn10k0vvz1UVwSVQfxiGmwmAMoBT68dld1EMIq6G6oHJrhnCq2xv_sZBLC/s200/46+-+A+black+bear+looks+at+us+from+behind+trees+on+Loon+Lake.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229230023281477506" border="0" /></a>The wind from earlier in the afternoon had steadily increased and was blowing out of the south right into our faces. As we neared the point we stopped talking, signalling to one another only in gestures regarding how to angle the boat against the wind, how fast to go, etc. The bear might be anywhere on the other side of the point. We rounded the point and paddled quickly but quietly close to shore looking ahead and up beside us on the raised plateau of ground on the eastern shore. Ilana spotted the bear first and pointed eagerly. The bear was up on the flat plateau, perhaps a dozen meters away from the water’s edge, with it’s back to us and head down. The plateau was sparcely wooded and he seemed to be looking down, possibly digging or turning up rocks in search of grubs. Ilana prepared to take a photo as I did my best to hold the boat in a fixed position against the wind. It was impossible to do so paddling by myself so I let the wind push the bow around (which sits a bit higher in the water than the stern ) so that I was backpaddling into the wind. This allowed the boat to rock less as Ilana hurriedly tried to get a clear photo. Unfortunately the bear was not cooperating. He was close, but still had his back to us and his head down, busy with something there. I was beginning to tire from backpaddling when the bear lifted his head and turned. He moved a metre or so before turning and seeing us. The sound of the wind had drowned out the sound of my backstrokes and he seemed surprised to see us, but unconcerned. He stared at us for a few seconds and then he turned his head away from us, as if camera shy, and moved away and out of sight over the ridge. He didn’t seem startled or scared. He wasn’t hurried at all, but rather moved fluidly as if he wanted to be left alone. We turned the boat around and paddled further south and away from the shore in the hopes of getting another glimpse of him as he moved inland, but he was gone. Fortunately Ilana had gotten a photo of the bear when he was looking straight at us, but the camera setting was off, so the photo came out over-exposed.<br /><br />Elated now, we paddled downwind back to our campsite. We giggled at our good fortune of actually getting a closer look at the bear and a photo to boot. It was also comforting to see that the bear wanted nothing to do with us. When he’d seen us from across the lake earlier he seemed unconcerned, but seeing us closer had make him uncomfortable enough to leave. This was no human-habituated nuisance bear about which we needed to worry. It was now 6:30 PM.<br /><br />An hour later we put supper together: shepherd’s pie and then hot chocolate and roasted marshmellows for dessert. After doing dishes and brushing our teeth we put away the food barrel and ducked under the tarp to bask in the afterglow of a good day’s exploration and wildlife sightings. At around 8:45 PM we both heard some sort of growling, yelping and yipping noises. Ilana had heard them last night in the tent but I had not. It came and went several times. It was either wolves or coyotes. We didn’t hear the unmistakeable sound of a howling wolf, so it was probably coyotes.<br /><br />By 9:00 PM we were tuckered out and prepped for bed. As usual I went into the tent with our books (I love to read a bit before going to sleep), our air mattresses, and two Nalgene bottles (one filled with water and an empty bottle to pee in during the night if necessary). On this trip we tried something different with our tent setup. On all our prior trips we used a tough, plastic groundsheet underneath the tent to prevent dampness and moisture from getting into the tent from below, but on this trip I decided to forego a groundsheet in favour of a lighter plastic liner to go inside the tent on the floor. A groundsheet protects the floor of one’s tent but is not a foolproof means of keeping water from coming in from below since water can pool under the tent in a downpour and get between the floor of the tent and the plastic groundsheet beneath, wetting one’s mattresses and sleeping bags. Having a plastic liner inside the tent ensures that even if the tent is sitting in a pool of water and the floor is soaked, no water can wet one’s gear. The only downside of this scheme was that our mattresses tended to slip around more during the night. We like to place our mattresses side-by-side in the tent so we can snuggle up to one another, but the mattresses would not stay put on the slippery plastic liner and kept sliding apart during the night. To prevent this I took an 8-foot length of thin, stretchy, shockcord from my utility kit and tied the two ends together to form a closed loop. I then put an overhand knot in the middle of loop to create two connected loops (like a figure eight). I stretched a loop over each of our mattresses so they would now stay side-by-side during the night, turning our narrow, single mattresses into a wider, double mattress.<br /><br />The only other thing we did differently this night was to place a metal pot gripper handle into our large aluminum pot and to leave this in the tent’s vestibule. If a bear did come sniffing around our tent at night we could shake the pot to produce a really loud, resounding, noise to dissuade it. As I lay in the tent, with the moonlight making our tent glow a pale blue, I wondered if all the thoughts of bears this evening would leave me too excited and nervous to sleep. Would I sleep with one eye open tonight? Nope. It was a windless night and all was quiet (except for the Whippoorwills which started their racket promptly at 9:30 every night) and I slept soundly, awakened only when Ilana nudged me to roll over because my snores were keeping her up.<br /><br />DAY 6: A HOT DAY<br /><br />We were out of the tent shortly after 6:00 AM in time to see the end of the sunrise over a misty and glassy flat Loon Lake. We got the fire going, the food barrel down, fixed breakfast (oatmeal and blueberries again, with coffee). I was sitting out by the shore in my Therm-a-rest chair, sipping my second cup of coffee and taking in the view of the lake when I heard a single long shrill sound – a cicada. On a warm summer day that sound is as good as a guarantee that it will be a scorcher of a day. We agreed that if it was going to be warm we would take it easy today and not undertake any long hikes or strenuous paddles.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDprX-HWnxZINV3Mk6p9-MGY1vi8B6G-SNxtvJdhY5vlz-7AbwTVcG66QHdF4sap_e5o2ORW4aUXsF4TCA7vj6mf3EwzkKvZZKTMucaKvPGzAoLdl4s6SXu_IzbjSA-j-9pYH22pjPUHZU/s1600-h/47+-+Freshly-picked+blueberries.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDprX-HWnxZINV3Mk6p9-MGY1vi8B6G-SNxtvJdhY5vlz-7AbwTVcG66QHdF4sap_e5o2ORW4aUXsF4TCA7vj6mf3EwzkKvZZKTMucaKvPGzAoLdl4s6SXu_IzbjSA-j-9pYH22pjPUHZU/s200/47+-+Freshly-picked+blueberries.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229231960426730498" border="0" /></a>We decided to finish off the last bit of our tour around Loon Lake. We would begin at our campsite and paddle leisurely in a counter-clockwise direction until we reached the point where we’d left off the day before. It was indeed a good day for lily-dipping. The sky was clear, the sun out in force and it was nearly breezeless. Deer flies buzzed around our heads incessantly while we hugged the shore, stopping from time to time to examine and identify some plants, including St. John’s Wort, Sheep Laurel, Sweet Gale, Fireweed, Virginia Meadow Beauty and Steeple Bush and of course blueberries. The amount of Virginia Meadow Beauty present beggared harvesting, so we promised ourselves to gather some leaves and tubers later in the day.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLN9kB1IntNo1Grgq3t2b3hsD6jwDNRa_qslwkWYJgmiDBxJwKlIBIS6oiZqDCc4b-m2Wzs-3XiZ5OALid_vBYGaPYsxhz6_GhX-tJQDeRLvgchprfmv2ugvpDGoNIpGjW9axBGYb4KJI2/s1600-h/48+-+Blueberries+everywhere+we+go.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLN9kB1IntNo1Grgq3t2b3hsD6jwDNRa_qslwkWYJgmiDBxJwKlIBIS6oiZqDCc4b-m2Wzs-3XiZ5OALid_vBYGaPYsxhz6_GhX-tJQDeRLvgchprfmv2ugvpDGoNIpGjW9axBGYb4KJI2/s200/48+-+Blueberries+everywhere+we+go.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229231960749570466" border="0" /></a>We paddled south to the end of the lake and gathered more driftwood for me to cut up later. We were headed back north along the eastern shore when we came abreast of the spot where we’d last seen the bear and taken a photo of him. We beached the canoe here and climbed up onto the plateau hoping to find some evidence of the bruin we’d seen the day before and what had been holding his attention on the ground. We couldn’t discern any evidence of his having been here, but here was a treasure of blueberry bushes laden with plump ripe fruit. To our added delight we also found a bigger patch of those large wintergreen berries left-over from last autumn and winter. We gathered these in a ziplock bag along with some blueberries and serviceberries we found here. We moved north along this high ground where there was evidence of campsite – some old fire grates, old fire rings, etc, but a forest fire had swept through here some years ago making the area somewhat unsightly and too densely filled with dead standing trees to make it a safe and suitable campsite.<br /><br />We continued walking along to the north as the elevation changed, bringing us to the water’s edge. Here I looked carefully in the soft ground and mud at the water’s edge, hoping to find a nice bear print, but I could find none. We walked back to where we’d landed and tied the boat and paddled it back to camp for a lunch of peanut butter and jam on tortilla bread and then cooled off in the shade of the tarp for a while. We made sure to keep chugging water to prevent ourselves from dehydrating in this heat.<br /><br />In the early part of the afternoon I sawed and chopped a bit more firewood while Ilana busied herself with her food barrels, putting some order to her pantry. We’d gone through enough food at this point that she was able to transfer nearly all the food into one barrel so one barrel could stay aloft in the pine tree without having to be lowered again this trip. Hot and sticky now we decided to take a quick dip in the lake just to cool off. We let our clothes air out on the clothesline as we swam and then air-dried ourselves in the hot sun.<br /><br />The bath reinvigorated us and we decided to take a short walk westward up the hill behind our campsite. It was a large open hill for the most part and Ilana had been itching to check out the flora on that hill. On the way up, perhaps a 100 meters from our campsite, was a big patch of flattened grass. Some really big animal had rested or slept here. Judging from the size of it, it must have been a moose, a bear or a couple of deer. There were large deep moose prints at the shoreline near our camp, so that seemed most likely.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9LAVbMZ2VnONlMIxlMv2mWtwUZtB2ENE7KcDJ1N8m3qmxOgUcy9VuJDK129QKohNsJOtHeUXAzbMojaYUlyqlngqEAi5Cdr8dyPsgsTM6uvWA1TFnTDf8smjaczUuUPIQoHr-pvVjbWh8/s1600-h/49+-+Martin+on+the+hill+behind+our+site,+looking+east.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9LAVbMZ2VnONlMIxlMv2mWtwUZtB2ENE7KcDJ1N8m3qmxOgUcy9VuJDK129QKohNsJOtHeUXAzbMojaYUlyqlngqEAi5Cdr8dyPsgsTM6uvWA1TFnTDf8smjaczUuUPIQoHr-pvVjbWh8/s200/49+-+Martin+on+the+hill+behind+our+site,+looking+east.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229231966060612130" border="0" /></a>From the top of the hill we had a clear high view of all of Loon Lake 1 and part of Loon Lake 2 and Ilana snapped a few photos. Once at the top we walked northwest, following the ridge of rock we were standing on and down the other side a short distance in search of nothing in particular. The ridge was moss covered and littered with chunks of spalling granite, both of which showed signs of having been dug and turned over by a bear. As if to confirm this hypothesis we happened upon a nice big pile of fresh, fly-covered bear scat.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVtBHVGRvP_anWQubKBujEPxKXir63MREKIuH0JtWiWRKPdULSoqaDQZUS9QyDWYI9eC06pvDDVJRERVHgz2HNDYNerhHOI6ONufjAvAnK8ViSg9il59Gj2abT7d1FFei5y7vPTftyUrKk/s1600-h/51+-+Fresh+bear+scat+a+few+hundred+meters+from+our+campsite.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVtBHVGRvP_anWQubKBujEPxKXir63MREKIuH0JtWiWRKPdULSoqaDQZUS9QyDWYI9eC06pvDDVJRERVHgz2HNDYNerhHOI6ONufjAvAnK8ViSg9il59Gj2abT7d1FFei5y7vPTftyUrKk/s200/51+-+Fresh+bear+scat+a+few+hundred+meters+from+our+campsite.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229231969693060210" border="0" /></a>All this evidence of recent bear activity so soon after seeing a bear walking the shore of the lake yesterday was making me feel vulnerable and uneasy and I led us back to the top of the hill where it was more open and we had a better view of what lay ahead. We’d only been exploring up here for 45 minutes, but it was oppresively hot and we were looking forward to actually bathing.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNUwWInJfj94MtTLW8Em3rJ7AfmQhN_PzE8jtYk5N5VedPkqyukzuyWh6cOQjDjZ80_SLhzRUbTIjTsQC9bZlriPMGZ65EcmnBi2kD6-YzYtc8ciIAR_TKAhnyvWJVkkwDxNjMeIvYcRlB/s1600-h/38+-+Martin+enjoying+a+sip+of+Irish+Whiskey+on+Loon+Lake.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNUwWInJfj94MtTLW8Em3rJ7AfmQhN_PzE8jtYk5N5VedPkqyukzuyWh6cOQjDjZ80_SLhzRUbTIjTsQC9bZlriPMGZ65EcmnBi2kD6-YzYtc8ciIAR_TKAhnyvWJVkkwDxNjMeIvYcRlB/s200/38+-+Martin+enjoying+a+sip+of+Irish+Whiskey+on+Loon+Lake.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229229215916079570" border="0" /></a>After our bathes we felt a lot better and decided to sit quietly and enjoy our usual late-afternoon happy hour under the tarp instead of doing anything that might make us break into a sweat. We read for a bit and discussed what to do with the days ahead of us. Shouldn’t we be moving on to the Oil Can site on Island Lake with a view to making our way into Rat Lake and Dutton Lake? We were ambivalent. Our site was so lovely and perfect and there was all sorts of hiking to be done right here. We had brought along our fishing tackle and we’d not yet wet our lines even once. We tentatively agreed to spend at least one more day here and we’d decide tomorrow what to do on the following day.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0fl0BUfl5_Uc0CbHkiUOITfyJZnuh4SFA4ntX5lmae1oxH5oI2Y60ezbMG0z-L5X7puu3X14wi7W0VwH2OU-IwuuHyMalZV3IgvDeQqe7kqwxQOu-tK_cnDYHdNdF3ZMqmSbWUEPbbeBF/s1600-h/55+-+Macaroni+supreme+with+wild+salad.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0fl0BUfl5_Uc0CbHkiUOITfyJZnuh4SFA4ntX5lmae1oxH5oI2Y60ezbMG0z-L5X7puu3X14wi7W0VwH2OU-IwuuHyMalZV3IgvDeQqe7kqwxQOu-tK_cnDYHdNdF3ZMqmSbWUEPbbeBF/s200/55+-+Macaroni+supreme+with+wild+salad.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229234076147552210" border="0" /></a>To our relief the heat began to break in the late afternoon when a steady breeze started up. We took advantage of the cooler temperature and moving air to go down to our shoreline and harvest a few Virginia Meadow Beauty tubers and leaves. It took me a few tries to correctly identify the plants from their similar neighbours, but before long we had a dozen or so of the tiny tubers and a good handful of small leaves. We moved to the picnic table to prepare them. I washed the leaves and Ilana skinned and chopped the tubers. We mixed these in with the medley of serviceberries, blueberries, raspberries and wintergreen berries we’d gathered in the past two days. Ilana dressed these with a simple vinaigrette she’d brought along and it made a delicious side-dish of fresh fruits and vegetables with our main course of Kraft Dinner Supreme (which is just KD with rehydrated ground beef, carrots and peas).<br /><br />After doing dishes we felt pooped. The heat had broken, but still left us feeling exhausted. We spent the evening reading quietly and weighing the pros and cons of staying vs moving on somewhere else. I was keen on staying here for a few days and possibly until the food ran out, but Ilana’s restlessness is pretty irrepressible and she was getting antsy. Even during the hottest part of the day she busied herself with a natural, bowl-shaped chunk of charred driftwood, scraping the black char from it and smoothing it into a small ornamental serving dish in which she kept her drying tea leaves of freshly-picked sweet fern and yarrow.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcv_XCTm23uNfCbKgA5uIYVrcVUkXAl135rzMX20A63v5yKBOV4SYvJ0DgJsGg7Iuw3WWv0FSFDZ6AC3W94IH5J4TpyxC7m9_MoSz_jNdKDyg-CqV9JKLX8KzRzhEK5BvH8X6CrQn9KUEp/s1600-h/50+-+Paddling+under+a+full+moon+on+Loon+Lake.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcv_XCTm23uNfCbKgA5uIYVrcVUkXAl135rzMX20A63v5yKBOV4SYvJ0DgJsGg7Iuw3WWv0FSFDZ6AC3W94IH5J4TpyxC7m9_MoSz_jNdKDyg-CqV9JKLX8KzRzhEK5BvH8X6CrQn9KUEp/s200/50+-+Paddling+under+a+full+moon+on+Loon+Lake.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229231966801553730" border="0" /></a>As darkness approached I wanted to paddle around in the moonlight in front of the campsite. The reflected moonlight on the rippling lake had been a stunning sight each night and I thought it would make a truly picturesque photo to paddle across that reflected moon now that it was full. Ilana agreed to play photographer while I did the paddling. Unfortunately the lake was perfectly flat, so the moon’s reflection was a small round disc instead of a long dappling effect across the whole lake so we didn’t get the desired result. It also became clear that our digital camera was getting very low on charge and that we’d have to be very sparing in our choice of photographic subjects for the remainder of the trip.<br /><br />We were in bed by 9:30 PM. The Whippoorwills started their racket right on schedule and they were accompanied by a cacophony of animals noices that night: loon calls, a cloud of buzzing mosquitoes outside our tent, various hoots, squeaks, chirps and croaking frogs. By 10:30 PM we both succumbed to fatigue and fell asleep, but we were awakened in the middle of the night by a series of loud Ka-Splash sounds, a few minutes apart. It sounded as if someone was hurling pumpkins into the lake. It was probably just beavers diving underwater and slapping their tales on the surface. Later still that night Ilana woke me up so I could hear the distinct sounds of dog yips and yelps and whines, coming from the north this time. Some hours later I returned the favor and woke her up when I thought I could make out faint howling, but it ceased before she came to. Do coyotes howl at all?<br /><br />DAY SEVEN: POND HOPPING & THE WRATH OF ZEUS<br /><br />We rose at 6:30 AM to a cool morning and a slight breeze. We donned our polar fleece jackets as we went about our morning routine and ate our hot oatmeal and drank our coffees. The cool was welcome after the previous day’s heat.<br /><br />At 9:45 AM we set out on a short shoreline walk. We would begin at our site and walk clockwise round the lake to see what there was to see. We only made it a few hundred meters from camp when our way was blocked by a stream, a couple of meters across, feeding into Loon Lake at it’s northwest corner. We decided to follow it upstream to the northwest in search of it’s source. We discovered this stream led to a tiny beaver pond a few feet higher. This pond was fed by a slightly higher pond beyond it, and that one was fed by still another behind it, until we came to a large pond. Here we heard some of the odd squawks of unidentified large birds we’d heard in camp at night. We began walking around it, clockwise, but before long the way became slow-going as the bush became thicker. Still more fresh bear scat here, though it was a very small specimen – perhaps left by a very small bear or cub.<br /><br />Since the tangle of bush was getting thick and we had no map or GPS with us, we agreed to head back to camp. The series of tiny ponds leading into this large one had been so close together, we would come back here with the canoe, portaging from Loon Lake, up the hill and around the small ponds into this large pond to see where it might take us. We hiked back to our campsite following the high ridge of rock behind our campsite along which we’d walked the day before.<br /><br />Back in camp we had a snack and something to drink and gathered the gear we would need for for a very short excursion by canoe: Our emergency first-aid kit, map, and GPS. The pond was close enough and small enough that we’d be back soon enough to have lunch in camp, so we didn’t bring a lunch. We set out from camp at 11:00 AM.<br /><br />The portage route we took from Loon Lake into this lily covered pond was direct, but a bit soggy. We both had damp socks by the time the canoe was in the pond. The pond proved to be smaller than we’d hoped but it was lovely, choked with water lilies glistening sundews, and a raised island, perhaps 10 meters across, covered in trees and shrubs, smack in the middle of it. I beached the canoe on the island long enough for Ilana to walk across it and check out a few wild flowers. Floating in the water, just beyond the island was what appeared to be an old bridge or possibly an old dock. It was made of two long parallel tree trunks approximately 10 meters long and across the top of these were nailed smaller bucked trunks, making for a very heavy bridge or dock indeed. It was unclear where it came from and how it came to break free of it’s pilings or moorings to find itself floating here, completely overgrown with mosses, sundews and wild grasses – a floating eco-system in it’s own right. We paddled past the log bridge (or whatever it was) to the far end of the pond where we could now see a 5’ high vertical beaver dam. We climbed up onto the ground around this obstacle and found ourselves staring over yet another pond, though this one was smaller. Looking to the far end of this smaller pond we could see an even higher beaver dam at it’s far end and what seemed to be a pretty vast open area – a huge meadow or floodplain with water running through it. We’d had no plans to go pond-hopping today, but we weren’t about to portage back out so soon, especially when there was paddlable water still ahead of us. We lifted that empty canoe out of ‘Log Bridge Pond’ into ‘Middle Pond’ and crossed it a moment later. At the far end of Middle Pond was an enormously wide beaver dam – easily more than 2 meters high and at least a hundred meters across, but most of it so overgrown with vegetation that it seemed like a steep wall of land in front of us. We paddled right up to it along a narrow channel of water. This was clearly the lowest point of the dam where water spilled over after a rain and so we chose this place to lift the canoe up and over, right next to where a still living jack pine had toppled into the water on the deep side.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFWdMUrwbrb80gU8PEYcxIG9RzuAoWMijtJEIYE5XGdkLHMum4ePBn9oaS5QAVe9nT0l-LV6gNnQVHPA2GXiveFK6Ju8eGHg_MOFNDoc3k8xzy_yuQLQRHIrO0J9t7cswUd38w9cdCvY0C/s1600-h/53+-+Pond-hopping+1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFWdMUrwbrb80gU8PEYcxIG9RzuAoWMijtJEIYE5XGdkLHMum4ePBn9oaS5QAVe9nT0l-LV6gNnQVHPA2GXiveFK6Ju8eGHg_MOFNDoc3k8xzy_yuQLQRHIrO0J9t7cswUd38w9cdCvY0C/s200/53+-+Pond-hopping+1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229234071845438034" border="0" /></a>Thus far we had not travelled far to the northwest as the crow flies, but despite the short distance we’d come, we were now floating several meters above the level of Loon Lake on the south side of a wide and very long floodplain which ran along an east-west axis. There was no indication of the series of tiny ponds or this floodplain on our topographic map, but when we got home all this was quite obvious on the Google Earth satellite images. I will make a point of printing these photos off to bring with me for our next trip to wherever we go.<br /><br />Sitting here on the other side of this wide grassy floodplain we had three choices:<br />1) We could paddle staight ahead (roughly northeast) into the deepest and broadest water channel.<br />2) We could go left (roughly northwest) and paddle along the edge of this dam to see how far we could go around the perimeter of this floodplain in a clockwise direction<br />3) We could go to the right (roughly east) and paddle along the edge of this dam to see how far we could go around the perimeter of this floodplain in a counter-clockwise direction.<br /><br />We opted to go left and paddle clockwise. With any luck there would be a channel of water ringing all or most of this huge floodplain and we could turn back when we began to get hungry or thirsty. It didn’t matter how far we got as we were excited by this watery discovery and would be coming back here tomorrow to make a day of exploring this area. We followed the left channel which mostly hugged the edge of this high beaver dam. On our right was a big, open floodplain of mostly marsh grasses and swamp plants. It reminded us of the watery saw-grass prairies of the Florida Everglades we’d paddled two winters ago. After only about 15 minutes of paddling in this direction it became clear progress would be difficult. The channel narrowed in many places such that the canoe could barely squeeze through the thick floating mats of muskeg. The water also grew shallower, so that we were poling more than paddling, and then our luck ran out as the channel grew too shallow and too narrow for the canoe and blocked by small fallen trees. We were lucky to get this far though. The past two months have been very rainy and water levels were unusually high for this time of year.<br /><br />With difficulty we turned the canoe around to head back to where we’d come into the floodplain. We were now paddling during the hottest part of the day, and because we had initially intended to explore only one pond (Log Bridge Pond), we’d brought no lunch and no water bottles. We were both thirsty and I was hungry for lunch. When we reached the place where we had our three choices of direction we decided not to climb back down from this pond and go to camp but to to explore just a little bit longer by heading up the main center channel which seemed to run roughly northeast. We were both in the grips of ‘What’s-around-the-next-bend’ syndrome. We’d only gone a short distance (a hundred meters or less) when I looked back to the right and saw that in that direction was an old wooden cabin in the woods. Had we turned right we could probably have paddled right to it. We would have to explore that channel and the cabin on our next visit. For now we were paddling into the middle of the grassy floodplain along the main channel of water. Eventually this channel began to turn to the east and ahead of us we saw an area of open water. We paddled into this nice eliptical pond. It was obviously quite deep as there was no underwater vegetation of any kind in this pond. Beyond this pond the channel continued and we paddled past some Rose Pogonias and clusters of small carnivorous pitcher plants, which look more like specimens from some alien world, or possibly animal organs with their bulbous forms and veiny transluscent purple and red parts. We finally came to a much larger pond, also deep and wide and on it’s far side we could see the channel continuing into a swamp. These last two big ponds did appear on our topo map, meaning we were now north of the eastern arm of Loon Lake 1. We paddled only a few meters towards the swamp before agreeing to turn around. It was hot, we were thirsty, and it was definitely lunchtime. We headed back for camp the way we’d come, hauling the canoe down from the floodplain channel into Middle Pond (where we startled a deer) and then lifting the boat down into Log Bridge Pond and then portaging the canoe from Log Bridge Pond to Loon Lake.<br /><br />We were crossing back through Log Bridge Pond when I realized that there must be a trail from the north shore of loon Loon Lake to the cabin we’d just seen, and this would explain why those two boats were stashed there. People must be flying in directly to this lake and staying at that cabin and those overturned fishing boats were stashed there for their use. Any trail to that cabin must begin at those boats. Mystery solved. If I was right we could probably get back to the flood plain in one step by portaging from Loon Lake along the hypothetical trail to the cabin which sat at the water’s edge up there.<br /><br />We were back in camp by 1:30 PM. For lunch we had a kind of cold pizza wrap. Ilana spread some salsa on a tortilla and then placed freshly sliced pepperoni chunks and sliced baby bell cheese on the tortilla. It’s a quick and tidy meal and the only significant preparation involved was dehydrating the salsa at home and remembering to re-hydrate it this morning in a small container before we left camp. In the past we have made this sort of lunch on pita bread, but pita bread tends to go stale quickly, whereas the tortilla remains supple and fresh tasting much longer.<br /><br />After lunch we took a refreshing bath and then it was my turn to do a bit of laundry as Ilana prepared to bake some bread by mixing a small packet of dry baking yeast with water and set it on the picnic table to activate for an hour. Baking a loaf of bread is one of the lengthier and more involved aspects of camp cuisine. One must re-hydrate the yeast and let it sit for an hour to give it time to activate, then one must make a dough from dry ingredients, then let the yeasty dough rise for an hour, then bake it for approximately an hour on our little Trangia burner and finally let it cool. Biting into a loaf of freshly baked bread a week into a camping trip is wonderful. But Ilana was crestfallen an hour later when the yeast was ready to use but she accidentally spilled it all over the ground when she got her foot caught in one of the food barrel straps. So much for bread today, she’d start over another day. At least she’d not begun mixing the dough yet.<br /><br />We spent the rest of the afternoon taking care of mundane camp chores, reading, and enjoying our sips of Irish Whiskey at happy hour and later enjoyed a supper of chili with rice and lentils followed by hot chocolate and roasted marshmallows for dessert.<br /><br />From late in the afternoon the sun had become progressively covered over by smeary white clouds moving in ever so slowly. By 8:00 PM the light wind had disappeared completely and all looked good weather-wise and we were feeling very fortunate to have enjoyed only one half day of rain in seven (on day two while on Island Lake) and only one day that would have left us windbound (on day three on Island Lake). Throughout this week Ilana had jokingly “guaranteed” that we’d have sunny and rain-free days until at least day seven, based on a very cheery long-range forecast of 13 rain-free days. She refused to remain so optimistic after this day however. Had we made a bet she would have won.<br /><br />We went to bed at around 9:30 PM as usual. It was completely windless but we could make out distant thunder rumblings. I tried to will myself to ignore it and fall asleep, but the rumbling grew louder and more frequent and it was apparent we were in for a big storm. By 11:00 PM the slow-moving storm was right over our heads. It was the oddest storm we’ve ever been in. The rain fell down perfectly straight in absolute torrents, unaccompanied by any wind, and the sky seemed to be constantly alight with lightning flashes. Not once did I hear our rain tarp flap in the wind and it was only a few meters from the tent. When the rain began it fell in such volume that our poor tent fly could not shed it fast enough and droplets worked their way through the seams of the tight synthetic fabric and fell onto the mesh walls and atomized into fine mist inside the tent. At it’s worst, when the storm was directly over us (for about 45 minutes), the thunder crashes were frightening us, even though we normally enjoy the sights and sounds of a good thunderstorm. The distant rumblings had given way to loud booms and finally ear-splitting cracks of electrical discharge. Ilana snuggled up to me for comfort. She feared that lighting would strike a tree and send it down on us. I reminded her that this would be wildly improbable and that most trees downed in a storm resulted from wind, not lighting strikes, but I couldn’t help feeling the same irrational fears when the lightning strikes became so close and so frequent that I could see the blue tent light up through my closed eyelids. The lightning flashes were coming only seconds apart from one another and sometimes there were several simultaneous bolts. It seemed as if Zeus himself was menacing us with his bolts. After nearly an hour of anxiety we heard and felt a small gust of wind from the southwest (where the storm came from) and this signaled the end of the storm as it slowly moved past us. I had been waiting and listening for the sound of such a tailwind, and I breathed a sigh of relief when it came. When it was all over, the forest’s residents remained silent for the first night yet.<br /><br />Despite the slight misting we received and the occasional droplet that forced it’s way into the tent, our gear remained dry, and this in spite of the fact that water had to be puddling under our tent which sat in a slight low spot relative to the rocky ridge that ran behind our campsite. The inner plastic lining method had worked like a charm. We would rely on this on future trips instead of using a groundsheet beneath the tent.<br /><br />By midnight we both drifted off to sleep even though Ilana had been troubled by hunger pangs and a headache exacerbated by all the thunderclaps.<br /><br />DAY EIGHT: A RAINY DAY<br /><br />We awoke, warm and dry, shortly before 7:00 AM. It was not raining and the birds were singing, but the sky was completely overcast and rain seemed likely at some point. Everything was soaked from the last night’s downpour, including the firewood, so I took advantage of the hatchet to get atthe dry wood inside some unsplit pieces of driftwood and then used a pocket knife to carve some tiny match-like pieces and curls of wood to use as fire-starter. I got too impatient on the first attempt and the small bit of firestarter I produced was consumed before I could get the fire started properly. I heard thunder and knew rain was coming fast. At this point I should have just forsaken starting the fire and got the water boiling for our oatmeal and coffee in much less time using our Trangia stove, but I now wanted the satisfaction of getting the fire going from wet firewood. I got the fire going on the second attempt but the rain began to fall. Ilana prepared the coffee and our last batch of hot oatmeal of the trip. I gathered a few blueberries for the oatmeal. We had slipped into our raincoats and rain pants as the rain worsened. We ate our breakfast in dry comfort under our tarp. Like last night there was no wind accompanying the rain and it fell perfectly straight.<br /><br />The morning was spent reading and dozing under the tarp. We’d gotten to sleep later than usual and I was happy to have some down time. Whenever the rain abated for a moment we took advantage of these breaks to step out from under the tarp and stretch our legs or sit outside in our raingear on the damp rocks. Loons and wood ducks busied themselves on the lake unperturbed by the rainy weather. I watched in amazement when a loon suddenly broke the surface of the water from below and with great flapping and splashing took to the air, turning from a submarine into an airplane in mere seconds. At one point we saw three very large birds suddenly take to the air from the north shore. They kinda looked like herons, but they were close together and flying in formation, leaving us to think we were looking at something else.<br /><br />By late in the morning the rain had lessened to mostly drizzle and would stop for longer and longer stretches only to start again. The completely overcast cloud cover slowly gave way to paler white clouds and we were very encouraged when we saw the first patches of blue sky moving our way. This wet system was moving out as slowly as it had moved in yesterday.<br /><br />At 11:30 AM we decided to move the picnic table under the tarp. We lifted one wall of the bug shelter’s mesh and carried in the table and closed the shelter behind it. We could now cook and eat at the table and stay dry. To keep us warm in all the surrounding dampness Ilana used our Trangia stove to boil up some water for another cup of coffee. We’d been cheated of our second cup when the rain extinguished our fire. For lunch we had pizza wraps.<br /><br />In the early part of the afternoon I was sitting under the tarp with my little notebook and mechanical pencil and Ilana was standing a few meters away by the shore looking off into the southern sky assessing the weather when we both heard a very sharp ‘Clack’ sound coming from the eastern arm of Loon Lake.<br />“Did you hear that?”, she asked.<br />“Yeah.”<br />“Where’d it come from?”<br />“Over there.”, I said, pointing eastwards. Ilana agreed and we both moved to the point of shore closest to where we’d heard the sound coming from. We both thought the same thing. It had sounded exactly like a rock being dropped onto another rock – the very sound a bear would make if it were flipping rocks over along the rocky shore in a search for grubs. We squinted into the distance down the length of Loon Lake’s eastern arm and I spotted something small and black moving. “It’s a bear.” I said. I pointed it out to Ilana and ran to fetch the binoculars from under the tarp. It was indeed a bear, though this one was unmistakably smaller than the first one we’d seen. We observed it for about 20 minutes. It too seemed to be foraging for berries and grubs along the southern shore, moving away from us slowly eastwards.<br /><br />When we’d lost sight of the bear we moved back under the tarp. I was content to sit here and read, but Ilana was too restless and took advantage of the windless weather to bake some bread. When the bread was finished baking and cooling we put it into a plastic bag and sealed it into the barrel where it would stay until we needed it for sandwiches and snacks. The bears in the area must have been licking their chops because the smell of freshly baked bread lingered in the campsite for hours. It occurred to me that a canister of bear spray would be a good thing to have. About two hours later we spotted either another bear or the same bear farther down that same shore right where Loon Lake 1 narrows before the beaver dam. It was too far now, even with binoculars, to conclude if it was the same bear as we’d seen before or not.<br /><br />While the bread was cooking Ilana sat in front of me with her back to me as I combed her hair to ensure there were no tangles in it. Ilana has long hair and she is always wanting to cut it before we go camping as she finds it makes her needlessly sweaty on warm days, is slow to dry, and prone to tangles. I had promised to comb her hair for her every day while camping if only she would not cut it, so this had become a late afternoon and evening ritual.<br /><br />Just before 4:00 PM we finally saw sunlight as the gray and white clouds gave way to larger and larger expanses of blue sky. What a welcome sight. Instantly we felt cheerier. As the air warmed and the dampness dissipated we took advantage of the sudden warmth to bathe and air out the tent and hang up our sleeping bags on the line to get any dampness out of them.<br /><br />Over happy hour we finalized our plans for our remaining days. We would stay camped here tonight and spend tomorrow exploring the ponds and the cabin just north of us as we had intended to do today. We would leave the following day for Island Lake and spend one final night on Blueberry Island and leave for home on day eleven.<br /><br />For supper that night we had our second serving of chili with rice and lentils and went to sleep at our regular time.<br /><br /><br />DAY NINE: COMPLETING THE LOOP<br /><br />We were out of the tent by 7:30 AM. The sky was overcast again and all was damp with dew. Breakfast consisted of homemade granola cereal in instant milk and hot coffee. Ilana’s injured left shoulder which had been doing so well was now hurting her. She felt gristly, popping sensations when she rotated her arm about. I suggested that we stay put today since rain might be forthcoming, but Ilana would have none of it. She insisted that these clouds would disappear soon and we’d just have to take it easy on her shoulder on our little excursion. By 8:30 AM the sun appeared and seemed to burn off all the gray clouds.<br /><br />The plan was to paddle directly north from our campsite over to where the overturned boats were stashed on the shore and look for a trail of some sort that would take us a little ways north to where that cabin sat. If we found it we’d portage the canoe up to the cabin, snoop around it a bit, and then put the canoe in the water just on the other side of the cabin and easily paddle westward back to where we first came into the floodplain two days earlier. Once there we could finish exploring the floodplain and then complete our loop by pond-hopping our way back into Loon Lake.<br /><br />We were on the water by 10:00 AM. Within minutes we were standing on the north shore where the boats were and we immediately found a clear trail that headed up a nice gradual hill to the cabin.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqz9K-eM5HUK5tKHN78ewqLZAqRyktNYge1BiPvThJi6FiQroD7DzWY5vBpy0-kR-bouOj1s5CyoILzCBaA_HaEfLMOorEEPhB_ggeitRqUkdnPeA1_Gk6es1MknLgFoiBuF37tfyzX4gs/s1600-h/57+-+Pond-+hopping+2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqz9K-eM5HUK5tKHN78ewqLZAqRyktNYge1BiPvThJi6FiQroD7DzWY5vBpy0-kR-bouOj1s5CyoILzCBaA_HaEfLMOorEEPhB_ggeitRqUkdnPeA1_Gk6es1MknLgFoiBuF37tfyzX4gs/s200/57+-+Pond-+hopping+2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229236921193499410" border="0" /></a>The cabin was a hunter’s cabin. It was in reasonable condition outside, though it was grotesquely decorated with various animal skulls and antlers. Off to the right of the cabin a long beam spanned horizontally between the crotch of two trees high off the ground – a place for the hunters to hang their kills far out of the reach of critters, I guessed. We peered through the windows of the cabin to see a dreadful mess. Those who’d stayed here last were complete pigs – worse than drunken frat boys. Cigarette butts, beer cans, rotted sneakers, burned pots on the stove, and other trash were strewn about throughout the padlocked cabin. It amazes me that people would pay to fly in to an area of wilderness to live like complete slobs.<br /><br />We walked around to the north side of the cabin which faced out onto an area of swamp beyond which we could see the big floodplain. There was plenty of water here to put-in to but there were only two narrow channels to choose from and they both looked hard to negotiate. Ilana expressed misgivings, arguing that there might not be any way to get to the floodplain channels we’d seen two days ago, but I was confident that there’d be a way to get through and complete the hypothetical loop. Since I was the one who had to carry the canoe up here and carry it back down again if we didn’t find a way through, she agreed to give it a try.<br /><br />We walked back down to Loon Lake to get the canoe and the paddles. Ilana led the way and inadvertently flushed out a small brown rabbit which ran right across my path, practically under my feet. We portaged up to the cabin and then around to the other side of it. We put into the swamp and considered our two options: We could go down the channel heading off to the left from the cabin or straight ahead. The more direct route would be the one on the left which, if it was navigable, would take us in a nearly straight line to the very spot where we lifted over from Middle Pond into the floodplain. The channel straight ahead of us would (I hoped) take us along a meandering course that hugged the high ground on the right shore of the floodplain and would eventually take us into the floodplain’s main channel or into one of the two large ponds to the north of us. The channel on the left seemed like it narrowed too much after only a dozen meters, so we opted for the channel straight ahead of us.<br /><br />We paddled forward only about three canoe lengths when the deep channel narrowed and turned acutely to the right. The channel was too tight and the turn too sharp to get the boat beyond it. Normally this would be no obstacle as we would just hop out and wade the canoe along, but the water here was very deep. Nor could we hop out onto the shore and simply carry the canoe past the trouble spots, because the sides of these channels were not solid ground, but rather big floating muskeg mats covered in vegetation. Stepping onto these mats would be like stepping out onto a plastic pool cover. You’d stay up for a moment or two, but your weight would soon sink the surface beneath your feet. Good luck getting back into the boat after that. This way was no good.<br /><br />We back-paddled to where we started and headed down the channel to the left. We encountered similar problems here. Within a few canoe lengths we were hemmed in again by floating banks of muskeg and blocked by partially submerged logs and tree stumps. Ilana suggested we abort the mission and go back to Loon Lake and pond-hop our way to the floodplain but I wasn’t ready to give up just yet. I persuaded her try the first channel one more time.<br /><br />We back-paddled to the beginning and headed up the first channel again, but this time instead of proceeding until we got stuck, we aimed the canoe towards a small point of high ground on the right and climbed out to get a look to see what the channel looked like beyond the tight spot where we’d gotten stuck. The channel looked more promising, though we could not see if it led all the way to where we needed it to go. Ilana was game to give it a try. Despite her sore shoulder we lifted the canoe over this point of ground and into the channel again, thus circumventing the tight spot. From there the paddling was easier, though there was as much poling going on as paddling. Fortunately the swamp was very beautiful and the sun was occluded by some clouds, keeping us cool as noon approached.<br /><br />We were making good progress in this direction. The channel was plenty deep most of the way as it followed the contours of the land on the right. The flood plain extended out on our left and it was just a matter of time before we’d wend our way into the floodplain’s central channel or into one of the two large ponds. It was a bit discouraging when we rounded a bend and saw the channel blocked by a fallen jack pine. Discouraged but not defeated we landed the canoe on the shore on the right and walked around the tree and along the shoreline a short distance to see if there were more obstacles in our path. It looked pretty good. With any luck this fallen tree would be the last obstacle to completing our loop. While walking along here I found evidence of a bull moose having come through here – a sizable chunk of antler felt on the ground. A bull moose loses it’s antlers every fall and grows a new rack over the spring and summer. In spring the fast growing antlers are soft, spongy and covered in a kind of fine felt. As the new antlers harden up the moose scrapes the felt from the woody rack.<br /><br />When we got back to the canoe I judged the ground where we’d climbed out to be too steep to safely pick up the canoe and the woods too thick to carry the boat through. I thought I would do better by paddling up to the fallen tree, climbing onto the sun-bleached trunk, snapping off some of the branches that stuck out in all directions and drag the boat over the trunk and hop back into the boat. Ilana would wait for me on shore on the other side. I managed this little maneuver, but I very nearly tipped over on my first attempt to step out onto the tree. It was one of those comical scenes – I had one foot on the fallen trunk and the other in the canoe when the canoe began to drift away from the trunk. One finds out just how good one is at doing the splits when that happens. I thought I would pull a groin muscle when I had to force my spreading legs back together again to force the boat back to me. Phew. Fortunately Ilana missed that graceless episode.<br /><br />Once past the fallen tree our way was easier, though the water grew very shallow at the very point where the channel we were in met up with the main floodplain channel. After some vigorous poling we grunted our way in. We were tired and sweaty, but it felt great to complete the loop. Ilana pointed out an obvious lesson here: never try to complete a theoretical loop from the opposing direction from which you started. You never know how many obstacles you will encounter along the way, any one of which could prove impassable and then you’d have to go back the way you came through all those obstacles again. Further, had it not been for the torrential downpour we’d gotten two nights before, the loop would have been impossible. The water level on Loon Lake was a good 6” higher today than it was two days before.<br /><br />We had broken through right into the smaller of the two deep, round ponds, so we paddled east through them, along their circumferences towards the large swampy area that lay farther to the east. We wound our way through the deeper line of water and passed mats of muskeg covered in Rose Pogonias and carnivorous Round-Leafed Sundews and carnivorous Pitcher Plants. The swampy route before us eventually opened up to a large lilly-filled swamp. Drowned standing tree trunks stood up in places like telephone poles and towards the far side of the swamp we saw a large beaver lodge. We paddled past the lodge to the very far shore where we beached the canoe. We stepped out onto the rocky ridge here to stretch our legs and look back over where we’d come and take a photo. Swamps don’t much prettier than this.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1r2qkaL4vYcvJdYGwi-9SBn8MnfI-0nvJIPy_TFP0q0ShmBoO6sCzZRuGUiCa4EGjMERKN1l37jEHF_PK3CAfeW7Qv0NrqOQsYCQib1u-8Co6NMnD5kTmsNv47K7FqGJi9d3bpIjSa1PT/s1600-h/52+-+A+view+of+what+we%27d+just+crossed.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1r2qkaL4vYcvJdYGwi-9SBn8MnfI-0nvJIPy_TFP0q0ShmBoO6sCzZRuGUiCa4EGjMERKN1l37jEHF_PK3CAfeW7Qv0NrqOQsYCQib1u-8Co6NMnD5kTmsNv47K7FqGJi9d3bpIjSa1PT/s200/52+-+A+view+of+what+we%27d+just+crossed.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229236922909446434" border="0" /></a>On this granite ridge were signs of recent bear presence: bear scat, overturned rocks and overturned moss pads with the dirt drying in the sun, etc. It was then that I noticed a patch of overturned moss that revealed damp dirt on it’s now exposed underside, implying that this patch of moss had been overturned only minutes ago. When I brought this to Ilana’s attention she said, “Yeah, when that heron flew off as we approached the shore here I thought I saw something moving here.” Now she tells me.<br /><br />We returned to the canoe and paddled back through the swamp to the beaver lodge by a slightly different route and from there we paddled westwards back to the two large ponds. As we crossed these ponds we made a point of being as quiet as possible. If bears were nearby we didn’t want to scare them off from the safe viewing position or our canoe, and we’d yet to see a moose on this trip. We had just left those ponds behind us and were well on our way back to the dam separating this channel from Middle Pond when Ilana pointed to something large, black and furry about a 100 meters ahead of us, moving across the floodplain along a raised ridge of tall grass and then off to our right, headed for the tree-line. It was another bear. This one was of a size intermediate between the two we’d seen already. It never looked our way once, moving in a straight line with it’s head down and stopping only to scrounge around on a little raised hillock of shrubs for a moment before continuing on it’s way out of the floodplain towards the tree-line. We were downwind of it and we’d been quiet, but it was unclear if it was just ignoring us or was unaware of us. We sat transfixed again for minutes as it moved off. We’d seen at least three different black bears in five separate sightings but we were not tiring of seeing them. Still, I did find it unnerving to know there were so many bears foraging around our campsite on Loon Lake and that this particular bear had, just moments ago, been in the very spot where we were headed. Suddenly our practice of deliberately making noise when on hikes in bear country seemed a little less paranoid and silly.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgL938vjhff6Bmz8AboV1Dwwv6gjHQly-7tIvpPt-lBakO5jj4t6KNHVNkfDBkzFVmn1nlB3cPgJtQx3NnrgR_PcgYLAGfzopSeeJYvvFjIzcszotA3NqRDO1yZ72hHQygEXMo-mSHRqH6C/s1600-h/56+-+%27Log+bridge+pond%27.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgL938vjhff6Bmz8AboV1Dwwv6gjHQly-7tIvpPt-lBakO5jj4t6KNHVNkfDBkzFVmn1nlB3cPgJtQx3NnrgR_PcgYLAGfzopSeeJYvvFjIzcszotA3NqRDO1yZ72hHQygEXMo-mSHRqH6C/s200/56+-+%27Log+bridge+pond%27.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229234073585615922" border="0" /></a>When the bear had disappeared into the trees we made our way to the lift-over down into Middle Pond. What a difference a big rain can make. Two days ago water was barely trickling over here, but now the water pouring over the dam was considerable and I soaked my socks while climbing down to Middle Pond. We made our way across this tiny pond to the lift-over into Log Bridge Pond. We decided to stop here for a snack. Ilana kept wandering off with the binoculars in the hopes of another animal sighting and I had keep reminding her not walk off alone here in silence. Ilana took a nice photo of Log Bridge Pond here.<br /><br />We next made our way across Log Bridge pond and then portaged the canoe over the rocky ridge and down into Loon Lake, thus officially completing our intended loop. It was now just past noon and we were getting hungry for lunch but there was a nice breeze moving over the lake and I suggested we take a short leisurely paddle on Loon Lake to cool us off first. We paddled east, sticking close to the north shore. Halfway down the east arm of Loon Lake 1 Ilana was seized by in irresistible urge to put ashore and climb the big, open, grassy hill on our left. I was not much in the mood for land travel right now, but the grassy hill was invitingly covered in patches of wild flowers: Daisies, Brown-Eyed Susans, Orange Hawkweed, and St. John’s Wort as well as the usual Blueberry and Serviceberry bushes.<br /><br />As we approached the shore Ilana was insisting we keep silent. She was aching for another animal sighing and her plan was to move up the hill quietly so as not to warn off any deer or other animals that might be there. I, on the other hand, was equally insistent that we not do that, since this was exactly the sort of terrain where we’d seen two bears in recent days. I didn’t want to crest a hill only to find myself standing between a mother bear and her cubs. So, we compromised. Ilana was silent and I deliberately made as much noise as I could on the way to the top. I carried my paddle with me.<br /><br />The view from atop the hill was worth stopping for. We could see most of Loon Lake in both directions and on the very highest point on some exposed rock lay rusty, antique remnants of an earlier generation's logging efforts. There were pieces of a mechanized log bucking machine, barrel bands, chains, pulleys and many pieces of iron whose functions I could not guess at.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaqxzzRLXuRCQTObOH_g23vbEEKAttESXvJsRzolNUxvKfrBuOwyzijqVwi6V1a8XWERNHyF334pWVdbF76hIw8NmgY30f6VulndfLSaP4Kuq8jnKbCUto0j-hQ6sDjtCSWFsyhfglQhVT/s1600-h/54+-+Atop+a+hill+on+the+north+shore+of+Loon+Lake,+looking+west+towards+our+campsite.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaqxzzRLXuRCQTObOH_g23vbEEKAttESXvJsRzolNUxvKfrBuOwyzijqVwi6V1a8XWERNHyF334pWVdbF76hIw8NmgY30f6VulndfLSaP4Kuq8jnKbCUto0j-hQ6sDjtCSWFsyhfglQhVT/s200/54+-+Atop+a+hill+on+the+north+shore+of+Loon+Lake,+looking+west+towards+our+campsite.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229234072291828274" border="0" /></a>We also discovered someone had blazed a trail here. Rock cairns and flagging tape on short trees led us northwest towards some trees blazed with red paint. We didn’t follow the trail, but it seemed to be headed in the direction of the hunting cabin. Since this hilltop represented the best view within walking distance of the cabin, that seemed likely. We then proceeded down the other side of the hill to the north until we came within sight of a large swamp. There was likely more pond hopping to be done in this direction, but that would have to wait for another camping trip to Loon Lake.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXJwwEl750YeYR91YABQix48VrHllCkF7dvtc8JpJz287T3kw6eIGZIEosipPXSmJwALDNwxDgzlDXeGgHOAJcfyGBLDCVUx3qUWlDsgc1AAp3thr5RtRDaJG2xiGaorNxMq0A_pqeJtNo/s1600-h/58+-+Ilana+sitting+among+the+daisies+and+st.john%27s+wort.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXJwwEl750YeYR91YABQix48VrHllCkF7dvtc8JpJz287T3kw6eIGZIEosipPXSmJwALDNwxDgzlDXeGgHOAJcfyGBLDCVUx3qUWlDsgc1AAp3thr5RtRDaJG2xiGaorNxMq0A_pqeJtNo/s200/58+-+Ilana+sitting+among+the+daisies+and+st.john%27s+wort.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229236925145075842" border="0" /></a>By this time I was getting anxious about the canoe. I’d left it tied at the shore, but with our yellow dry bag still in it. The dry bag contained our lunch fixings and considering how the bears were in the habit of foraging for food along the shore I wanted to get back to the canoe before some bear made himself comfortable in the bow seat. We headed back to camp and took a few photos or our site from the water. We were already starting to miss it knowing this would be our last night here.<br /><br />Back at camp we had a late lunch of pizza fixings on slices of Ilana’s baked bread and then went about the usual business: splitting a bit of firewood for tonight’s supper fire, filtering lake water into our Nalgene bottles for tomorrow’s trip out to Island Lake, bathing and then happy hour under the tarp.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjG4luGx6UnCJsBIXbBr6K735NZCnbr-D8bpC_KExi1GUw2Db9xhJmWPB24x1LjaNYCjlgIO8hdWz_r1w5WBqyt1BOI117jPRoMzOaCqwDKIZjNb1qurMo9TwcCKNhTJxB-CMg_RRQcN7g0/s1600-h/59+-+A+view+of+our+campsite+on+Loon+Lake.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjG4luGx6UnCJsBIXbBr6K735NZCnbr-D8bpC_KExi1GUw2Db9xhJmWPB24x1LjaNYCjlgIO8hdWz_r1w5WBqyt1BOI117jPRoMzOaCqwDKIZjNb1qurMo9TwcCKNhTJxB-CMg_RRQcN7g0/s200/59+-+A+view+of+our+campsite+on+Loon+Lake.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229236928827441426" border="0" /></a>Throughout our days here we made frequent trips to the water’s edge of our campsite with the binoculars to scan the shorelines and tree-lines in the hopes of more wildlife sightings. On this day, while I was splitting a few pieces of wood, Ilana called me over to her by the shore. On the northern shore, near where the boats were stashed, we watched two white-tailed deer walking along the shore and drinking from the lake for several long minutes, their short white triangular tailes whipping up and and their ears twitching ceaselessly to wave off the harassing deer flies. Everyone’s seen deer grazing in a field in farm country, but there’s something special about seeing deer in the woods doing something other than grazing. Not long after they left they returned with a third deer and sprang back and forth along that shore for reasons unknown.<br /><br />In the evening we discussed if we should leave tomorrow to spend one more night on Island Lake as planned or make it all the way home in one day. I was keen on staying for at least one more night on Island Lake, but Ilana shoulder was bothering her quite a bit and was getting more sore with every morning that went by. She felt it would be wiser to put in one final long day of paddling than two shorter days. It did seem a bit pointless to break camp here, paddle for three hours to Island Lake, make camp there for one night, only to break camp the next morning and spend hours to get back to the boat launch. But even so, I didn’t like the idea of facing 7 portages and however many lift-overs there would be in going from here all the way to the boat launch. That’d be a lot of bending and lifting, only to be faced with what might be a really windy crossing of a large lake. Experience had taught us that it’s best to cross Wah-Wash-Kesh Lake as early in the day as possible as the winds only grew stronger in the late afternoon. We agreed we’d play it by ear since there were many variables that would decide the matter for us the next morning: Would it be windy? Was bad weather coming? Would the increase in water levels make the lift-overs easier? Would Ilana’s shoulder be aching too much to go on by the time we reached Island Lake?<br /><br />That night we ate the second serving of Ilana’s Kraft Dinner Supreme (sans side salad this time) and we went to be a little earlier. We both slept soundly that night.<br /><br /><br />DAY TEN: HEADING OUT FROM LOON LAKE<br /><br />We awoke on Sunday, July 20th at 6:30 AM, fully rested, but snuggled and lazed in our sleeping bags until 7:00 AM. We dressed in the tent as usual and Ilana crawled out into the morning breeze. The sky was a diffuse gray. She retrieved the loaded food barrrel and boiled water on the Trangia stove for coffee and prepared our granola cereal. I stayed in the tent as she did this and packed up the sleeping bags and rolled up the air mattresses and then climbed out and removed the tent fly, resting it upside down on the tent so the condensation droplets on it would dry in the breeze while we ate our breakfast.<br /><br />After breakfast we took care of our morning ablutions after which we dismantled our latrine setups – Ilana retrieved the mosquito netting from over her comfy rock and I took apart the Cheek-Spreader 2008 by retrieving my bungie cords.<br /><br />Next Ilana packed up the food barrels. One of them was virtually empty, so to redistribute the load from the backpacks we put a lot of miscellaneous gear into the empty barrel, along with the litter we’d found here: the old rotting nylon rope, the rusty cans, burned tinfoil, etc.<br /><br />I struck the tent and then filled my big blue canoe pack with gear and finally unstrung the tarp and bug shelter and packed it up and the remaining gear into Ilana’s hiking pack. We hauled the gear down to the canoe and when all was ready we walked about the campsite to make sure all was cleaner than we’d found it. I was proud of the fact that this overgrown site still looked overgrown. We’d been here for a week and we’d managed not to beat down all the delicate foliage and moss. We had made a point of stepping carefully along the same small paths everywhere we went in camp so as to minimize our impact on the site and we’d only snapped off a few small dead branches that threatened to poke our eyes out. We had not ‘cleared’ or tried to improve the site. We’d not picked the site clean of ground litter to start our fires. It looked like the very sort of site I’d want to find if I was just arriving.<br /><br />We were about to shove off at 9:00 AM sharp when I spotted something that looked like an animal on the far shore. It was on the eastern shore opposite our campsite a few feet back from the water’s edge. It looked to be a bit bigger than a bread box, brown all over, but not moving. Even with the binoculars we weren’t sure what it was, but given it’s proximity to a small beaver lodge on that shore it was almost certainly a large beaver. We said our good-byes to our campsite and made our way across to the opposite shore for a closer look at the brown critter. As we got closer and closer it still did not move. It was a beaver, curled up on it’s haunches, head tucked down. It appeared to be dozing. It stirred when we got within 2 canoe lengths of it and then it uncurled itself and charged straight into the water, making a huge ka-splash sound with it’s tail as it went under water. That confirmed for us that the loud ka-splash sounds we’d heard a few nights ago were indeed the beaver. Or maybe the beaver was tossing pumpkins from the shore into the water.<br /><br />As we paddled south to where we’d put into Loon Lake after the last portage from Loon Creek, we speculated that the much higher water levels might mean we would not have to portage as far. We might be able to get further along by wading and avoid having to portage that first part at all. We were wrong. Loon Lake 2 and 3 and all the surrounding ponds had been spilling over into Loon Lake 1 and Loon Creek for days since that thunderstorm. The water was now easily a foot deeper in Loon Creek and we just floated along effortlessly, thus avoiding the longest portage on Loon Creek entirely. The increase in water volume was really moving us along too, which was a good thing since Ilana’s shoulder was quite stiff that morning.<br /><br />The two remaining portages were unavoidable despite the higher water, but we made excellent time with the strong current pushing us downstream towards Island Lake. The many beaver damns were also easy. In several cases we just glided over them on a pillow of water. One of the steeper lift-overs had turned into a small two and a half foot chute, but there was a dark black tongue of water going down it, so we aligned ourselves above it and went down it with a splash. Ilana let out a loud Whee! of delight, but the thrill came to an abrupt end when we allowed the fast moving water to carry us a little to the side where our boat became hung up on a barely submerged rock. With some effort we rocked ourselves off it, but the underside of our canoe bears the scars of that moment’s carelessness.<br /><br />The last lift-over was the big steep one and here we had to put ashore, unload the boat, portage around it and load up again. Minutes later we were putting Loon Creek behind us and headed to Blueberry Island. We had gotten here in record time (less than two hours) and with little effort thanks to the fast current and high water. Island Lake had only a slight wind blowing across it, so this too would prove easy. In the distance we could see dark, flat-bottomed clouds gathering and moving very slowly towards us from the west. The current would assist us on Farm Creek as well, so we decided then and there to stop on Blueberry Island long enough to have a snack and press on for home before the weather turned bad later on. There was no point in making camp on Island Lake if it was only going to rain later that day, and we might find ourselves windbound on day eleven just when we were running out of food.<br /><br />We stopped on Blueberry Island at 11:00 AM and had our morning snack and headed for the long portage into Farm Creek. To our dismay the portage here was messier than usual. Some anglers had come here by ATV and left the trail rutted and mucky. Like true ATVers, they’d also added to the existing litter here. Our packs and barrels were stuffed with gear, food and other people’s litter already, so I had to leave this crap here. It put me temporarily in a foul mood. Ilana cheered me up a bit when she found a brand new bungie cord on the ground among the litter which I claimed as another piece of booty.<br /><br />The portage was damp and the deer flies were horrible, but the progress we’d made so far this morning made it easy to ignore them. Regrettably the deer flies would not leave us alone and they buzzed us the whole way as the current carried us southwards down Farm Creek. As expected, the lift-overs here were all easy and we just glided over all the beaver dams except the highest one. There was only a slight wind still, but the clouds began to spit on us and this turned to a fine drizzle. Fortunately the drizzle stopped frequently and long enough for our quick-drying clothes to dry in the air as we paddled.<br /><br />When we reached the next portage by the falls and the trapper’s cabin we heard hammering coming from the trapper’s cabin. This was the first time we’d ever seen the cabin occupied. At the next portage I wanted to scout the small rapids to see if it was navigable, but Ilana would have none of that. She was getting tired and she didn’t want to risk dunking when we were only 90 minutes from the boat launch. I was thinking the opposite. What better time to try a short, minor rapid and risk taking a dunking? She won that one. I wasn’t about to try it without her.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEih-kfcLunFgsgk0J727Bb-7GupcCUgqL0dHQyqIh1yAjOnNOX-RQ7UjAP9drtEebxOEEmOQMXJurW35NZ054C2J8iT5TUC8OnM9bG3pIJVat_0VF78uqXuzwg9Edt8OIk0hKJ-hTDTqVdv/s1600-h/60+-+The+second+carry+on+a+clear+portage.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEih-kfcLunFgsgk0J727Bb-7GupcCUgqL0dHQyqIh1yAjOnNOX-RQ7UjAP9drtEebxOEEmOQMXJurW35NZ054C2J8iT5TUC8OnM9bG3pIJVat_0VF78uqXuzwg9Edt8OIk0hKJ-hTDTqVdv/s200/60+-+The+second+carry+on+a+clear+portage.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229236931942231890" border="0" /></a>As we approached the take-out to the last portage from Farm Creek into Wah-Wash-Kesh Lake we saw a beaver swimming across the fast-moving current at the head of the falls. It dove under when it saw us and I marveled at how it managed to swim right across the strong current and not get carried along by it.<br /><br />We put-in to Wah-Wash-Kesh Lake at 2:00 PM. The water was remarkably flat. This would be as easy as an early morning crossing. This was a good thing because we were both pretty tired and sweaty now and her left shoulder was really aching with every stroke, so I continued to remind her that we were in no hurry and not out to break any records. We lily-dipped across the island-dotted lake enjoying the big swells created by speedboats. The courteous boaters always slow down as they approach canoes on the water, but that actually creates much bigger waves as slowing down makes their boats sit deeper in the water, displacing more water, and results in a bigger wake. We wave at them anyway to say thank you as they speed off again.<br /><br />As we neared Bennett’s Bay we converged on two other canoes headed our way from Indian Narrows. Each canoe had two young men aboard and their camping gear. We exchanged greetings and a few words as we all paddled together down Bennett’s Bay to the boat launch.<br /><br />We arrived at the take-out at 3:00 PM sharp. From Loon Lake to here in just under 6 hours. A good day’s paddle and our best time ever, but we had good weather, high water and current to thank for it.<br /><br />Ilana unloaded the boat as I walked up the hill to where I’d parked our pickup truck. I could see Ilana beaming and clapping her hands in joy as I drove down the hill towards her. It’s always a relief to her to see the truck safe and sound after a long trip. Once the truck was down by the water I loaded the canoe atop the truck, tied it down, while Ilana placed all our gear into the backseat of the truck.<br /><br />We drove the 73 kilometers back to our cozy trailer in Katrine. Ilana was so tired she kept nodding off along the way. As we drove through Burks Falls I saw a hunting/fishing shop and promised myself I was going to buy myself a canister of bear spray before our next trip out. I got my way on that one.PineMartynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09513857282947052058noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1800071740782233625.post-78509775271339771802008-06-23T16:10:00.006-04:002008-07-10T12:29:58.680-04:0023rd: Our First Visit to Algonquin ParkOver the years friends and relatives who have never tried any form of backcountry camping have asked me questions about exactly what we do when we go canoe-camping. They want to know the little details about the camping experience such as what gear we use, what food we bring, how we cook in the bush, what makes for a good campsite, what we do when it rains, how do we keep our food from spoiling, even how we handle going to the bathroom in the woods. So, with a view to demystifying what camping in the bush is like, here is a trip log of our first short trip of the season in excruciating detail.<br /><br />PLANNING & PREPARATION<br /><br />Our last camping trip was in late August of 2007, which felt like a long time, so we decided to make our first camping trip of the year something short, easy, and nearby just to shake off the winter's rust from us. We've spent our last three summers at an RV campground less than an hour outside of Algonquin Provincial Park but have always found so much great camping on crown land in the area we never felt any strong impulse to pay for the privilege of camping in a provincial park. This year curiosity about Algonquin and a desire to see some moose finally got the better of us and we felt duty-bound to take a short camping trip into nearby Algonquin Park. A nod of thanks goes out to a long lost childhood friend of mine, who I recently reconnected with via Facebook, for urging me to visit Algonquin. He’s such an evangelist for Algonquin Park that I just had to satisfy my curiosity about it after hearing him rhapsodize about it on his website. Thanks Darren.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRgwLWU9sMtJoeSCl5RzLJvap_3KM-lzOzJHf6K13aLUY3CJZ6uh3FymxxAgKgHLC_Wjxh7VpIEp42Wrvv-svER3zhymZEV1UGe9RJAa_lMo8-jHmIHJOfLhxVtE_vii-uUcNGJZn8zAnS/s1600-h/00+-+Route++map.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRgwLWU9sMtJoeSCl5RzLJvap_3KM-lzOzJHf6K13aLUY3CJZ6uh3FymxxAgKgHLC_Wjxh7VpIEp42Wrvv-svER3zhymZEV1UGe9RJAa_lMo8-jHmIHJOfLhxVtE_vii-uUcNGJZn8zAnS/s400/00+-+Route++map.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5220369242883397266" border="0" /></a><br />Using a map we’d purchased at the nearest Algonquin Park office we worked out a very short and easy route. The plan was to enter the park just northeast of Kearney at Access point #2 and paddle downstream along the Tim River into Tim Lake, cross Tim Lake, and continue east along the Tim River to Rosebary Lake where we would spend two nights before coming home the same we we'd gone in. With only a single portage of 120 meters along the Tim River, this would be by far our easiest route in years, perhaps ever.<br /><br />Preparation for the camping season began in April when our trailer (affectionately known by us as 'the Keep') was parked for a month in Campbellville, Ontario. We were far from camping territory there, but the need to scratch the camping itch began then so I found myself dragging camping gear from the Keep’s storage compartment and inspecting it - checking the tent, fly, tarp, sleeping bags, etc., to make sure it was all in good condition. The smell of years of wood smoke on the gear brought back on all sorts of pleasant camping associations and just made the desire to be in the woods even stronger.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggxD5_jAevm9ptY856VKIQcLqkjjXJ7DUm3K5AEtnt2MGechMc1bBU1cyTMdWQlje6Ey05XbOYovZNttWRR6Y6UzvgaSCxXvaIsOy6upbX3hsHYJClkC0sDt_aE09QADhGlGURqKNXYzJv/s1600-h/01+-+Dehydrating+leeks+and+salsa.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggxD5_jAevm9ptY856VKIQcLqkjjXJ7DUm3K5AEtnt2MGechMc1bBU1cyTMdWQlje6Ey05XbOYovZNttWRR6Y6UzvgaSCxXvaIsOy6upbX3hsHYJClkC0sDt_aE09QADhGlGURqKNXYzJv/s320/01+-+Dehydrating+leeks+and+salsa.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5220370461498444242" border="0" /></a>More recently, over the last few weeks, Ilana has been busily dehydrating various foods: pasta sauce, ground beef, chili, carrots, corn, peas, lima beans, green peppers, entire cooked lasagnas, etc., all of which she then divides up into individual serving portions and combines as needed into ziplock freezer bags. The result is lightweight, compact, well-preserved and easily reconstituted by adding water when in the bush. Dehydrating our own ingredients and meals in this way also saves us a small fortune on commercially prepared camping meals. Packing space is at a premium when camping, so reducing the size and weight of every meal and ingredient using a dehydrator is just the beginning. We bring no boxes, jars, bottles or cans of food. Any food we buy for a trip is removed from its commercial package and put into ziplock bags which are lightweight, watertight and compact when empty. Liquids such as olive oil, vinegar, dressings, etc., are placed in tiny, leak-proof Nalgene containers which are used on every trip. Even the Gatorade we drink is purchased as a powder (like Kool-Aid) so we can make a batch in a 1-liter Nalgene bottle whenever we need one in the bush. There is simply no sense in bringing along the dead weight and bulk of commercial packaging. When paddling the canoe does all the heavy lifting, but on a portage one wants the weight of everything to have been reduced as much as possible. When canoe-camping we keep our food in one or two hard plastic barrels with tightly sealing lids. The barrels are then fitted with carrying harnesses so they can be carried like backpacks on a portage. Furthermore, every meal Ilana brings along has been prepared by her at home, at least once in the past, using only the cook kit that we use when camping to ensure that our cook kit includes the required cooking pots and kitchen implements. It sucks when you have brought along pasta and sauce and have only one pot in which to boil the pasta and rehydrate and heat the sauce.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhA4UU1RxNXwPQ0XKZuQ3ra7BvUV2qpvOynVv0du7TZYreDZRmJSjYCaIBEHdVwK6ssdzfonXZkqOQOVctQWDC6GaRPb0YLIBYA5830sfDNoHUGSLS0vvvHFWOcwdtcZVXE2wrbnefQy6Rg/s1600-h/03-+About+to+start+packing.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhA4UU1RxNXwPQ0XKZuQ3ra7BvUV2qpvOynVv0du7TZYreDZRmJSjYCaIBEHdVwK6ssdzfonXZkqOQOVctQWDC6GaRPb0YLIBYA5830sfDNoHUGSLS0vvvHFWOcwdtcZVXE2wrbnefQy6Rg/s320/03-+About+to+start+packing.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5220370463397353890" border="0" /></a>Monday, June 23rd, the day before our departure, was packing day. We each have our own responsibilities when it comes to packing. Ilana works out the entire menu plan for the whole trip and decides what ingredients we will need to bring including such things as condiments and special cooking instruments such as tinfoil, mixing containers, etc, and begins packing the food barrel. Meanwhile, I am in charge of putting the canoe atop the truck and ensuring the paddles, PFDs (personal flotation devices a.k.a. life jackets), bailer, etc are loaded up in the truck. Then I gather all of our camping gear from storage and pile it up in front of the couch in the Keep's miniature living room. Using my gear checklist, which I printed out a few days before, I take inventory, making sure we have the all the gear we need and sufficient quantities of such things as biodegradable soap, fuel for the stove, sunscreen, bug repellant, toothpaste, band aids for the first-aid kit, toilet paper, etc. Once I've taken this inventory and Ilana is halfway through packing the food barrel and figured out what few foodstuffs we need to get fresh from the grocery store, we take a break from packing to drive into town to get those last-minute groceries.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiydU8fSBVXe2_gf604OvL-ONDyM6D4-QiQRWt7IWR94msfoLyVw-kT2svWYRjxj2GiKkcXI2NIkGEHNG8tO6GjvU7sWhU4g3z04x82nJlmGEAbap71iDnSQ_44xeQT-JjoBJMAKf-akOo9/s1600-h/02+-+barrel+filling.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiydU8fSBVXe2_gf604OvL-ONDyM6D4-QiQRWt7IWR94msfoLyVw-kT2svWYRjxj2GiKkcXI2NIkGEHNG8tO6GjvU7sWhU4g3z04x82nJlmGEAbap71iDnSQ_44xeQT-JjoBJMAKf-akOo9/s320/02+-+barrel+filling.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5220370463892945282" border="0" /></a>Upon our return Ilana resumes packing the food barrel. It was an easy menu plan and food packing chore this time, but it can take many long hours when preparing for a longer trip. I turned my attention to the pile of gear in front of me. The tent, tarp, sleeping bags, and clothing I stuffed into compression sacs to reduce their bulk. Compression sacs are just ordinary stuff sacs with adjustable straps attached to the outside of them. By cinching the straps one can compress a bulky tent or sleeping bag to half it’s size. Since space in a pack is always limited, compression sacs permit one to fit more gear into a pack. Then I placed all the gear which must remain perfectly dry in our large blue waterproof, roll-top canoeing pack: sleeping bags, Thermarest mattresses, clothing, headlamps, books, etc. That Eureka canoe pack is one of my favourite pieces of gear, being a tough and roomy roll-down dry bag and weighing only 4 pounds, which is nothing compared to it's heavier all-rubber cousins.<br /><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVFXiLW_IMmi77Jn_XjMSd4T_G4ShxRMJwz3yNgVpM9qZ9U6RtotWTOwY01IL1rO4dHwvq1r8DM__HGilpfMqZN86KXywF4HdxU9kiE2HBVhK_X5SMeagBt7CDd4GrCOoYEtKrkN3A08yo/s1600-h/04+-+Eureka+canoe+pack.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVFXiLW_IMmi77Jn_XjMSd4T_G4ShxRMJwz3yNgVpM9qZ9U6RtotWTOwY01IL1rO4dHwvq1r8DM__HGilpfMqZN86KXywF4HdxU9kiE2HBVhK_X5SMeagBt7CDd4GrCOoYEtKrkN3A08yo/s320/04+-+Eureka+canoe+pack.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5220370469478567826" border="0" /></a>The gear that can handle getting wet I put into Ilana's smaller hiking backpack: the tarp, rope, camp saw, MSR fuel bottle (which holds the fuel for our camping stove), water filter, toiletries kit , utility/repair kit, etc. Near the top of her pack I stuffed our rain gear (rain pants and rain coat) so it would be readily accessible in the event of a sudden downpour while on the water or on a portage. Once the packs were ready I tossed them in the truck. The last thing to pack was our yellow, 20-litre, roll-top, dry bag. This waterproof rubber sac sits at the front of the canoe and hold the things we will need to get at easily while on the water or on a portage: emergency/first aid kit, GPS, camera in ziplock bag, bug jackets. I left room in it for the day's lunch which Ilana would be adding to it later. Ilana's last preparatory chore was putting together the lunch for our first day on the water, usually sandwiches, trail snacks and Gatorade, which she then placed in the refrigerator overnight.<br /><br />As usual on the night before a camping trip I had a fitful sleep. Knowing I have to wake up early, drive to the put-in in the morning and begin our trip always generates enough anticipation in me to keep me from enjoying a deep sleep, rather like the excitement a child feels the night before Christmas morning.<br /><br /><br />DAY 1: THE TRIP TO ROSEBARY LAKE<br /><br />We awoke at 5:00 AM on Tuesday morning, showered, dressed, had breakfast and made the last minute preparations: putting the lunch sandwiches into our yellow dry bag and placing the steak we bought at the grocery store the day before between two freezer packs to keep it fresh and cold during the drive to the put-in. The ‘put-in’ is whichever spot you actually put the canoe into the water. The ‘take-out’ is the where you remove the boat from the water.<br /><br />We drove the short distance from our Campground in Katrine to the town of Kearney where the nearest Algonquin Park office is situated, paid the fee of $10 per person per day for our backcountry camping permits, and drove another 32 kilometers to the put-in at Access Point #2. The put-in here was easy since one can drive right to water's edge, avoiding the usual mini-portage of canoe and gear from the parking area to the put-in. I took the canoe off the truck as Ilana removed our gear from the truck and handed it to me to load in the canoe. I'm always fussy about where I want the gear to be positioned so that our canoe will be well-trimmed (level) on the water, especially when larger lake crossings are involved and winds can blow a high-riding bow about. Ilana took the cold steak out of the truck and put it into the food barrel where it would now remain cold until supper tonight while I parked the truck in the designated parking area.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTV2X-GyqjALiD9iig9BoXKvrk5kZtIxZdilC_VzUB7rmKSrEJV8PyDP62L5bTl8AFGhSsxGf7dkCOGtKnbDVkvupGMSeeijBpMTzSOppYp2iv_Jm6TY4lqGYzIDavzsRc4muGZ3TdKuNV/s1600-h/07+-+The+put-in+the+the+Tim+River,+Access+point+%232+2008+002.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTV2X-GyqjALiD9iig9BoXKvrk5kZtIxZdilC_VzUB7rmKSrEJV8PyDP62L5bTl8AFGhSsxGf7dkCOGtKnbDVkvupGMSeeijBpMTzSOppYp2iv_Jm6TY4lqGYzIDavzsRc4muGZ3TdKuNV/s320/07+-+The+put-in+the+the+Tim+River,+Access+point+%232+2008+002.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5220371622841712370" border="0" /></a>We did one last gear check: Paddles? Check. PFDs on? Check. Both packs in the canoe? Check. Food barrel in the canoe? Check. Yellow dry bag in the canoe? Sunscreen on? Hat on? Map in hand? Check, check, check, check. We perform this last-minute inventory every time we set out from a put-in, portage, or campsite to save us from having to return to retrieve a forgotten piece of gear. Some years ago we left behind our yellow dry bag on the last portage at the end of a trip. It had our digital camera with precious photos in it. My buddy Joe and I had had to paddle back to get it while our better halves waited around in for a couple of hours in the middle of nowhere until we returned. They were both drunk as skunks by the time Joe and I returned to them as they decided to finish off some wine left in one of the food barrels. After that goof up, and to protect the sobriety of my camping partner, I promised myself we’d make sure all our gear was accounted for before paddling off. With this duty out of the way Ilana posed for a quick photo and then climbed into the bow. I shoved the canoe away from the shore, hopped into the stern and we set out on our way downstream along the Tim River.<br /><br />The Algonquin Canoe Routes map indicates that the Tim River is prone to very low water levels, but at this time of the year we had nothing to worry about, especially after the unusual amount of rainfall this area has seen throughout June. Water levels were so high that even when the river slowed down in the places where it widened there was still noticeable current propelling us along.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzc6DPWIJMO2vT-ugpN2THP6Xkuv5UCN90WOfKboVYJfjh7JuLrfcGGM-PCcLhRR7fhVTy_9cXosLVnf9eMN0hweTa6HZkoRN8vd_mbnybB02YZqkApyKgjn4hl0UBBEOhfxytgETbrcel/s1600-h/05+-+Route+closeup+map+topo1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzc6DPWIJMO2vT-ugpN2THP6Xkuv5UCN90WOfKboVYJfjh7JuLrfcGGM-PCcLhRR7fhVTy_9cXosLVnf9eMN0hweTa6HZkoRN8vd_mbnybB02YZqkApyKgjn4hl0UBBEOhfxytgETbrcel/s320/05+-+Route+closeup+map+topo1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5220370473823982354" border="0" /></a>We were not on the water an hour when I began lamenting the lack of a topographic map. I normally insist on having a topographic map with me on a camping trip so that I can measure our progress and avoid getting disoriented, but I figured that the Algonquin Canoe Route map would suffice given how straightforward our route was. The map we left us with the impression that the Tim River was uniform, but the reality was different. The River is sometimes straight, sometimes winding, sometimes passing through wide open floodplains and sometimes a narrow channel only a few feet wide banked by dense foliage, sometimes marshy, and sometimes like a small lake. With this much variety and given the distinct hills around us and valleys we passed through, we could have pinpointed our precise location at every point if we'd had a topo map.<br /><br />Crossing Tim Lake was uneventful and easy despite a minor crosswind. A pair of loons floated ahead of us and then dove underwater when we got too close for comfort. Minutes later they surfaced again and one of them began fluttering it's wings, stretching it's neck forward and rearing up from the surface of the water in a blustery display while making that all-too-familiar loon's cry of dismay.<br /><br />From the middle of the lake we could make out several camping sites, made easier to spot because of the orange signs which mark them for park visitors. I happen to dislike the look of those things, though I understand the need for them in a park. We’ve grown accustomed to camping on crown land where campsites and portages are usually unmarked or at best crudely blazed and I like having to figure out where a campsite is or where a portage route begins. In this specific instance I was happy to know where the campsites were since they revealed that even on this lake, only 40 minutes from the put-in, the sites were all unoccupied, meaning we were all alone. If this easily accessible lake was empty on the Tuesday before the Canada Day long weekend it suggested that Rosebary Lake, where we were headed, would be similarly free of occupants.<br /><br />We made our way out of Tim Lake, exiting it via the northeast along the Tim River again, which was now significantly wider and deeper. Not long after continuing down the Tim River we floated, just barely, over an old manmade wooden dam. In even slightly lower water we would have had to lift-over at this point and we would likely have to lift the boat over it on the way back unless some rain fell while on this trip.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgl5exDwBmyGX7FNqT-TK3P2hdVzydcupottQO4Vy8fBLw0WMJc9Tsl6V_NmDq0F8zUAjvIIkf2IZu3u7KWokGilv-_ip1bBTe9lMES4-jpKMbOvlI1D9b_tJGK6JROP0-PA2aV0osnKH0N/s1600-h/08+-+Approaching+Rosebary+Lake1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgl5exDwBmyGX7FNqT-TK3P2hdVzydcupottQO4Vy8fBLw0WMJc9Tsl6V_NmDq0F8zUAjvIIkf2IZu3u7KWokGilv-_ip1bBTe9lMES4-jpKMbOvlI1D9b_tJGK6JROP0-PA2aV0osnKH0N/s320/08+-+Approaching+Rosebary+Lake1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5220371634862892002" border="0" /></a>It was around here that Ilana and I began remarking on just how much waterfowl there was to be seen: herons, wood ducks, Canada geese, and of course, loons. Marta, the park official at the Kearney office, had told us that our chances of seeing moose on this route were very good and so from the moment we put-in we were squinting far ahead of us and scanning the tree-lines around us in the hopes of spotting a moose. On several occasions Ilana would point to some almost identifiable object in the distance and ask hopefully, <span style="font-style: italic;">"Is that a moose?"</span>, only to be disappointed a few paddle strokes later when the hoped-for moose turned out to be an overgrown beaver lodge or oddly-shaped tree stump.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBEretqRpjg9Rwmv0r9mWsFeqPdnFA-jAaOtQHM1zFnsQkvLJW2rgBaqHdJnjiB9zEDbjphxP23yXIMea6RfbTcMQI4UD_A5kGMRGL6-J3HDoPubAsu9t2pZUSAsv5zum2YaCkxJWKwmun/s1600-h/09+-+Martin+emptying+the+canoe+at+the+Tim+River+portage.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBEretqRpjg9Rwmv0r9mWsFeqPdnFA-jAaOtQHM1zFnsQkvLJW2rgBaqHdJnjiB9zEDbjphxP23yXIMea6RfbTcMQI4UD_A5kGMRGL6-J3HDoPubAsu9t2pZUSAsv5zum2YaCkxJWKwmun/s320/09+-+Martin+emptying+the+canoe+at+the+Tim+River+portage.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5220371638470605522" border="0" /></a>In short order we reached our first portage. The landing for this take-out was a nice open area facing out onto the wide, marshy part we'd just crossed and only a feet away from the narrow, rocky, and steep falls which necessitate this portage. We climbed out of the boat onto the rocky landing and stretched our legs. The view of where we'd just come from was beautiful but the aesthetic experience was marred a moment later when I noticed that an old stone fire ring at the start of the portage was littered with cigarette butts, bits of plastic, plastic wrap, pulped toilet paper and other small bits of trash. Seeing even a minor mess of this sort in the wilderness fills me with outrage. How exactly can a person be too busy or important to pick up the crap they carted in? Argh! I'm not fanatical about the 'leave-no-trace' camping philosophy, but wilderness etiquette demands that one packs out whatever one packs in, no matter how small. Better mannered campers will pick up the trash left behind by others so as to leave a site or trail cleaner than the way they found it, so I promised myself I'd clean up this mess on the way out two days hence.<br /><br />It was time to begin our first portage which we would do in two carries. I lifted the packs and other gear from the canoe and set it on the ground. Ilana put on her backpack and headed down the portage trail ahead of me with paddles in her hands as I heaved the canoe up onto my shoulders and followed behind her. Normally, on an unfamiliar portage, I would do the first carry of the portage wearing a heavy pack or barrel instead of the canoe to see what's in store for me later when my view of the trail will be limited by the canoe, but the portage trail was so obviously wide and well-traveled that I had little concern about banging the canoe against some low tree limb or wandering down the wrong trail (both of which I have done before). As always we made a point of making lots of noise, shouting "Hey bears!" to scare off any large terrestrial carnivores we might catch by surprise on the portage trail. The portage, though clear and wide, was steep in places, especially near the end, but park rangers and volunteers have gone to the trouble of setting large wooden frames into the steep muddy hillside to make the descent to the water less treacherous. While I appreciate the motive for this sort of construction project, it violates my purist aesthetic sensibilities in the same way that campsite and portage signs do, but then nothing could take away from precious view of the deep narrow river below the falls.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXWKk-UK-92cIO7f8nRoJq5yvKwidlOZ1-sIPCFU6FXmy5MekfT8DPM3KCmT_VzJWg_BXryX7WTjz28Dt6rbQ5lSJ7fH7upv7daTmBI3pxgNaRnTJEEjpHfic66FTcTkaoVmoMbZMQGi7p/s1600-h/10+-+The+view+east+from+the+end+of+the+portage+on+the+Tim+River+01.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXWKk-UK-92cIO7f8nRoJq5yvKwidlOZ1-sIPCFU6FXmy5MekfT8DPM3KCmT_VzJWg_BXryX7WTjz28Dt6rbQ5lSJ7fH7upv7daTmBI3pxgNaRnTJEEjpHfic66FTcTkaoVmoMbZMQGi7p/s320/10+-+The+view+east+from+the+end+of+the+portage+on+the+Tim+River+01.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5220371643701999762" border="0" /></a>We dropped off our first load and headed back up the trail to get the remaining pack, food barrel, and the yellow dry bag. It was at this point, walking the trail without a canoe on my head, that I began to appreciate how few bugs there were for the month of June. I'd only sustained two or three mosquito bites on my hands while helplessly trapped under the canoe and there were none at all bothering me now. Even while we’d paddled slowly along the marshier parts of the river we'd not been harassed by mosquitoes, blackflies or deerflies as we'd expected. When we'd set out in the morning I fully expected to be applying bug repellant and maybe even don the hood of my bug jacket. What a pleasant surprise not to have to do so in June, which is always the buggiest time of year in these parts. We loaded the boat, performed our checklist ritual - 2 paddles, 2 PFDs, 2 packs, a food barrel, and a dry bag – then climbed into the boat. Ilana suggested this would be a good spot for a mid-morning snack and so instead of paddling downstream we paddled into the deep turbulent pool at the bottom of the falls and drifted about in it while we snacked on some granola bars and re-hydrated ourselves from our water bottles.<br /><br />At this point the Tim River cuts a deep, winding, but very narrow channel in a wide, grassy, floodplain. With the river channel only a few feet across and the walls of tall grass and shrubs on either side of us it was sometimes hard to know what would be around any bend but there were no surprises in store for us, except for the occasional small beaver dam (three in all), two of which we were able to grind our way over without stepping out and only one of which hung us up, requiring that I step out of the boat and stand on a high part of the dam to push us over it. Despite these obvious signs of beaver presence and the occasional beaver lodge, we didn't see any beavers nor hear their familiar tail slaps when we invade their territory.<br /><br />The snack we'd eaten an hour or so before had worn off and we were both feeling the need for a proper lunch so we nosed the boat into some reeds to prevent us from drifting and we feasted on the chicken salad sandwiches and Gatorade Ilana had prepared the night before. I love lunching while sitting on the floor of my canoe, resting my back against the seat, surrounded by wilderness. Paddling a canoe along a meandering river like this is soothing, but just sitting there quietly without paddling for several minutes allows me to really listen to singing birds, chirping frogs, buzzing insects and gives the dragonflies an opportunity to land and visit us right in our boat.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdeq3Uq7PsQlmypJuPhKm3Wj1YJDA-YAy-8AeVPuTpYpnv9x1NDojSz9yLy-nL5jmzMlpEyc1o0J1q23i22X3uKcuVkFFe2ePcebspDZiOD46zt_K26SOA1rxnSTdJcuYuiCzBBxPSJgKO/s1600-h/06+-+Route+closeup+map+topo2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdeq3Uq7PsQlmypJuPhKm3Wj1YJDA-YAy-8AeVPuTpYpnv9x1NDojSz9yLy-nL5jmzMlpEyc1o0J1q23i22X3uKcuVkFFe2ePcebspDZiOD46zt_K26SOA1rxnSTdJcuYuiCzBBxPSJgKO/s320/06+-+Route+closeup+map+topo2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5220371623332806818" border="0" /></a>The Tim River flows into and out of Little Butt Lake and thereafter the narrow channel of the Tim becomes frustrating. Until this point the channel had been zigzagging eastwards, but now it became a series of large, exaggerated, s-shaped switchbacks so that we found ourselves spending much time paddling in directions perpendicular to, and even away from, our easterly course. Making progress through this valley between Little Butt Lake and Rosebary Lake seemed very slow, but we were would still arrive on Rosebary Lake in plenty of time to examine a few campsites and make camp before supper.<br /><br />It was here that we had our first moose sighting of the trip. This was our 22nd camping trip since 2003 and only once before had we spotted a moose, so this was a big deal for us. Ilana saw something far ahead of us near the tree-line on the right, just a few hundred meters from where the Tim River empties into Rosebary Lake. She whispered urgently "I think I see a moose!" Sure enough, we could see the heads of two moose - a cow and her offspring - both looking back at us from their safe distance. Ilana was transfixed. I whispered to her to get the camera out of the yellow dry bag and start snapping pictures, but she was afraid of making too much noise. She didn't even want to take her eyes off of them for fear they would bound away, deer-like, out of view. I began paddling quietly forward to get a better view while I coaxed Ilana to break out the camera. She gave in and began taking photos, but the moose were still too distant. She could scarcely make them out through the camera’s viewfinder. As I moved the boat closer our proximity finally overcame the nervous cow and she moved out of the tall grass towards the tree-line to disappear into the woods, followed immediately by her little one. Ilana was slightly annoyed having wasted much of her viewing time getting the camera out and taking pictures. As we would later discover, the two moose were not really visible in the photos she took. Still, we were both tickled to have seen moose on the first morning of our camping trip. I remarked that even if we didn't see another moose, and if the campsites were miserable, and the weather foul, it would have been worth the effort and cost of coming here.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAliHzxl04lLVzQ36ZCRzieWOz9KhdLAfLneksbA-t1QUf2zyKiOvaVrc1tqapcnSlPQ8y4eFJik0GK-v_wsstqNSWhWn9wx3INWHWL9YDc_EklUEOK24ubqrk6hhdBebKSMaER3SqfErm/s1600-h/11+-+Our+first+moose+sighting.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAliHzxl04lLVzQ36ZCRzieWOz9KhdLAfLneksbA-t1QUf2zyKiOvaVrc1tqapcnSlPQ8y4eFJik0GK-v_wsstqNSWhWn9wx3INWHWL9YDc_EklUEOK24ubqrk6hhdBebKSMaER3SqfErm/s320/11+-+Our+first+moose+sighting.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5220372727333039266" border="0" /></a>Excited by the moose sighting and with Rosebary Lake now in full view just ahead of us we paddled through the remaining meanders into the strong breeze of Rosebary Lake. The Lake was bigger than we'd expected it to be. Although the scale printed on the map should have set us straight, the crudeness of our Algonquin Canoe Routes map made the river appear wide and the lake correspondingly small in comparison, leaving us with the mistaken impression that Rosebary would be cozy. Images speak louder than words I guess. Discovering the lake to be bigger than we'd visualized was good news though, since there are 5 campsites on this one lake and so many sites on a small lake would have made them too close together if others joined us on this lake in the next two days.<br /><br />DAY 1: CHOOSING A CAMPSITE<br /><br />We moved out into the lake while we looked at the map and tried to decide which campsite to examine first. In Algonquin park one pays a fee to stay on a specific lake on any given night, but not for a specific site, which meant we could circle the lake and visit each unoccupied campsite before choosing which we would make our temporary home. Marta the park ranger at the Kearney office had recommended to Ilana we try the campsite on the point jutting out into the lake from the eastern coast. A campsite on such a point would ensure a good breeze and so make for a less buggy site, but I was not sold on the idea because of the weather forecast. The forecast called for a 60% and then 10% chance of rain for the next two days. Camping out on a point in strong storm can leave one too exposed. We quibbled for several minutes about which site to look at first and where exactly it we’d find it before making for the site on the north shore of the lake. I should mention that here on Rosebary Lake those orange campsite signs were discreetly placed so as not to be visible from a great distance. Perhaps the high visibility of those signs on Tim Lake was deliberate to make them obvious for those campers wanting an easily located campsite just a short distance from the put-in.<br /><br />We made our way to the campsite on the north shore but it was not to our tastes. It was a low-lying area, only a few feet above the water level and set in a densely wooded area. As a result this site was rather dark, damp and without a good view of the lake. In stormy conditions we would be ideally sheltered there from prevailing winds, but within just minutes of our arrival the mosquitoes were on us. The site was infested with mosquitoes, making us cross this campsite off our list. The site also suffered from over use. The ground was free of normal forest litter, having been picked clean by campers scrounging the site for kindling and leaving only bare dirt. If it rained, this would be a muddy mess to live in. Worse yet, campers had taken it upon themselves to "improve" the site by building primitive camp furniture. For me, the sight of such construction projects leaves me feeling as if I'm about to move into an abandoned shanty town instead of making camp in the woods. We decided to pass up on this dreary site and headed straight out into the lake for the one Marta had recommended.<br /><br />This site looked more promising even from the water. It was on the very tip of the large point and had a nice rocky landing for the canoe. The land rose steeply from there and the site seemed open and airy with sunlight breaking through the maples, birches and big pines. It'd be pretty exposed if the weather turned foul on us, but we would have little trouble with bugs and we'd enjoy sunlight on the site from early morning to sunset.<br /><br />We landed the boat and Ilana climbed out and steadied it for me as I clambered overtop of the gear in the boat to make my way beside her on the rocky landing. I tied the boat to a tree and we began examining the sight in earnest. The site had a serious slope to it, but was level enough in a few places where we might pitch our tent. We walked about the site discussing where we'd put the tent and where we'd string up our tarp. The trees were ideally placed for stringing a tarp and that to me is even more important than a perfect tent spot. Like any campsite in a provincial park there was a privy or “thunderbox”. A thunderbox is a primitive toilet – a small wooden box with a hole in the top sitting over a shallow hole in the ground, invariably with a hinged wooden top much like a toilet seat lid. This is arguably the only human artifact I welcome seeing on a campsite as it saves me having to dig a tiny latrine or cat-hole and arranging some simple frame of solid branches upon which to sit when relieving oneself. A thunderbox is always more comfortable. The thunderbox was located sufficiently far away from the main area to afford privacy. Lastly, access to the water's edge on this site would be easy, making swimming and fetching water a pleasure instead of a chore. The big selling point for Ilana though was the view. The site was high, open, and gave us a wide-angle view of most of the lake because of it's location on a point.<br /><br />Aesthetically, the only quibble I had was evidence of inconsiderate campers who'd stayed here before us. Someone had allowed their children to paint the words ‘Welcome’ on several of the boulders by the shore. The stone fire ring was quite clean with only minimal litter in it (burned tinfoil), but some lazy arse had brought in one of those folding camp chairs and abandoned it here when one of the legs had broken. Also, someone had brought in a board, hammer, saw and nails and nailed a 4' x 1' piece of plywood and nailed it directly into a large pine tree to use as a shelf. He or she had also cut some young living striped maples to serve as legs for this waist-high fish-gutting table. It was probably the same person who’d recently cut 2 or 3 living trees of 2" diameter and left the young trunks lying about. I guess this person hadn't read the rules about only cutting fallen deadwood, not live trees. Did I mention the wooden shelf smelled so strongly of fish that it wasn't usable as a shelf to us since it imparted it's odor to anything we placed on it? As if that weren’t enough crap left behind, there was a large iron stand sitting near the fire ring. At least we could use that as a small table upon which to rest things.<br /><br /><br />DAY 1: MAKING CAMP<br /><br />Despite this debris and evidence of human impact we decided to make camp here for two nights as the site was otherwise well situated and beautiful. We emptied the canoe of gear and I carried the boat away from the water's edge and put it down near the water's edge, upside down, resting the gunwales on a fallen birch trunk and tied the boat to a standing tree. I always tie my canoe even when set down far from the water's edge as sufficiently strong winds can hurl an empty overturned canoe right off one's site, leaving one stranded. Meanwhile Ilana hauled the gear from the rocky landing up the slope to what would become our living area.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhyqD76OG11oNtXcGdCjQdwfxqTh96Iay7pp0EdN53oOKf2-e86DTE7Kd-Vx-1TJyRCt2ZZOnRlTX1UC_2xAWzH97ujaTmOOOM_3Htr172bSmsaPVMjISW7jfOCJXMNRyflvLR8pYbnfcZ/s1600-h/12+-+Ilana+collecting+firewood+on+our+campsite+on+Rosebary+Lake.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhyqD76OG11oNtXcGdCjQdwfxqTh96Iay7pp0EdN53oOKf2-e86DTE7Kd-Vx-1TJyRCt2ZZOnRlTX1UC_2xAWzH97ujaTmOOOM_3Htr172bSmsaPVMjISW7jfOCJXMNRyflvLR8pYbnfcZ/s320/12+-+Ilana+collecting+firewood+on+our+campsite+on+Rosebary+Lake.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5220372726638612434" border="0" /></a>Just as we have our established packing responsibilities, so we have our respective tasks where camp setup is concerned. Ilana began with gathering firewood and kindling. When we camp on crown land finding and gathering fallen deadwood is easy because it’s so abundant, but on this heavily used campsite the pickings were slimmer and it took her a little longer than usual to find the quantity of kindling and fallen 1" branches we'd be using for our cooking fires over the next two days. Fortunately for us, a previous camper had left a small stockpile of split, dry hardwood so Ilana's foraging didn’t take quite as long as it might have and it meant I wouldn't need to break out the saw to cut the larger pieces to length.<br /><br />As Ilana went about her work I reached into her backpack for the mesh bag containing the 100' of yellow plastic rope and the compression sac holding our nylon tarp and bug mesh. I began by spreading out the kite shaped tarp on the ground and strung the yellow line through the loops along the diagonal longitudinal axis of the tarp and hoisted the tarp up between two distant trees, setting the taught ridge line of the tarp at about 8’ high. Then I attached a line to each of the two hanging corners and tied them off to two other nearby trees at a height of about 4' from the ground. The tarp would be high enough to stand under along the center line and we could comfortably sit in the corners with plenty of headroom. Next I dragged the 12' x 12" bug mesh under the tarp and clipped it into place to the underside of the tarp. Our rain tarp was now a bug-proof shelter where we could relax, eat, read, or do anything else free of harassing bugs. Finally I attached a few guy lines to the tarp’s edges to make it drum-tight and sunk a few tent stakes into the soft ground to hold down the walls of the bug shelter. I always set up the tarp first and take it down last on any camping trip. Once the rain tarp is in place I have complete piece of mind, knowing I can set up the rest of the gear in the cool shade and protected from any rains. This particular tarp and bug mesh is called the Parawing VCS, made by Eureka, and I can strongly recommend this piece of gear to any camper on the market for a well built and lightweight tarp. The optional bug mesh which clips neatly to the underside of the tarp is heavier than the tarp itself, but worth its weight in gold during the buggy season.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiH1zwVTDZ6hyphenhyphen_lUScUTM5uIHFXspWlfoluhW8yHkU-mIE4ov28uDQef7fQxEw4TW9CGiOsU39aOW55qPAC0kh2o_F-wm6GBBnt8fuSyoCV9wmwLwvLfKM3IZmksn5NuKFlaXNhIbA8oh1t/s1600-h/13+-+Martin+setting+up+the+tent+after+setting+up+the+tarp+and+bug+shelter.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiH1zwVTDZ6hyphenhyphen_lUScUTM5uIHFXspWlfoluhW8yHkU-mIE4ov28uDQef7fQxEw4TW9CGiOsU39aOW55qPAC0kh2o_F-wm6GBBnt8fuSyoCV9wmwLwvLfKM3IZmksn5NuKFlaXNhIbA8oh1t/s320/13+-+Martin+setting+up+the+tent+after+setting+up+the+tarp+and+bug+shelter.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5220372734638778546" border="0" /></a>My next chore was the tent setup. Ilana and I always disagree about where we should pitch the tent and this time was no different. She has a great eye for spotting a flat sight, but flat and level are not the same thing. She's always urging me to pitch the tent on a perfectly flat 20 degree incline. Fortunately she always lets me have my way in this matter and I settled on a really good flat and level spot which I cleared of small twigs, pine cones and other debris that might puncture the bottom of the tent. I removed the compression sac containing our tent from my big blue canoe pack and spread out the clear plastic groundsheet where the tent would go. Our tent is a free-standing 3-person dome tent by Sierra Designs. It's a bit roomier than we need, but it's a pleasure to setup, even in a strong wind. Once the tent was up and staked down I stretched the tent-fly over it and began tossing some of our gear into the tent - sleeping bags, extra clothing, the rolled up, lightweight, Thermarest mattress, etc. The rest of the gear and packs I placed under the tarp/bug shelter so it wouldn't get strewn all over the site. I like a tidy camp.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSujfpugF1kV7mUF1yWGzBXoskvVXvR4qxB2UbzMVl-nWERpfjnEicMr0dsnUMwwpAFE49aAolNQfBL_Lqjhza2ACut8ksWnJQRSxAiSpdLrsTmXyIDQOeVi_Xl01FZp4V8pWDRowY-uiw/s1600-h/14+-+Ilana+filtering+water+on+Rosebary+Lake3.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSujfpugF1kV7mUF1yWGzBXoskvVXvR4qxB2UbzMVl-nWERpfjnEicMr0dsnUMwwpAFE49aAolNQfBL_Lqjhza2ACut8ksWnJQRSxAiSpdLrsTmXyIDQOeVi_Xl01FZp4V8pWDRowY-uiw/s320/14+-+Ilana+filtering+water+on+Rosebary+Lake3.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5220372737546551490" border="0" /></a>After more than a half dozen forays into the dense foliage Ilana returned with her last armload of dry kindling and firewood and moved on to her next task, this one more relaxing – filtering water. First she retrieved the MSR Miniworks water filter from the top of her pack along with our large aluminum cooking pot and the empty MSR water bladder from the food barrel and lastly an empty 1-litre Nalgene bottle. The procedure is simple. She fills the cooking pot with lake water, screws the Nalgene bottle into the bottom of the water filter, puts the end of water filter’s rubber hose into the pot of lake water and pumps the lever on the water filter. The pumping action draws the lake water from the pot up the hose and into the filter, forcing it through a ceramic cylinder and squirts the clean, odorless water into the attached Nalgene bottle. When the bottle is full she empties it into the large 6-litre water bladder, repeating this 5 more times. She sat here quietly by the water's edge for about 25 minutes until we had 6 litres of deliciously clean, worry-free drinking water. I know some people don't bother filtering or even boiling their water, trusting that the lake water will be free of Giardia and intestinal parasites, but this strikes me as analogous to making a habit of unprotected sex with strangers. Sure you can have unprotected sex and never contract a disease, but that's a bad gamble, especially over the long term. For this reason we prefer to filter or boil our drinking water to avoid a bad intestinal bug.<br /><br />While Ilana filtered some water my next order of business was setting up some mosquito netting over the thunderbox. I'd never done this before but had read about it somewhere and thought it would be nice to enjoy the use of the thunderbox without feeling hurried by bottom-biting mosquitoes and blackflies. The bug situation was so minor on this trip that I didn't really need to bother, but I’d brought some lightweight mosquito netting with me and so decided to set it up anyway to see how well it would work. I removed one of the 15’ painters from my canoe (a painter is a length of rope attached to the bow or stern of a canoe) and strung the rope between two small trees so that it passed right over the privy like a short clothesline. Then I hung the mosquito netting from it and let it drape down, veil-like around the privy. Not bad…no bugs would get through that. Since I didn't want the wind to blow the bug mesh about and tear it on the corners of the wooden box or on nearby bushes, I tucked the netting into the compression sac which had contained the tarp and left the sac hanging from the rope until needed. We would definitely be making use of this simple setup again on buggy trips. It was so easy to set up and use for the amount of comfort it provided, especially in the evening when the mosquitoes came out.<br /><br />At this point Ilana and I took a stroll together along the small trail leading out from camp in search of a tree from which to hang the food barrel. We pack our food in watertight plastic barrels for a couple of reasons. First, these barrels are genuinely watertight, which means that in the event of a mishap on the water our food will remain dry and the barrel will float, not sink. Secondly, these barrels are critter-proof (excluding bears, of course). Hanging them from a high limb makes them harder to notice and inaccessible to all but the most determined critters. There the barrel would stay except around meal times when we would need the contents, then back up it would go.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCnWeXQ9XqhMvxnMePiP29RlnDtFa0rSTciAE8dfuWS1HeBRGtSrwGGslRptsxD0s4pAPEJyAyqzD3P-BaMEWKvWE7Unl4jEBK6NBWgI8ZgbWfIXnjiThdY8B8gRgHCWFohicrc-7EGvqZ/s1600-h/17+-+Marrison+food+hanging+system.gif"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCnWeXQ9XqhMvxnMePiP29RlnDtFa0rSTciAE8dfuWS1HeBRGtSrwGGslRptsxD0s4pAPEJyAyqzD3P-BaMEWKvWE7Unl4jEBK6NBWgI8ZgbWfIXnjiThdY8B8gRgHCWFohicrc-7EGvqZ/s320/17+-+Marrison+food+hanging+system.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5220374031799668546" border="0" /></a>For this chore I brought along yet another mesh bag with another 100' feet of yellow plastic rope. I picked up a fist-sized rock and wound one end of the rope around the rock and tied it securely as we walked. Once we'd decided on which tree limb would be long enough, high enough off the ground, and strong enough to support the weight of the food barrel, I lobbed the rock up and over the tree limb.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRR68sIMkn1dHSclZJRCxswGiw3xgv822xawUiC56yX_tpxZNrKpAKfFCckOkluQoyyBr-Fqds5rTxeR8wJNr8HM1ynusXXlQCouvZJXHgUIhctgUQioqQLQXeXYboa36M-xfkMGAE_WXH/s1600-h/18+-+Hanging+food+barrel.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRR68sIMkn1dHSclZJRCxswGiw3xgv822xawUiC56yX_tpxZNrKpAKfFCckOkluQoyyBr-Fqds5rTxeR8wJNr8HM1ynusXXlQCouvZJXHgUIhctgUQioqQLQXeXYboa36M-xfkMGAE_WXH/s320/18+-+Hanging+food+barrel.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5220374030654603682" border="0" /></a>The attached yellow rope trailed behind the rock in a nice arc. It’s always nice to get it on the first try. By attaching a carabiner to the rope I fashioned a rope-pulley system with which I could easily hoist up the barrel out of reach of hungry forest dwellers. At the start of a trip the full barrel can be quite heavy and just tossing a rope over a tree limb to haul the barrel up can create a lot of needless friction, whereas this make-shift pulley system saves the tree limb from being scored by the rope, prevents the rope from fraying and the mechanical advantage gained makes the load easier to raise, avoiding rope burn on one’s hands.<br /><br />My last setup chores were to break up the large pile of kindling and firewood Ilana had gathered into 8” lengths and then to add some kindling to the firewood so it would be ready to light for supper. Like most long-established campsites this one had an assortment of old abandoned fire grates to choose from. I took the one that seemed the least bent and rusted and laid it across the stone fire ring.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJmV44UuUsxw_mKs-BK_lEbItnJUki1JYf4sKOqn2qScMR5cx-cBFHuertWTUxptnoyeCZH92BqBMv-92aKm6M2nH-Zk2jj6FnBZUOMd7QowuzriXqqkHP_UkgW6FoErWz7_DrW4VE9uh4/s1600-h/16+-+Chairs.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJmV44UuUsxw_mKs-BK_lEbItnJUki1JYf4sKOqn2qScMR5cx-cBFHuertWTUxptnoyeCZH92BqBMv-92aKm6M2nH-Zk2jj6FnBZUOMd7QowuzriXqqkHP_UkgW6FoErWz7_DrW4VE9uh4/s320/16+-+Chairs.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5220374026331100562" border="0" /></a>Ilana relaxed in the bug shelter reclining on one of two thermarest camping chairs she'd setup for us. The Thermarest chairs are another piece of gear I can recommend. The makers of our Thermarest sleeping mattresses sell a fabric sleeve into which one of their inflated sleeping mattresses can be folded and inserted forming a kind of legless chair which sits on the ground, permitting one to lean back like in a rocking chair. It sounds gimmicky, but without some sort of seat and backrest one gets weary of always standing, crouching, kneeling or sitting on bare ground, logs or rocks. Some years ago I invested in one of these lightweight sleeves for converting a sleeping mattress into a chair for myself. Ilana sat in it once to try it out on a camping trip and she wouldn’t let me have it for the rest of the trip! So we had to buy another to prevent endless squabbling over whose turn it was to use the chair.<br /><br />DAY 1: TYPICAL CAMP PLEASURES<br /><br />The weather had been perfect all day with a pleasant breeze keeping us cool the whole way here, but breaking up the firewood into pieces had left me feeling a bit sticky and Ilana's forays in the dense brush looking for firewood left her feeling a bit grimy too. We decided to wash off the sweat and sunscreen by taking a bath in the lake. Since the wind was picking up noticeably and this could signal a cool evening we thought it best to do it right away.<br /><br />We hurried down to the water’s edge with miniature fleece camp towels and biodegradable soap in hand and stripped right down. We entered the water gingerly, trying not to stub our toes on the rocky uneven bottom or and scrape our knees on the pumpkin sized rocks that were invisible in the tea-colored water. Once deep enough we cautiously lunged in. Ah…the first skinny-dip of the season in a lake all to ourselves. What a feeling! Once thoroughly wet we swam back to the rocky landing where we’d entered and soaped up lightly using the biodegradable liquid soap which also serves as dish-washing liquid when camping. We then waded back into the water to rinse off and then swam back to shore. Bathing in this manner is disapproved of by some adherents of the leave-no-trace camping philosophy who instead recommend swimming in the lake and then soaping up away from the lake and rinsing off with a large basin or pot of lake water. I’m not unsympathetic to these concerns as the cumulative effect of hundreds of campers rinsing off the soap in the lake can perturb the delicate ecology of shorelines, but our way is just too quick and easy and we use as little of the biodegradable soap as possible. Still, I will probably reform my evil ways on the next trip.<br /><br />Ilana was on shore toweling off while I was letting myself dry in the sun and strong breeze right at the very water’s edge when I felt something on my foot. It felt as is something had delicately tapped the outside of my right foot. I glanced down to see every skinny-dipper’s favourite friend, a 4-inch lake leech, probing along right beside where I stood. I hopped away fast before it could attach itself to me. Not very manly of me, admittedly, but the yuck factor is pretty high when it comes to leeches. Had the little devil followed me out of the water or had it been on me for some time but not had time to latch on? I immediately began looking over Ilana for any sign of leeches on her and she returned the favour. Phew! No leeches on either of us. Leeches are a good reason for bringing a little extra salt on any camping trip. I spent the next few minutes marveling at the shiny black critter as it wormed it’s way along the shore looking for me. Eventually it worked it’s way back into the lake and I watched it writhe around at the water’s edge. I knew my next swim would be even quicker than this one had been.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZFei1X_vBPDGMuBOt8qVlxRHEEPGWqtjOkhKWgWpOe_YU11yNYIxdZ7uJkbhyphenhyphenc8DMWBk0yYNN1jyVk8R9sdxwKR_mZdUDqdbec1RUyZzv1tsLC_nG5sqXkiPyyLnrR4-tJ7LJqIhqdKbS/s1600-h/15+-+Our+site+after+setting+up1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZFei1X_vBPDGMuBOt8qVlxRHEEPGWqtjOkhKWgWpOe_YU11yNYIxdZ7uJkbhyphenhyphenc8DMWBk0yYNN1jyVk8R9sdxwKR_mZdUDqdbec1RUyZzv1tsLC_nG5sqXkiPyyLnrR4-tJ7LJqIhqdKbS/s320/15+-+Our+site+after+setting+up1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5220372735142055362" border="0" /></a>Once dry we put on our clothes, hung up our towels to dry on one of the tarp’s lines and returned to the bug-free pleasure of the shelter to enjoy the feeling of being fresh and clean after a good day’s work. We sank back into our little reclining chairs, tippling red wine from our plastic coffee mugs while reading and looking out at the shimmering lake in the late afternoon sun. We talked about the usual stuff we always talk about in these moments: What will the weather be like tomorrow? Who’s going to do the supper dishes tonight? Look at that chipmunk over there. These are the most pressing concerns we have in these moments.<br /><br />By the time we finished our wine our thoughts were turning to supper. Because fresh meat is heavy and perishable we only ever bring one meal made from fresh, non-dehydrated meat – steak on the first night. Ilana dug into the barrel for the supper fixings she’d need: a ziplock bag containing the steak (still cold), the ziplock bag containing the instant mashed potatoes, the ziplock containing such miscellaneous ingredients as salt, pepper, steak spice and a tiny plastic container of butter, and lastly, a ziplock bag containing instant coffee grounds and sugar. Next she opens up our cook kit to retrieve the cooking implements she will need: a small pot, a pot gripper, two plastic plates, two steak knives and forks.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwpxa29a3XqZfURKik5z-5knf61KBtZPZzmz5eiUfkbN-REKbAcWtR6wpyVryAIphojdZaMSI_yibW_HhGq5lZw04LH_gfS1wwa5AZCK9rBkoK8yhtDMZTFcyZr6RJitOrqrSr42F_A1c7/s1600-h/19+-+Ilana+grilling+a+steak+on+our+first+night.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwpxa29a3XqZfURKik5z-5knf61KBtZPZzmz5eiUfkbN-REKbAcWtR6wpyVryAIphojdZaMSI_yibW_HhGq5lZw04LH_gfS1wwa5AZCK9rBkoK8yhtDMZTFcyZr6RJitOrqrSr42F_A1c7/s320/19+-+Ilana+grilling+a+steak+on+our+first+night.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5220374034971897010" border="0" /></a>While Ilana organized her kitchen around the stone fire ring I lit the fire by igniting some birch bark using a lighter then filled our aluminum pot with lake water and set it on the rusty, sooty grate to boil. We would use some of this boiled water later to make coffee and let the rest cool for use in doing dishes. Beside it Ilana placed the small cooking pot with a measured amount of lake water e to boil for use in making the instant mashed potatoes. Among the collection of old grates left behind by other campers (grrr!!!) was an especially useful one for cooking steak – the sort which folds in half and holds the steak, burger, wieners or whatever you’re grilling sandwiched between the two halves. I tossed this onto the main grate and let the hot flames lick and burn the folding grate clean.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIuHCHOnGrE-DfBs8gzu2nZ2yxbwZrMOfDCaivRfpVJ9vextTqpUgJjmb2GO60L9McwN036xlmH4tvjnRr6FupYsvfDL1Yq6vyjEIJtvT43KvCBn30aEvFtTVEtxe03DGpptbwEWDLKegk/s1600-h/20+-+Ilana+making+mashed+potatoes+on+our+first+night.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIuHCHOnGrE-DfBs8gzu2nZ2yxbwZrMOfDCaivRfpVJ9vextTqpUgJjmb2GO60L9McwN036xlmH4tvjnRr6FupYsvfDL1Yq6vyjEIJtvT43KvCBn30aEvFtTVEtxe03DGpptbwEWDLKegk/s320/20+-+Ilana+making+mashed+potatoes+on+our+first+night.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5220374039680325730" border="0" /></a>Once Ilana had spiced the steak we sandwiched it between the two layers of the small folding grate and rested it on our main grate over the hot embers. The mouth-watering smell of wood smoke and grilled beef filled the air as Ilana set about making mashed potatoes by adding the dehydrated potato flakes into the small pot of boiling water, stirring in a bit of butter, powdered milk, salt and pepper. When the potatoes had the desired fluffy consistency she set them on the edge of the grill to stay warm while she allowed the other side of the steak to cook.<br /><br />When the steak was ready we freed the steak from the folding grate, cut the steak in half for each of our plates, and then spooned out big helpings of mashed potatoes on each plate. We left the juice-covered grates over the fire to burn clean again before hurrying into our bug shelter to sit down and eat. The steak was actually not as tender as it usually is, despite having bought a good cut of meat, but a grilled steak never tastes so good to me as on the first night of camping following a day of paddling and camp setup. I savoured my supper slowly while taking in the view around us. One of the pleasures of eating in the bush is you always feel as if you’ve earned your meals.<br /><br />It was now time for some coffee. Into our plastic mugs Ilana measured out some instant coffee and sugar and added boiling water from the large pot we’d left sitting on the grate. I removed the large pot from the grate to let the water cool for doing dishes later. I normally drink my coffee with milk, but I never miss it when I’m camping for some reason. Go figure.<br /><br />The evening air was now turning cool and the wind was gaining strength, so we donned our thin polar fleece jackets and with steaming cups of coffee in hand we settled under the tarp, backs to the wind in our chairs, drinking in the caffeine and the sound of birds all around us as well as the racket of frogs from clear across the lake. It was now about 7 PM and there was no sign of smoke and no sound of other human voices coming from across the lake. Any late arrivers to this lake should have shown up by now. The lake was going to be ours alone this night.<br /><br />When we’d finished the coffee I left Ilana in the bug shelter to read and nibble on her red licorice whips (one of her favourite treats) and I gathered the dirty dishes together. Doing dishes in camp is easy, but the days of washing one’s greasy dishes in the lake are a thing of the past. The ethic of leave-no-trace camping demands that one not pollute and perturb shorelines eco-systems with grease and food particles. Instead I wiped off any greasy matter and food particles from the plates, pots and cutlery using a paper towel or two and tossed these into the fire. I added a small squirt of biodegradable soap to the large pot of warm water and used that pot as my sink to wash our plates, smaller pot, cups and cutlery, scrubbing as needed with an ordinary dish cleaning pad I’d cut in half (just to save on bulk). The clean dishes were then dipped quickly in the lake to remove any remaining suds and all were put in a mesh sack and hung from a tree limb to air dry. Lastly, I took the large pot of dirty dishwater for a walk down the path, far from camp, dug a small cat-hole in the ground with a short stick, and poured the dirty water in, letting the ground drink the gray, sudsy water and covered the hole with loose dirt and ground litter. One should never pour dirt dishwater into a lake or river or into the thunderbox. On that point, one should never put anything in a thunderbox or latrine except bodily wastes, never leftover food, trash or even sanitary napkins and pads as these will entice animals to dig under the thunderbox and scatter the litter. These other things should be thoroughly burned in the fire.<br /><br />With dishes done I headed back to the campsite and filled the large pot with lake water again and set it down near the fire ring. I would need the water later to completely drown the dying embers in the fire ring. When Ilana saw this she put down her book and began putting things back into the food barrel, making sure that no food or food-scented bags were left lying around the camp to attract critters in the night. She then sealed up the barrel and I carried it down the path to where I’d set up my Marrison pulley system and hoisted the barrel well out of sight and reach. The reason for hanging the barrel well outside the camp is to minimize the amount of food odors in camp. With the camp clean, no food in camp, and the dishes washed, any curious animals smelling food in the air would find nothing to eat and move on.<br /><br />With all my camp chores done I joined Ilana under the tarp again and picked up my book to read beside her. It was comfortably cool and as evening advanced the wind abated and the tiny waves on the lake turned into mere ripples and then went flat. As it grew darker the birds quieted but the frogs grew louder and we put on our tiny headlamps around our heads to continue reading in the dimming light.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_0u_jF_i4y7dnKJYtz2AJEU5samVj3e15bNVyEOPlBbddAzyAPxFJFJuBDvI2tYmb7VVGbqS_R9Qo9GIUVqzafbS7l_1AtueBk0-_BmZZN94ujGYI5JOMEd9brBH7fXbeuGyPdN2bqHmE/s1600-h/23+-+Sunset+on+Rosebary+Lake2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_0u_jF_i4y7dnKJYtz2AJEU5samVj3e15bNVyEOPlBbddAzyAPxFJFJuBDvI2tYmb7VVGbqS_R9Qo9GIUVqzafbS7l_1AtueBk0-_BmZZN94ujGYI5JOMEd9brBH7fXbeuGyPdN2bqHmE/s320/23+-+Sunset+on+Rosebary+Lake2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5220375322319793586" border="0" /></a>By 9 PM the sun was sinking below the treetops, so we got ready for bed. This consisted of bushing our teeth and then bringing whatever gear we’d need with us into the tent: raingear (in case it’s pouring when we wake up), our Thermarest mattresses which we’d kept folded up and used as reclining chairs throughout the day, our books, a Nalgene bottle full of water, an empty Nalgene bottle (for peeing in so you don’t have to open the tent, let the bugs in, and then stumble around in dark only to pee in the pouring rain), and of course, our emergency/first-aid kit.<br /><br />Our bedtime ritual is always the same, if it’s buggy, I dance a little jig and slap myself all over to get the bugs off me and slip quickly into the tent. Ilana stands outside and hands me the thermarest mattresses and other items we need in the tent then I zip up the tent. The idea is to do this quickly before too many mosquitoes find their way into the tent. She waits patiently outside for a few minutes while I unfold the thermarest air mattresses and spread the sleeping bags on them and position the rest of the gear where it needs to be and then Ilana does the hysterical bug dance and joins me inside. We leave our footwear (boots or sandals) just outside the tent but under the fly so they will not be damp in the morning.<br /><br />This night’s ritual was no different except the bugs were not so bad as to require comical bug slapping moves. Once inside we got out of our clothes. Because it was going to be a cool night Ilana put on some light polypropylene underwear and I put on a cotton T-shirt. Then comes the critical task of arranging all of one’s other clothes into a serviceable pillow. I wrapped my clothing in my polar fleece jacket to make a pillow, but Ilana prefers put her clothes into a stuff sac which she then wrapped in a fleece camp towel. With our bedroom all setup we slipped into our sleeping bags and read by the light of our headlamps, killing the occasional mosquito that had found it’s way in. For some reason blackflies are never a problem in a tent, since they spend every moment striving to escape instead of looking for a blood meal. Shortly before we drifted off we heard a strong wind gusting. We wondered out loud if this was a sign of what tomorrow would bring. I suddenly remembered that I’d forgotten to drown the fire. It had died out hours ago, but with a breeze like this, warm dying embers can be blown back into hot coals and start a fire. I dashed out of tent in just my T-shirt. There was a waning half-moon in the sky obviating the need for a flashlight. As I picked up the large pot of water I’d set aside hours ago I noticed that the wind had in fact resuscitated some of the embers. I drowned the fire and made my way back to the tent in bare feet and bare bottomed. We read until drowsiness set in, turned out our headlamps, and fell asleep. Ilana slept deeply that night, but the sound of the wind concerned me and I slept with one eye open that night, waking up several times in the night and had to get out of my sleeping bag once to use the empty Nalgene bottle.<br /><br /><br />DAY TWO<br /><br />We awoke shortly after sunrise to the dawn chorus of birds. We could tell today would be breezier than the day before because it was already audibly gusty for so early in the morning. This should have been sufficient warning for us to get our day underway since an early morning wind often signals that stronger winds and possibly rain is coming, but we lingered in our sleeping bags for another half hour. I took the clothes I would wear that day (yesterday’s clothes) and tucked them into my sleeping bag to warm them up. The sound of the wind continued getting louder and the gusts grew more frequent which finally motivated us to get moving. We slipped out of our sleeping bags, got dressed in the tent and folded our Thermarest mattresses back into chairs. Ilana crawled out first and I handed her the gear that now needed to come out of the tent: chairs, emergency/first-aid kit, water bottle, pee bottle (to be emptied and rinsed out thoroughly) and rain gear. It was quite cool at this hour, especially with the moderate gusts blowing through the camp, so our fleece jackets had to be worn.<br /><br />Ilana emptied and rinsed the pee bottle out carefully and put the chairs and other gear in the shelter while I opened up the tent fly a bit to let the tent air out and to let the condensation that had formed on the inside of the fly evaporate.<br /><br />Our plan for this day had been to explore Rosebary Lake by paddling around it, examining all the other campsites on it and then paddling east out of Rosebary Lake along Longbow Lake to check out the campsites there and to walk some of the portages into other lakes. Since these are fairly large lakes this would take most of the day and so we’d bring our lunches with us.<br /><br />The first order of business was breakfast. Breakfast on the first day is almost always bacon and eggs and making eggs is always my responsibility so this would be my only turn in the kitchen. I went down the path, lowered the food barrel and carried it back to camp. Ilana opened the barrel and took out the ingredients I would need: fresh raw eggs which she’d carefully wrapped in paper towel and stacked carefully in a wide-mouthed Nalgene container, a vacuum sealed package of pre-cooked bacon, some pita bread, butter, salt, pepper, coffee and sugar.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpQD4-CchcZaYego5hKDuHAXFrgTTEqb_dxlIHz2y9YhHEif09vcv64mnS4G3k2A62C1fQgK0C3vgKBWvQ85yUsoK5E0eg84fXLDjglHERcJQ_mZnEFz_oEop4yx2aKczFvh7GohAAocVk/s1600-h/22++-+Martin+cooking+bacon+and+eggs.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpQD4-CchcZaYego5hKDuHAXFrgTTEqb_dxlIHz2y9YhHEif09vcv64mnS4G3k2A62C1fQgK0C3vgKBWvQ85yUsoK5E0eg84fXLDjglHERcJQ_mZnEFz_oEop4yx2aKczFvh7GohAAocVk/s320/22++-+Martin+cooking+bacon+and+eggs.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5220375315077560066" border="0" /></a>The floor of the fire ring was still soaked from last night so I lined the bottom of it with some dried pieces of wood and bark and then added my kindling. Within minutes the fire was going, the large pot of water was on the boil and Ilana sat back and relaxed while I made breakfast. I melted a small amount of butter in the small frying pan which doubles as a pot lid in our cook kit and filled it with the thin pre-cooked bacon slices. Within a couple of minutes the bacon was cooked and I transferred the bacon to a plate and covered it with a slice of pita bread to prevent it from cooling too suddenly. Next I cracked 4 eggs into the pan, flipping the eggs over carefully with our small folding spatula. The temperature of the fire was just right, so the eggs cooked evenly and quickly. When the eggs were ready I put two in each plated, divided up the bacon, lightly buttered some pita bread as Ilana prepared the instant coffee. The eggs were perfect, but I should have reheated the bacon at the last minute since it was cold. Oh well, I’ll get it right next time.<br /><br />After breakfast I did the dishes in the same way I had the night before and took our lunch fixings and some snacks from the barrel and put them into our yellow dry bag which would come with us on our little excursion later on. Into the yellow dry bag also went our digital camera (in a ziplock bag), our GPS, the emergency/first-aid kit, to Nalgene bottles of water and our rain gear. She then sealed up the food barrel so I could hoist it back up the tree.<br /><br />Since we’d be gone for several hours and the weather can change quickly I closed up the tent and made sure all the gear was under the tarp. We brushed our teeth, applied some sunscreen, untied the canoe and together we carried it to the water.<br /><br />DAY TWO: A WINDY EXCURSION<br /><br />During breakfast we realized that our plan would need to be modified. The wind had steadily increased and we were concerned that we could get windbound away from our campsite if we ventured too far and the winds worsened. We agreed to forego exploring Rosebary Lake and paddle straight down Longbow Lake and back. We would just have to play it by ear and see how much exploring of campsites and portages we could fit in given the strong gusts. We would head eastwards from our campsite down the length of Longbow Lake staying close to the north shore on the way out and hug the south shore on the way back. Longbow Lake is aptly named, being quite a long and narrow lake oriented along an east-west line, but it has many small bays along both it’s northern and southern shores, so unless the wind blew directly out of the east we would be able to paddle back quite easily by sticking to the leeward side of these bays whenever possible. Since the wind was blowing in a south-easterly direction it seemed unproblematic.<br /><br />We stuck to the plan and stayed fairly close to the northern shore as we made our way east along lake’s length. Shorelines are always more interesting even if following a wavy shoreline means paddling longer to cover the same overall distance. In one large bay, not very far from our campsite, we lingered and drifted among the pond lilies and water shields until our presence there proved to be too intrusive for a large heron and it flew off. They never fail to remind me of pterodactyls when in flight.<br /><br />We glided along with the wind assisting us and snuck up on more herons or possibly the same one. It’s hard to tell since they are shy and skittish and seldom stand their ground and allow one to pass by them, preferring instead to take flight and land further along the shoreline where one is headed. As we made our way eastwards towards the end of the lake we scanned both the near and far shorelines for moose. No luck.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEii6mhXInXNTasNfDhcFS0x49xTOsJC3z9r_OYA6no_WHovKnGO15BtDJ2AoNAgXQfM4zwRcJt8rNrI_Gx-TiMT-3ywcJbWLOipWd-f7TeFbjvC9ovy4j64JbEw6vNu2H-koRLB3DYdxqiw/s1600-h/24+-+The+view+east+on+Longbow+Lake3.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEii6mhXInXNTasNfDhcFS0x49xTOsJC3z9r_OYA6no_WHovKnGO15BtDJ2AoNAgXQfM4zwRcJt8rNrI_Gx-TiMT-3ywcJbWLOipWd-f7TeFbjvC9ovy4j64JbEw6vNu2H-koRLB3DYdxqiw/s320/24+-+The+view+east+on+Longbow+Lake3.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5220375321899222738" border="0" /></a>It became apparent as we were coming to the end of the lake that the journey back would be considerably harder. The wind had increased in strength even more and small whitecaps were in evidence along the centerline of the lake. The wind hadn’t changed direction, it was being funneled along the length of this long lake so that the wind might have just as well have been pushing east. Ilana estimated that we’d probably be paddling four strokes on the way back for every one we paddled on the way here.<br /><br />At last we came to a point of land jutting westwards at us near the eastern end of the lake. I noticed a tiny sign with a portage symbol on it nailed to a stump a few feet above the waterline. We could see the vegetation here had been beaten down by previous canoeists seeking the start of the portage. This should be the start of the portage into Bog Pond. We had no intention of actually portaging the canoe into Bog Pond, but we had come this far and we both wanted to stretch our legs and have some lunch.<br /><br />We nosed the canoe into the point of land and climbed out of the boat. There was a distinct trail here so I drew the boat onto land and tied it securely to a tree using one of the painters. We began walking the trail but to our bewilderment the trail just came to an end after only a dozen meters. Further, this point of land seemed significantly far from the very eastern end of the lake. Portages trails are made as short as possible but if this was the portage trail, it seemed to have its start needlessly far from it’s ultimate destination. Something was very wrong. We headed back to the canoe when Ilana, convinced that we must be missing the trail somehow, suddenly turned and headed back up the short trail by herself. I was just putting my PFD back on when I heard a faint cry over the sound of the wind in the trees. In alarm I called out <span style="font-style: italic;">“Are you okay?”</span>. <span style="font-style: italic;">“I fell!”</span>, she called back. I ran the short distance up the false trail and found Ilana on her back, in a large depression in the ground. She’d stumbled and fallen backwards. It wasn’t a very hard fall, but her feet were up higher then the rest of her and she needed a hand to pull herself back up. We squabbled about her wandering off that way without reason and about my being over-protective. We were both just frustrated at having come this far and not being able to find the trail.<br /><br />We got back on the water and paddled back a few meters to take a closer look at that sign I’d seen tacked to a stump. It was indeed a small portage symbol (a black silhouette of a man carrying a canoe) with an arrow pointing to the right…directly where we’d just been looking. The signs of previous landings here and the short trail were testimony to others having concluded as we had.<br /><br />We paddled a short distance further eastward and suddenly it became clear what was going on. The sign I’d seen was an advance warning of a portage which lay further ahead. Ilana had suspected as much. Had we been using a proper topographic map instead of the crude canoe route map we had with us we’d have immediately understood the way to the portage lay beyond the point and down a small channel on the right.<br /><br />We followed the small channel which turned south a short distance before turning east again and opening up into a large bog of muddy chest deep water filled with spongy mats of sphagnum and muskeg. Right smack in the middle of it stood a large moose cow feeding on the plants in the water. She neither saw nor heard us at first as we paddled quietly around the bend into the bog, but she must have eventually heard our paddles dipping in the water or caught our scent (we were upwind of her) as she turned her head directly at us, her big mule ears at attention. <span style="font-style: italic;">“Moose. Moose.”</span> I whispered to Ilana who had been looking off to her right. We both froze. We couldn’t believe the luck at being so close to a moose - only half a dozen canoe lengths from her and the wind was pushing us towards the her. At that the moose began struggling against the insubstantial bottom to make it’s way to shore. We could see her stepping forward, sinking, straining to free her hooves from the soft bottom then pushing forward on another hoof, again and again for several long minutes. We felt sorry to see her struggle at our approach, but she’d been feeding between us and our destination and turning around now wouldn’t change her mind about leaving. I urged Ilana to take some photos but she was so excited she didn’t want to bother, but nevertheless dug the camera from the dry bag and began taking photos as I moved the boat very slowly forward towards the portage at the far end of the bog. She took 14 close-up photos of the magnificent animal. When at last the moose reached solid land and disappeared slowly into the dark woods Ilana noticed that the lens cap was on the camera. Uncertain whether she’d just put the lens cap back on or never removed it she said with irritation <span style="font-style: italic;">“I think I had the lens cap on the whole time.”</span> Then she remembered that the flash had been firing, which meant the lens cap must have stayed on the whole time. I was disappointed but the sighting had been so wonderful and Ilana obviously felt so embarrassed that I couldn’t reproach her for forgetting the lens cap in her excitement. Nevertheless she has earned a new nickname: Lens Cap Lanny.<br /><br />We paddled the remaining short distance to the far end of the bog where we saw a large white plastic portage sign with faded writing stapled to a tree which stood on a slight hill. A trail lead upwards to the tree and beyond into the woods. We stepped out of the canoe onto the muddy shore and beached the boat. Content at finally having found the portage trail we walked up the hill past the tree with the sign on it when, to our dismay, the trail just ended again. We have seen some overgrown portage trails in our time, but this was not the case here. It was clear that this too was not the portage trail, but merely a small trail created by others before us who’d come this way looking for the start of the portage. The trail we were on even branched off in a few directions and each branch quickly came to a dead end. It was clear that none of these were the portage trail, but rather small trails created by others before us who’d come this way looking for the start of the actual portage trail. We walked back towards the old sign on the tree. Barely discernable on the sign were some faded words directing someone had scribbled with a black marker directing us to walk along the edge of the bog near the tree-line off to the right. Now it all made sense, but unfortunately, with water levels as high as they were, the actual portage trail was all but underwater, at least as far as the eye could see along that tree-line. It hardly seemed like a worthwhile venture to march through muck and water for 300 meters from one bog to get a glimpse of a tiny pond called Bog Pond.<br /><br />It was now lunch time but we knew the trip back up the length of the lake was growing more difficult by the minute as the wind steadily increased and the water became choppier. To save time we had a quick snack of granola bars and spicy meat sticks and water. On the way out of the bog and into the open wind of the lake a red-tailed hawk flew low over us and disappeared in the trees.<br /><br />We began our westward journey by angling the canoe slightly so as to let the wind nudge us slowly over to the southern shoreline. We wanted to stick to the plan and paddle along this shore in the hopes of examining the three campsites on that side of Longbow Lake. Unfortunately for us the wind was pushing east-southeast and so the shallow bays along the southern shore of the lake offered little shelter from the worst of the wind. In fact, when large gusts came up, our forward progress slowed to almost nothing. We were going to have to paddle across to the other shore and get back to camp along the north shore as we’d come. We angled the boat out so the wind would push us diagonally to the north shore as we paddled hard against the headwind. In the middle of the lake the waves were quite high and bow was crashing through the waves so we opened up the angle a bit so we could quarter the waves and ride up and down the waves rather than plunging through them. It only took about a minute or two to cross from the south to the north at this new angle, quartering the waves, but it was tiring and it came as some relief when we found ourselves in the calmer waters of a shallow wind-sheltered bay on the north shore.<br /><br />Ilana had been right to suggest this shoreline was going to be easier to paddle back through. Slowly, but with effort, we made our way back towards our campsite, but most of the time there was no respite from the headwind and we simply had to make short, fast strokes to force our way forward without tiring ourselves out on hard strokes. Unfortunately, there were several places where the lake narrowed and there the winds were at their strongest with large blasts of wind getting funneled right at us. There was no way to cheat at these bottleneck points and we could only paddle hard and fast, digging in deep to haul the boat forward to prevent ourselves from blowing back. It proved so hard in places that we discussed the prospect of pulling ashore, stashing the boat, and walking back to camp, but this would have made for a very long hike through very tangled woods. Who knew when the wind would abate and we could walk back to our boat and paddle it back to camp? We pressed on, arms growing wearier with each stroke.<br /><br />Part of the difficulty is that our canoe is an all-purpose tripping boat, with a smooth, rockered bottom and no keel. This makes it extremely maneuverable and responsive, especially in current and white water, but that virtue becomes a drawback in strong winds. The smooth rounded bottom has nothing with which to grip the water and help the boat track in a straight line. The boat is easily pushed along on the surface of the water in a strong wind, especially when there is no gear in the boat to make it sit deeper in the water. This meant we had to lose precious forward momentum with frequent course-correction strokes to avoid getting blown off course or broadsided by the wind. Being broadsided like this even for just a moment can result in the boat being capsized by a wave. Taking a dunk in the lake was not of concern to me, but many a paddler has lost his boat after rolling over on a windy lake. An empty canoe on a windy lake races away in the wind like a sailboat. No human alive can swim fast enough to catch the boat when that happens. I determined that if I felt the boat heeling over I would take hold of a gunwale and hold it under water long enough to make the boat fill with water so it would not escape us. A canoe swamped in this manner can be tugged to shore by swimming paddlers, emptied, and set back on the water. Fortunately for us it did not come to that. We managed to keep the bow of the boat angled just right to avoid being broad-sided, though there were some close calls which we avoided only because Ilana’s quick reflexes with bow draw strokes or bow pries corrected the angle in the nick of time whenever the wind grabbed hold of the bow and tried to broadside us. We hugged the northern shore very closely, only feet from it, exploiting the fact that the wind was weaker close to the shore and the waves were dampened by the frequent crops of pickerel weeds growing in the shallow water, but even then we were paddling for all we were worth. We stopped in the lee offered by a small bay to rest our arms and refresh ourselves with water and snacks. It was now mid-afternoon and we’d still not had lunch, but lunch would have to wait until we made it back to camp.<br /><br />We knew we were nearing our destination when we approached the wide, deep bay just before the narrows into Rosebary lake where we’d lingered in the morning. At the far northern end of the bay I saw something large and dark, like the rear end of a large horse. I guessed it was a moose and we headed for it when a rack of antlers became discernible. It was a bull moose - a second moose sighting in less than two hours. Algonquin was living up to it’s reputation.<br /><br />We paddled into the deep bay towards the moose, enjoying the complete relief from the wind in this sheltered location. To our surprise the bull moose took no notice of us, never even looking in our direction. It was chest deep in the bay feeding on the water plants and seemingly oblivious to us. A grown bull moose probably has little to fear from anything but we were amazed at how it continued feeding completely unperturbed as we approached it cautiously.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghyphenhyphenHyXd4kjHkY-yizt-luRct1SdYijcUm85Iw0Ft3CK55yy28jY7fbLkFtVGfLl2RCyjVk-Me9eLvqG9CFRig2E-95d856AXTbFgMEPIKIh3NqqV1UDDyJDEAEaPHmk3npcxrlEyrC2lR8/s1600-h/27+-+Bull+moose+on+Longbow+Lake23.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghyphenhyphenHyXd4kjHkY-yizt-luRct1SdYijcUm85Iw0Ft3CK55yy28jY7fbLkFtVGfLl2RCyjVk-Me9eLvqG9CFRig2E-95d856AXTbFgMEPIKIh3NqqV1UDDyJDEAEaPHmk3npcxrlEyrC2lR8/s320/27+-+Bull+moose+on+Longbow+Lake23.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5220376623880175202" border="0" /></a>We have since learned that this lack of concern by moose is completely common provided one is in a canoe. They seem to think of boaters as some odd sort of large waterfowl posing no threat. The mother and offspring we’d seen yesterday had fled from us, but that was a predictable reaction given she was with her two month old calf. The cow we’d seen just a couple of hours earlier had been stuck in the mud when we approached, so it made sense that she too would have been made anxious by our presence and fled. This male now before us was wading on a solid bottomed lake and he could have escaped in any number of directions if he’d wanted to.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZNwxccLGZrSJlBZlXbEUCFKC1tSEI88P1ez6egSIxkCLMMiXvXPcvCj-GosxevU63RSHtAJZF7YUeseD_0llypmjM3TfQhivLoJq2ZTrVkRqXVUxKtclBjkRu7B2McvotSKh7_m_SCXR4/s1600-h/25+-+Ilana+and+Bull+moose+on+Longbow+Lake.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZNwxccLGZrSJlBZlXbEUCFKC1tSEI88P1ez6egSIxkCLMMiXvXPcvCj-GosxevU63RSHtAJZF7YUeseD_0llypmjM3TfQhivLoJq2ZTrVkRqXVUxKtclBjkRu7B2McvotSKh7_m_SCXR4/s320/25+-+Ilana+and+Bull+moose+on+Longbow+Lake.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5220375327500744050" border="0" /></a>This time Ilana needed no coaxing to dig out the camera. The moose was practically posing for us, moving around, pulling up huge mouthfuls of water plants, showing off his felt-covered spring antlers. We paddled in a semi-circle around him, making sure we never came between him and the shoreline so that he would not feel cut off from shore. He let us get very close. At our closest we were perhaps two or three canoe-lengths from him. He probably would have let us get closer still, but we didn’t dare. Ilana and I snapped a few dozen photos, sometimes angling the boat so that we would appear in the photo along with the moose to give a sense of how close we were to it.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxluHLNjUMOThIq6NR9Ke5GfXM4qTjgBWxcGGsPqcKh8wuLg8s_mG97jkcyP6Yl59X4AmDQRFpjZmGrh0YFf1qNnrTrbWCWZsO2HM9DZUrYTduz7GaSuWU9H-CNUcEydkuydrlRyRlxfQp/s1600-h/26+-+Martin+backpaddling+towards+a+bull+moose3a.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxluHLNjUMOThIq6NR9Ke5GfXM4qTjgBWxcGGsPqcKh8wuLg8s_mG97jkcyP6Yl59X4AmDQRFpjZmGrh0YFf1qNnrTrbWCWZsO2HM9DZUrYTduz7GaSuWU9H-CNUcEydkuydrlRyRlxfQp/s320/26+-+Martin+backpaddling+towards+a+bull+moose3a.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5220376615415859986" border="0" /></a>After about 20 minutes of paddling near him, observing him, and photographing him we realized we had rested sufficiently to head out back into the wind and make the last push for home, but it’s hard to leave the presence of a large bull moose. Animal sightings are one of the most rewarding things about camping and one gets used to the fact that they are almost always fleeting. It seemed almost sacrilegious to simply leave when we could observe this beautiful creature indefinitely, but the wind wasn’t abating and the narrow channel between Longbow and Rosebary lakes would be the hardest part of all. We had to get going.<br /><br />Reluctantly, we pulled away from the moose and out of the bay. The paddle through the narrows proved to be every bit as slow-going and exhausting as we’d expected, and we were nearing the limits of our energies when we finally reached the landing of our campsite. What a relief. Tired and hungry we got out of the canoe and put the canoe away and lugged the paddles, PFD, water bottles and yellow dry bag up the hill. Because the campsite was high up off the water the wind was blasting through it and my tarp was flapping and straining against the wind as the bug mesh below it billowed out. I spent a few minutes adjusting the tarp lines to relieve the pressure on some parts and tightened it to prevent it flapping in other parts. The tent was fine as it’s all but bombproof in high winds.<br /><br />We flopped into our camp chairs under the tarp and finally broke out the lunch from the yellow dry bag, which consisted of some pita bread, a small Nalgene container for peanut butter and another for jam. If you haven’t guessed yet, Nalgene makes a variety of perfectly leak-proof plastic bottles and containers which we would never do without on a camping trip. We savored our lunch of peanut butter and jam spreads which we washed down with Gatorade and followed with some gorp (trail mix of nuts, raisins, M&M chocolates and dried fruit) for dessert. Ilana broke out the digital camera and began reviewing the moose photos we’d taken, including the memorable all-black photos of the inside of the lens cap.<br /><br />After this late lunch I retrieved the food barrel and Ilana took out the ziplock bag of dehydrated spaghetti sauce and added it to a small pot of water to let the leathery strips of dried pasta sauce rehydrate back into liquid sauce for use later. I’d had enough of looking at the ugly, smelly, fish-gutting shelf nailed to the large pine tree, so I pulled it apart, set the board upside down on the large iron stand someone had left behind and attached the shelf to the stand using two bungie cords. With the smelly side of the board face-down and the clean side of the board face up we could now make use of it as a cooking counter without it imparting fishy smells to everything we rested on it.<br /><br />It was now past 4pm and Ilana noted that the wind was no longer worsening. In fact, the strong gusts were becoming less frequent. We waited another half hour or so and saw the choppiness of the water diminish a bit. Fearing it might get worse again we stripped down and took a very quick bath to refresh ourselves. No sign of leeches this time. I’d been wearing the same clothes since yesterday morning, so I changed into fresh socks, underwear, pants and shirt after my bath. Ilana was saving her fresh clothes for tomorrow. We were really feeling the brevity of this camping trip. It had been a really lovely first trip of the season and it was almost over. Why couldn’t we just stay another night? That’s the real downside of camping in an operational park instead of crown land: You may not extend your trip spontaneously (others might have reserved all the sites on the lake where you are camped), you must keep to a schedule of being on a given lake on a given day. We had enough food with us that we could have stretched it to last a whole extra day if there were a way to extend our stay without violating park regulations and messing up the plans of other campers. Oh well, that’s what crown land camping is for.<br /><br />Because we would be leaving tomorrow, there was no need for me to wash my dirty clothes, so I let them air out on one of the tarp lines for a bit before cramming them into a kitchen garbage bag I’d brought along for this purpose. My dirty clothes, now in a plastic bag, would get crammed into my makeshift pillow later tonight. If we were staying longer I would have filled the large pot with lake water, added some biodegradable soap and let my clothes soak in the pot for a while before hand-washing them in the pot. One does not wash one’s clothes directly in the lake. Just as with dirty dishwater, dirty laundry water is poured into a cat hole a short distance away from the campsite and then the clean clothes are rinsed in fresh lake water in the large pot, then the clothes are hung up to dry or else laid flat out on a hot rock to dry. The clothing we wear camping is all made of quick-drying synthetics, except for our wool socks. Cotton takes hours and hours to dry so we avoid bringing anything made of cotton.<br /><br />We spent the time before supper resting out of the wind under our tarp, reading, sipping wine from our plastic mugs, and discussing what our exit strategy would be for tomorrow. The 60% chance of rain predicted for today hadn’t produced any rain, but there had been more wind than called for. There was a slight chance of rain forecast for the next day and if that day was as windy as today was, we’d have a hard time getting across Rosebary Lake and Tim Lake. Worse still, we’d be paddling upwind (if the wind came from the west where we’d be heading) and against the flow of the Tim River. We had originally intended to break camp the next day at a leisurely pace and enjoy as much of our last day in Algonquin as possible, taking our time making our way back, but with arms already feeling burnt out from the day’s hard paddling we opted for a more cautious plan. We would rise early, eat quickly, break camp and be on the water before the winds grew strong.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje9oEMsv_cxojU0aKTbgLjZ9IPSot0KE7Jsuj5ja5YK7Vf2qMUHefuFHK-YlPre1Mp5jwjfTwgKhZ-XFbaXhYAbOOTblsKsZvU-6820lHqx6rkPaRMOSb_4unhvTrBTtbDVxQz08B4ScYO/s1600-h/21+-+Ilana+preparing+pasta,+sauce+and+coffee+on+our+second+night.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje9oEMsv_cxojU0aKTbgLjZ9IPSot0KE7Jsuj5ja5YK7Vf2qMUHefuFHK-YlPre1Mp5jwjfTwgKhZ-XFbaXhYAbOOTblsKsZvU-6820lHqx6rkPaRMOSb_4unhvTrBTtbDVxQz08B4ScYO/s320/21+-+Ilana+preparing+pasta,+sauce+and+coffee+on+our+second+night.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5220375307678244674" border="0" /></a>With our new plan established we got supper ready. Ilana got the fire going and began boiling water in a small pot for macaroni pasta and heated up the other small pot containing the now rehydrated pasta sauce. There was little for me to do so I took it easy as she tended the fire and prevented the pasta from boiling over and the sauce from sticking. When the pasta was cooked to the desired tenderness I got up to help by using a small plastic folding strainer to drain the boiling pasta water out of the cooking pot and into the large pot. As Ilana filled our plates with cooked macaroni, spaghetti sauce and parmesan cheese I took the pasta water to the cat-hole and then filled the large pot with lake water and set it back on the grate to boil for our coffee after supper. Pasta and sauce, like steak and mashed potatoes, tastes way better in the bush than it does at home.<br /><br />After supper and coffee we closed up the food barrel, hoisted it up into the air, did the dishes, and spent the rest of the evening reading in the bug-free comfort of our shelter. After the hard paddling we’d done earlier we were both too tired to do much more than read. I found myself nodding off. I couldn’t wait to crawl into my sleeping bag.<br /><br />As it began to grow dark around us the wind died down completely and the lake became still. This was a good sign. We brushed our teeth, doused the fire, carried the necessities into the tent with us and were about to crawl into the tent when I noticed smoke across the lake on the western shore. Someone had paddled in late to Rosebary Lake and made camp on one of the three sites on east side of the lake. Fortunately for us they were quiet campers and we never heard a peep coming from their side of wide lake. We retired to our sleeping bags before the sun had completely set. This time I slept like a log and Ilana was the one to wake up a few times in the night.<br /><br />DAY THREE: BREAKING CAMP<br /><br />Ilana’s stirring woke me up at 5am and by 5:30am we were out of the tent. It was cloudy today and the wind was blowing already. Not a good sign. We didn’t rush, but we didn’t dawdle either. I removed the tent fly and turned it inside out so it could dry. Ilana started the fire while I fetched the barrel for the last time and took down my rope, stuffing it back into it’s mesh bag. Ilana boiled water for coffee and then took out the coffee, sugar, some powdered milk and the homemade granola she’d prepared at home while I struck the tent and packed it into it’s compression sack. I was about to move onto something else when the granola cereal and coffee were served. We’d never had granola cereal for breakfast in the bush. It’s a good breakfast to have on a day when one wants to get on the water early. There’s no cooking involved and there are only two small pots (which we used as our bowls), two spoons and two coffee mugs to rinse out afterwards. The granola Ilana makes is very filling so I had no worries about it not being enough.<br /><br />With breakfast out of the way Ilana took out the lunch and snack fixings we’d need on the way home. She then drowned the fire completely with lake water from the large pot and I filled 4 Nalgene water bottles with filtered water from the water bladder and put the empty bladder in the barrel. I packed up the cook kit (pots, plates, cutlery, etc) and put it in the barrel too. Ilana sealed the barrel for the final time and carried it to the water’s edge.<br /><br />Since we were both done with the thunderbox I took down our mosquito netting and packed it away and took the rope down and reattached it to the canoe as a painter. Ilana took apart our camp chairs, squeezed the air out of both Thermarest mattresses, fold each in half lengthwise before rolling them each into a small bundle. Together we took down the tarp and bug shelter and Ilana crammed it all into it’s compression sack while I took apart the makeshift counter I’d assembled, leaving the fishy plank in the wood pile to be burned or used by the next campers.<br /><br />We brushed our teeth and packed up the toiletries kit. We filled our two packs with all the remaining gear around us and took the packs down to the water’s edge and then untied the canoe, righted it, and carried it down to the lake. I loaded the gear into the canoe while Ilana did a last minute inspection of the campsite to make sure we had left nothing behind. During our two day stay here we had picked up every scrap of litter and added it to our plastic garbage bag (kept in the food barrel) so as to leave the campsite cleaner than when we’d found it.<br /><br />We climbed into the boat, performed our quickie inventory - <span style="font-style: italic;">“2 paddles, 2 PFDs, 2 packs, 1 barrel and 1 yellow dry bag”</span> - and said goodbye to our temporary home. We promised to revisit Rosebary Lake another time and hoped we’d find this site unoccupied. It was 7:30 am when we pushed off and the wind was up a bit and out of the west - right in our faces - but nothing compared to yesterday. By the time we were halfway across Rosebary Lake and approaching the mouth of the Tim River our concerns about a strong wind were allayed. The boat was laden with gear and so sat deeper in the water and therefore tracked straighter. Better still, the sky was overcast in milky white in every direction. There was no hint of dark bottomed clouds to threaten big winds.<br /><br />DAY THREE: LEAVING ALGONQUIN<br /><br />We were counting this trip as a complete success and delight. The trip to Rosebary had been easy with only one short portage, the bug situation was so good that I never had to put on my bug jacket or apply bug repellant, the campsite had been very good (if overdeveloped), the weather had been warm, and best of all we’d seen two moose on our first day and been blessed with two much lengthier and closer sightings on our second day. Algonquin had lived up to its reputation. But it was about to get better.<br /><br />As we made our way through the meanders of the Tim River the wind showed signs of dying down. The current was moving against us, but it hadn’t rained so the water levels had dropped just a touch, meaning the current wasn’t as strong as it had been on the way in. We were approaching the very spot where we’d had our first moose sighting when Ilana thought she spotted those long characteristic ears far ahead of us through the tall grass of the floodplain. We spoke in whispers as we approached but saw no further sign of moose. We were now at the very spot where the cow and her calf had been 2 days earlier when Ilana saw a bull moose off to our left moving out of the water and up into the woods. He stopped on shore to look back at us and then slipped out of sight into the dark woods. And further upstream, not more than a hundred meters away we saw a cow and her calf – possibly the same pair we’d seen on our first day, but we couldn’t know. We hadn’t been on the water an hour and we’d just seen three more moose, bringing our total to seven. Unfortunately the cow and her calf proved as skittish as last time and they moved out of the channel ahead of us and headed for the shore on the left to disappear as the bull had done only a minute before.<br /><br />We continued through the exaggerated S-curves of the channel when we came to the first of several beaver dams over which we would have to lift the canoe. The dam wasn’t high; in fact, water was pouring over it, but the water flowing over the dam was too shallow and fast moving to paddle over. We forced the bow of the boat up onto the submerged portion of the dam and climbed out onto the tangle of branches and mud that reached above the water level. With both of us now balanced on the beaver dam the canoe sat higher in the water and we were able to slide the canoe over the dam, barely grazing the bottom of it over top of the beaver’s handiwork. Once the boat was on the other side of the dam we climbed back in and paddled onwards. This little exercise took no time, but we’d made no effort to whisper as we did it, so it came as quite a surprise when we’d only paddled two or three bends beyond the damn and startled another cow moose and her calf. They were so close that they startled Ilana too. They couldn’t have failed to hear us, but they had nevertheless stayed there feeding in the channel until we happened upon them. They bounded out of the channel and across the floodplain into the woods in a flash. We’d just seen two more moose. Our total was now nine. We mused about how Algonquin should be rechristened ‘Mooseville’ and that we should paddle more slowly for fear that we might collide with moose. “Watch where you sit down, there could be moose there.”<br /><br />As we made our way upstream, lifting over the occasional beaver dam, the opaque milky white sky began to lighten as the sun rose higher in sky behind the cloud cover. Ilana, ever the optimist when it comes to weather, predicted it would clear up, but I am always a pessimist where weather is concerned and predicted rain. I felt vindicated when it began to spit on us for a few minutes on two occasions.<br /><br />We reached the portage shortly before 10am. We beached the canoe, emptied it of gear and Ilana picked up her pack and the paddles and started up the steep hill. I lost my footing as I picked up the canoe and nearly dropped the darn thing, barely managing to lower it without letting it crash on the boulders around me. I tried a second time and marched up the hill behind Ilana. Once I’d reached the top of the steep incline and was walking along the wide flat trail I felt myself slowing. One’s visibility is severely limited when portaging a canoe and I thought perhaps the resistance I was experiencing as I progressed along the trail was from the bow of the canoe brushing against some low-hanging branches. Without warning I came to an violent stop, as if some powerful hand behind me had grabbed the stern loop of the canoe and held it fast. It was so sudden that the canoe very nearly got yanked off my shoulders. I took a step backwards to regain my balance under the boat and I tried to shrug the canoe back into position on my shoulders but it would not budge. How odd. How awkward. And painful on the lower back too. I pressed the canoe up over my head and turned my head around as far back as I could to see what was holding the canoe up. When I saw what it was I lowered the boat quickly and cursed. I keep an emergency throwbag in the stern of the canoe. The bag holds 50’ of rope and one end of it is tied to the stern thwart and I keep the throwbag itself wedged tightly between my stern seat and the inside wall of the canoe where I can reach for it and toss it in an emergency. Normally it doesn’t budge from there on a portage, but my clumsy near-dropping of the boat a minute earlier at the take-out must have caused it to slip from it’s spot. When I had picked up the canoe again the throwbag had fallen to ground and dragged on the ground behind me, eventually getting snagged on some bushes, whereupon the bag stayed put but the rope was drawn out to it’s full length as I portaged the canoe up the hill and along the trail. When the rope had run out, I came to dead stop like a dog that had run out of leash. I cursed my own stupidity for not making sure the throwbag was secure before starting the portage, but I was lucky the canoe didn’t get yanked right off of me or send me toppling. I spent the next couple of minutes recovering my rope and feeding it rope back into the throwbag when Ilana came back down the trail for the second load of gear, worried why I hadn’t made it to the end of the portage by now. I explained what happened, picked up the boat again and carried it the rest of the way to the put-in. I went back for my second load and saw Ilana struggling under the weight of the large canoe pack and the food barrel.<br /><br />We loaded the canoe again and were ready to set off, but were feeling a bit peckish. It was now 10 am and we’d earned a snack for ourselves. We sat cross-legged on the granite overlooking the open water we would soon be paddling across when we realized Ilana’s optimistic weather forecast was proving correct. Looking out on the open area to the west of us we could see bright sunshine beaming down and lighting up small patches of water and foliage. Above us the milky white sky had turned bright and silvery and some blue sky was visible through holes in the cloud cover. It was clearing up alright. When we finished our snack of granola bars, gorp, and zesty meat sticks I pulled a plastic garbage back from my pocket and we picked up all the litter left behind here by previous visitors as I’d promised myself two days earlier. I suddenly remembered the broken old camp chair that had been left abandoned on our campsite and wished I’d remembered to toss it into the canoe at the last minute. I put the bag of litter we’d collected in the canoe and we shoved off into the water.<br /><br />Though we had just paddled through here only two days before from the other direction we were a bit confused about which way to go. We were in a large marsh and there seemed to be at least two channels we could head down. We kept changing our minds as we approached the decision point, but we made the correct decision (sticking to the rightmost channel). Again, a topographic map would have made this a no-brainer. Live and learn.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-K324kZ3H5I7wSvAdIQ8Sid0-t5Nk_YDW7sdkcFPvLHOshHUNGvxUuXRFEALf4ZqScUDIqHCWsYqaVXlixGuAdMj4i5foCvDOEx483Wo77EM0ZvMfra75eHt4cH4D1qzuKNKHq2X5GcHM/s1600-h/28+-+moose+%2310,+Tim+River6.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-K324kZ3H5I7wSvAdIQ8Sid0-t5Nk_YDW7sdkcFPvLHOshHUNGvxUuXRFEALf4ZqScUDIqHCWsYqaVXlixGuAdMj4i5foCvDOEx483Wo77EM0ZvMfra75eHt4cH4D1qzuKNKHq2X5GcHM/s320/28+-+moose+%2310,+Tim+River6.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5220376634517117794" border="0" /></a>Having just lifted over the old man-made wooden dam, we were now only minutes away from Tim Lake and were feeling good about our progress when I looked over to my right and spotted a moose cow at the water’s edge on the north side of a small bay. We couldn’t believe it…our tenth moose sighting in 3 days! 6 in one day! Only minutes before we had been joking that we’d better not see a tenth moose because that’s just too round a number and no one will believe we saw that many in our first short visit to Algonquin. But here she stood, only knee deep in the water, grazing away.<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirW2hR_VBJY_OLXXHdQDpTBcmwaeuDZQ7g3FqnyLTzznQdkFcPkFaLKfiNaewi029gGgrc1hEmZBj4gG0gVQFVhC9N89XK0SoKlfM466zbl_x6U6IxF1-TITCNJL1BjwRsYiq6CFNiioFo/s1600-h/29+-+moose+%2310,+Tim+River13.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirW2hR_VBJY_OLXXHdQDpTBcmwaeuDZQ7g3FqnyLTzznQdkFcPkFaLKfiNaewi029gGgrc1hEmZBj4gG0gVQFVhC9N89XK0SoKlfM466zbl_x6U6IxF1-TITCNJL1BjwRsYiq6CFNiioFo/s320/29+-+moose+%2310,+Tim+River13.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5220376651511516226" border="0" /></a>Once more Ilana pulled out the camera and I turned the boat into the bay, switching from my usual J-stroke and Canadian stroke to the much quieter Indian stroke. As happened with the bull moose the day before this moose was not alarmed by our approach and she let us get quite close for some good photos. We glided along quietly in the bay in front of her for some 15 minutes until she began moving back a little. Concerned that our lingering was distressing her, we turned the canoe about and headed away. Once again we couldn’t help feeling that we should just pull back a bit and stay here observing her as long as she’d let us, but we were now quite close to the end of our journey, so we paddled off.<br /><br />Crossing Tim Lake felt a bit like a chore. The wind was in our faces the whole way, though it wasn’t an aggressive wind like the day’s before, but it seemed to take a long time to cross as our arms were still fatigued from the previous days struggle against the wind. We rounded the large Island in the middle of Tim Lake and waved to the small family camped there on the easternmost point. Just as we left Tim Lake behind and entered the mouth of the Tim River again we saw a solo canoeist with his dog lilly-dipping towards us into Tim Lake. We waved to him too. The Canada Day long weekend was about to start and it was clear weekend campers were heading into the park just as we were leaving it.<br /><br />We reached the final take-out before noon. There were many more cars and trucks in the parking area than when we’d arrived. We landed the canoe against the gravelly shore, hopped out, and Ilana began emptying the boat as I walked to the parking area and moved our truck from where I’d left it to the water’s edge. Ilana loaded the truck up with our gear as I lifted the canoe for the last time and placed it atop the truck’s roof rack and tied it down. A young couple with a rented canoe from a local outfitter pulled in behind us. They were heading in for the long weekend with their two large dogs. They told us they were going to be camping on Longbow Lake, so we warned them that this long narrow lake can get pretty windy. I noticed their rented canoe had a heavy keel on it and figured they’d have little problem unless they were novices.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjtXOakENfYqP2cpdFrfxMEHNylzf9Q0lwfXAygj2vFeVWajAHzMQqpfvLCz6EWeciF4BErUt5ISNTZn60v5duR3cUd4L38s9B7kWgMrsKpZOW9K81BgzggDsq6Jt0QShG8ybCKEzTiaHS/s1600-h/30+-+moose+%2310,+Tim+River12.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjtXOakENfYqP2cpdFrfxMEHNylzf9Q0lwfXAygj2vFeVWajAHzMQqpfvLCz6EWeciF4BErUt5ISNTZn60v5duR3cUd4L38s9B7kWgMrsKpZOW9K81BgzggDsq6Jt0QShG8ybCKEzTiaHS/s320/30+-+moose+%2310,+Tim+River12.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5220376659231074546" border="0" /></a>Just before driving off we filled out the comments form on the reverse of the now expired camping permit I had with me the whole time. We gave the park high marks, wrote a thank you to the anonymous park staff and volunteers who work to make Algonquin what it is and promised to visit the park again. We dropped the comment form into the wooden box provided and headed for home, looking forward to a hot shower, a clean change of clothes and then a hot cheeseburger at the Almaguin Restaurant in Burks Falls.PineMartynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09513857282947052058noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1800071740782233625.post-49499455796274773462008-06-17T16:16:00.000-04:002008-07-08T16:25:44.390-04:0017th: "Let's just see what's around the next bend."Almost anyone who's paddled down an unfamiliar stretch of river has had to fight the urge to go just a little farther to see what's around the next bend in the river. I hate calling it quits for the day or turning around for fear that what lies just out of sight beyond the next bend will be memorable: a moose wading near the shore, a family of deer bounding out of view just as one comes 'round the corner, some magnificent cliff face or other rock formation or some spectacular meadow, the perfect campsite or an impressive rapid. I fight this feeling even when on rivers and creeks meandering through a small town or featureless farmlands.<br /><br />Ilana wrestles with that impulse too, but she's more disciplined than I and manages to call it quits after only one or two bends in the river beyond the time we set for ourselves on any little excursion. If it were up to me, we'd always paddle way farther than we should. Ilana's self-control is what keeps us from over-extending ourselves or getting back to the take-out later than we planned. I've never begrudged her good sense on this, but last Sunday we paddled the exact same stretch of the Magnetawan as we had on our first lilly-dip of the season and we discovered that what lay around the next bend would have been worth getting back late for on that previous trip.<br /><br />I awoke Sunday morning to the sound of rain on our trailer. The previous night's weather forecast for Sunday had called for possible rain and thunderstorms. It's rained every day or night this week. Ugh. When it wasn't raining the skies and weather forecasts were threatening rain and thundershowers, so we had postponed a day trip on the water every day for a week, not to mention our first camping trip of the season. Worse yet, some of those threatening skies and weather forecasts turned out to be false alarms, which left us feeling dumb. I always feel stupid when I put off a day of canoeing due to warnings of bad weather only to have the day turn out to be beautiful. Nearly everyone who likes canoeing knows some guy who is always complaining about not being able to go canoeing or camping for some reason or other. Bad weather is that guy's favourite excuse. I really hate being that guy. So when the rain stopped on Sunday morning and the sun came out I didn't care that Environment Canada was calling for rain and thunderstorms. The sky was telling a different story.<br /><br />Ilana and I discussed a possible afternoon trip as she too was anxious to get out on the water for a half day. Since the weather might turn ugly on us at any point, Ilana suggested we avoid any trip across a large open lake. We'd been windbound once before on a day trip and didn't want to get stuck somewhere. She suggested we redo the very same stretch of the Magnetawan as we had on our first jaunt of the season, but this time we'd go as far upstream as we could before rapids or falls blocked our progress. With any luck, we might get close to Brooks Falls, which we'd discovered on our 2nd day trip of the season. So, after breakfast I began filling the dry bag with the usual stuff: Nalgene bottles of water, snacks, rain coats, emergency kit, etc. I even hopped out of my PJs and into my paddling clothes without my morning shower so as not to waste another minute of the day. I feared thunderstorm might roll in at any moment and cut our trip short.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsTv471zqQDYSJzIfGNTX_uLtFVehCoz-1e8dmby5rhuNZTztDLsJdBK_TsT7JlnJZr9CfG9Rl5YDltMGsf5Yevu7VrtOSKBM77lIrQmehKy588gTZk1FriMCkQcAGXe3OgJFWMmI9x5N4/s1600-h/00+-+Map.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsTv471zqQDYSJzIfGNTX_uLtFVehCoz-1e8dmby5rhuNZTztDLsJdBK_TsT7JlnJZr9CfG9Rl5YDltMGsf5Yevu7VrtOSKBM77lIrQmehKy588gTZk1FriMCkQcAGXe3OgJFWMmI9x5N4/s200/00+-+Map.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5216287741987711602" border="0" /></a>We drove from our campground to the Lawton's Cove boat launch on Little Doe Lake in Katrine and wasted no time putting-in. It was sunny, gusty and the fluffy white clouds made it look like a promising day. As on our first trip, we paddled east out of Little Doe Lake and took the first right (south) fork after the first bridge and began our upstream paddle through Katrine, passing under the second bridge and then under the highway 11 bridges, past the golf course, under the train bridge and beyond it until we arrived at the same spot where we'd stopped on our first trip. It took an hour to get there, which was pretty good time considering how much stronger the current against us was than it had been the last time. The river was a good 6 inches higher than it had been before, swollen from all those consecutive rain days. The difference in the current wasn't just felt, but visible in the way the underwater grasses were bent down flat in the reddish, tea colored water instead of bending gently with the current as they had the last time we paddled by here.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG2LSvRhp-lQa-EFH9613Uz7wWAsHA8iLQKodiVyu4JYsWOxvtnLEp8BWl5e91BcdpCEuLRUh4fa2TO4Okg6ITzrBMxpIG-F3YEfY1RRdx7bo8lxv0MDrUTnJZuo-IN3RtoK3vXqalRotk/s1600-h/01+-+Heading+upstream+on+the+Magnetawan.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG2LSvRhp-lQa-EFH9613Uz7wWAsHA8iLQKodiVyu4JYsWOxvtnLEp8BWl5e91BcdpCEuLRUh4fa2TO4Okg6ITzrBMxpIG-F3YEfY1RRdx7bo8lxv0MDrUTnJZuo-IN3RtoK3vXqalRotk/s200/01+-+Heading+upstream+on+the+Magnetawan.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5216287747584710562" border="0" /></a>For some reason there was a real paucity of wildlife that day. We saw no four-legged critters and very few birds, except for a few families of Canada Geese hiding out under the highway 11 bridges. The only good thing about the lack of fauna was that there were no bugs either; no blackflies, no mosquitoes, no deerflies or sand flies. I guess the occasional heavy gusts of wind were discouraging them from leaving the cover of foliage.<br /><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuWOPt4VdDPTdMiPsaqWeUHjfScV-KlSWvTHNY1Nn4sfmY-rZ6vGehIMBjrq25fTlnO2Khj7_iAbMFL_ZGkEydDmXa_t5xhZ12aEZXKMosBAZstHUOt4CwOp9PQN3GczayWbRTItHAxwWQ/s1600-h/02+-+Irises+on+the+river+bank.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuWOPt4VdDPTdMiPsaqWeUHjfScV-KlSWvTHNY1Nn4sfmY-rZ6vGehIMBjrq25fTlnO2Khj7_iAbMFL_ZGkEydDmXa_t5xhZ12aEZXKMosBAZstHUOt4CwOp9PQN3GczayWbRTItHAxwWQ/s200/02+-+Irises+on+the+river+bank.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5216287752158132370" border="0" /></a>Though the fauna was not in evidence, the flora was terrific. The river banks were lined in places with gardeny mixes of yellow hawkweed, mouse-eared hawkweed, daisies, purple vetch, and orange hawkweed. Best of all, the wild irises were in full bloom, sometimes singley and sometimes in generous patches. Immediately upstream from the secluded cottage was a tiny side pond where we stopped long enough for me to snack on some fruit leather and some peppery meat sticks as Ilana nosed the boat into the grassy banks to take some close-up photos of irises.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdJsevoOYMHh8zBkkkxJRkGihJUzH0Ow8PKqgDlDsziYLgqtfhIqULzWPUCa6nPfzkhZY8Z6H2aMmXJLFq7KmP98gupoUVvxqQcUciNjTc6ZyCeTyLAXgA7Ew1Vt9ymIdl-b9E62f2JTWo/s1600-h/02a+-+Close+up+of+an+iris.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdJsevoOYMHh8zBkkkxJRkGihJUzH0Ow8PKqgDlDsziYLgqtfhIqULzWPUCa6nPfzkhZY8Z6H2aMmXJLFq7KmP98gupoUVvxqQcUciNjTc6ZyCeTyLAXgA7Ew1Vt9ymIdl-b9E62f2JTWo/s200/02a+-+Close+up+of+an+iris.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5216287759077201554" border="0" /></a>When we returned to the channel Ilana pointed out that she was seeing tiny, but dense clusters of water bubbles floating downstream towards us. She'd noticed them getting more numerous as we paddled upstream. We suspected that these small sudsy islands were downstream indicators of frothy rapids not far upstream. No sooner had we inferred this that we began to hear the faint roaring of fast-moving water. We were just a few bends farther than where we'd stopped the last time we were here when we rounded a corner revealing a river feature we'd hoped to happen upon since last summer.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZBiES2i0ay_xSnBJpuo8mN-L5tLUR_1945_sEmXXrjbyNt4DefhdPQerU5N1JOks2cXw7Px0VK0GCIhpfDnK3lqojgG1BUu8gKfpXTgHTPANVMFHo5yxFAkaQuA-mYaDpxBTPT259Zi-R/s1600-h/03a+-+The+view+from+the+stern.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZBiES2i0ay_xSnBJpuo8mN-L5tLUR_1945_sEmXXrjbyNt4DefhdPQerU5N1JOks2cXw7Px0VK0GCIhpfDnK3lqojgG1BUu8gKfpXTgHTPANVMFHo5yxFAkaQuA-mYaDpxBTPT259Zi-R/s200/03a+-+The+view+from+the+stern.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5216287761107608258" border="0" /></a>Immediately ahead of us the Magnetwan widened, but just beyond we could see the river winding towards us in a tight S-shape. It was several feet higher and narrower with whitewater funneling down in big frothy waves. This is exactly the sort of rapid were were looking for to practice basic whitewater techniques.<br /><br />We didn't walk the shoreline that day to get a good look at the hard part of the rapids but from the base of the rapids the drops upstream seemed significant and rock-filled, making them beyond our abilities, especially when any route through would involve negotiating a fairly tight S-shaped channel. But the base of the rapids had all the elements we could have hoped for: very fast but straight current over a nice stretch of river, unlittered with rocks, some small haystacks to play in, distinct eddy lines on both sides of the main current, water deep enough to make an unexpected dunking safe, and finally, a big open and calm area immediately downstream, ensuring that one wouldn't have to chase the canoe or paddles a long distance in the event of an upset.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw2yc_Lbl6CQUciRml83zXdH8Q05_ysILv-NI-4zUI6vQJn2lLao1RyMWV8a7IrUCLGlFWe3JR6F87g1z9CzIiA_5PMEMz3OJJfnhk5cPyJpriKi1_Gx5Lwr6FG2G4yx3R5JqaEUh1x5QT/s1600-h/04+-+A+nice+view+of+the+river+below+the+rapids.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw2yc_Lbl6CQUciRml83zXdH8Q05_ysILv-NI-4zUI6vQJn2lLao1RyMWV8a7IrUCLGlFWe3JR6F87g1z9CzIiA_5PMEMz3OJJfnhk5cPyJpriKi1_Gx5Lwr6FG2G4yx3R5JqaEUh1x5QT/s200/04+-+A+nice+view+of+the+river+below+the+rapids.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5216289301205355378" border="0" /></a>It's also a picture perfect picnic spot. Near river right, in the calmer waters where the river widens sits a large flat platform of a rock on which several people could comfortably relax and sun themselves after a swim, all with a clear view of the rapids upstream. The moment I saw it I knew we could practice many of the whitewater paddling techniques we'd learned last August at the Madawaska Kanu Centre. Ilana didn't want to try at first but eventually reluctantly yeilded to my urgings to try a few simple river moves.<br /><br />We removed all the extraneous gear from the boat (dry bag, water bottles, etc) so we wouldn't have to chase unnecessary gear if we wiped out before discussing exactly what we'd do if we did wipe out: hold onto your paddle, get yourself upstream and clear of the overturned or swamped boat, float on your back with feet up and pointing them downstream until safely in deeper and slower water when it would then be safe to swim after the boat.<br /><br />We began with a simple front ferry upstream, moving from our secure eddy behind that large flat rock on river right into and against the current, crossing at an angle to a great big eddy on river left. It went smoothly. From there we paddled up that eddy to where the water was moving really fast but still well below the ledges and drops. We took a moment to reminding ourselves of the technique for peeling out into a current and then we paddled hard inside the eddy driving the boat upstream and then angling the boat into the current a little until we felt the boat slow against the onrushing water, at which point we initiated a hard turn to the left and tilted the boat downstream, letting the current grab the bow and help us make our 180 degree turn. It was not a fast or daring turn and we stayed clear of the fastest part of the current, but the move was correct, if a little awkward. Not bad for a first try.<br /><br />We followed the current downstream intending to eddy out behind the big flat rock where we'd begun but we were late in initiating the turn and we almost shot by it. We had to paddle hard upstream after spinning the boat 180 degrees to get ourselves back into the eddy. Pretty ugly move. We tried it all over a second time. The front ferry from river right to left was easy. The peel out into the current was a bit better, and this time we went out into the fast part of the water, enjoying the bounce from some wee haystacks. We eddied out behind the big rock again and this time it felt perfect. Our best eddy turn ever...and no instructor there to see it. We tried the whole thing a third time, but the eddy turn was sloppy. At this point Ilana put her foot down on my fun. Her arms were getting sore from doing crossbow draws for the eddy turns and she feared she'd pull a muscle if we kept at it. Since we intended to be canoe camping Algonquin two days later, she didn't want to be left with an injury. I grumbled at having to stop after only three attempts, but I was so happy to have found a nice safe spot with these river features only an hour's paddle from where we spend our summers that nothing could could get me down.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgb28nrRQ0Rikwk9m5RwGH-9taBCRxES7tHetGMfhPxr9cPSxuOC1uGpPbgcUYEAUlfD0RYr-daEyPyS-AYzPl28ZGVp2qEyXJaF-8F5aIX1XC8svzQZ-bu7RXhg9enG4URugv9mxjy1vq8/s1600-h/05+-+Ferrying+across+the+river.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgb28nrRQ0Rikwk9m5RwGH-9taBCRxES7tHetGMfhPxr9cPSxuOC1uGpPbgcUYEAUlfD0RYr-daEyPyS-AYzPl28ZGVp2qEyXJaF-8F5aIX1XC8svzQZ-bu7RXhg9enG4URugv9mxjy1vq8/s200/05+-+Ferrying+across+the+river.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5216289310680147634" border="0" /></a>I hadn't done any solo paddling yet this season and had never done so in moving water, so I told Ilana I wanted to try what we'd just done in tandem by myself. She was concerned that I'd wipe out but I didn't care. I thought a good dunking would be a fine price to pay for the experience. From the safety of the big rock she could even get photos of me wiping out. I moved to the middle of the canoe and front ferried across. That part was easy, especially since I had a nice strong gust of wind blowing at me from behind, directly against the current to help me along. The peel out was a mess though.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjND2YkCIj6B0qlwOwx7oDwAA8uwl2xEmcmlIiZx9_batYWtuFPPKtV-Y3oqDFXo7Jg3tmKCAnYo_lDtl-ZBQSPi-7co9UT9lJC6Zk02DybXYnmXxwa7wtOiw97F4GRJkhh0VQN134efZAV/s1600-h/06+-+Practicing+peeling+out.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjND2YkCIj6B0qlwOwx7oDwAA8uwl2xEmcmlIiZx9_batYWtuFPPKtV-Y3oqDFXo7Jg3tmKCAnYo_lDtl-ZBQSPi-7co9UT9lJC6Zk02DybXYnmXxwa7wtOiw97F4GRJkhh0VQN134efZAV/s200/06+-+Practicing+peeling+out.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5216289313349034162" border="0" /></a>Our canoe is not a playboat. It's a 16'-6" Prospector, designed for tandem whitewater tripping. When paddled solo, especially by someone as inexperienced at soloing and moving water as I, it's a challenge. The challenge was made worse by the strong gusts of wind. At one point, while trying to peel out, the wind was holding me fast in one spot for several seconds - broadside - right in the middle of the current I was doing bow pries like mad to crank the canoe around downstream. I guess with just my weight the boat sits pretty high in the water and the high profile of the ends catch a lot of wind. I made my way downstream and tried to eddy out, but completely overshot my target. Ilana got a few good shots though.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzw7_H7Lwq1SibB5A1R4cVhR4EppUrj3Z8ocHcckZyngx4Yfm__LVz34MpSSBAkM2AggnefkNW8ZwloAes9FZ8J5mrkg8mIZuXO-T83smUZ2zlWcPAzYvGVXXmokWmvEtFn3B40YNTw8mn/s1600-h/07+-+Down+the+tongue.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzw7_H7Lwq1SibB5A1R4cVhR4EppUrj3Z8ocHcckZyngx4Yfm__LVz34MpSSBAkM2AggnefkNW8ZwloAes9FZ8J5mrkg8mIZuXO-T83smUZ2zlWcPAzYvGVXXmokWmvEtFn3B40YNTw8mn/s200/07+-+Down+the+tongue.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5216289316416093794" border="0" /></a>Once back in the starting position behind the big rock I front ferried across the river again. Instead of moving up along that bank to peel out again I turned around (facing downstream) and sideslipped the canoe from the eddy on river left way out into the main current. To my surprise, with the wind's assistance, I was able to back-ferry a little bit upstream.<br /><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigLHXFDDfA3tNkuL0U-4DVTGF0G8vIxDoCgEh90Y4D0hyphenhyphenQhsCQdVMu4iHbMdDMCExvZF_XCT2C2tq8RmI38fWOleFD5tP3EdInfSEzfjMdGGOqR-CZulm2hm4TmxMWMZUZYYMx4IbxrhDh/s1600-h/10+-+Side-slipping+across+the+river.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigLHXFDDfA3tNkuL0U-4DVTGF0G8vIxDoCgEh90Y4D0hyphenhyphenQhsCQdVMu4iHbMdDMCExvZF_XCT2C2tq8RmI38fWOleFD5tP3EdInfSEzfjMdGGOqR-CZulm2hm4TmxMWMZUZYYMx4IbxrhDh/s200/10+-+Side-slipping+across+the+river.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5216290826263931202" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDheFo-yG87XlNKhAvt_6tOVJ2pHWC7PHKJ96VkUhkSyBTGbEx4o9pKgVZMkPvBprVilltMnSSNNdDr-1JWWezrXn5bn6pqGMtupIQQIXFyluAYMO0uAPrZyxBLzENyP3B2MYhWEMhh9Wy/s1600-h/08+-+Eddying+out.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDheFo-yG87XlNKhAvt_6tOVJ2pHWC7PHKJ96VkUhkSyBTGbEx4o9pKgVZMkPvBprVilltMnSSNNdDr-1JWWezrXn5bn6pqGMtupIQQIXFyluAYMO0uAPrZyxBLzENyP3B2MYhWEMhh9Wy/s200/08+-+Eddying+out.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5216289317625488418" border="0" /></a>I ended by doing a clean eddy turn behind the big rock. Ilana handed me the gear we'd removed and climbed back in. We were just tickled to have found this spot. We'll definately be back for more practice, though it's unclear if all these features will still be there when water levels drop as the rains ease off.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUyooKSsGYyfXmE6uvjG-EN-Fuz3US3pu6Mo7856aE5pT2T_dnj3_CurzL1oZukeKVNZdYzjHJdAVoCsseQA_JohuzC2ufZurMrNuhgaKvA7C8OH2fv3rkVMAyivKqEjWvwZDsLMxcYbc3/s1600-h/09+-+After+eddying+out.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUyooKSsGYyfXmE6uvjG-EN-Fuz3US3pu6Mo7856aE5pT2T_dnj3_CurzL1oZukeKVNZdYzjHJdAVoCsseQA_JohuzC2ufZurMrNuhgaKvA7C8OH2fv3rkVMAyivKqEjWvwZDsLMxcYbc3/s200/09+-+After+eddying+out.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5216290823369784354" border="0" /></a>It was now about 2pm and time to head back. We headed downstream and passed an angler trolling along in a small aluminum boat. He asked if Brooks Falls was ahead. We told him it was, but that the way there was blocked by a small rapid. There was no telling how many such rapids there would be between here and Brooks Falls. He headed up to take a look for himself as we went in the other direction, enjoying how the current made the distances seem so much shorter.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8WCFWWu81Q3I_2Smu6HKR5tXVRaJJeItW0R3bkd1ypcS80AW3pDpPUctfI6ckEwoV7mu20KLQDzGv5luP6eyOwgYxyfwNmDwUqmxA82HNPawkh5xf2OLVVtuF2ivGmRiUiSPvKH9wSydF/s1600-h/11+-+Plucking+cattails.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8WCFWWu81Q3I_2Smu6HKR5tXVRaJJeItW0R3bkd1ypcS80AW3pDpPUctfI6ckEwoV7mu20KLQDzGv5luP6eyOwgYxyfwNmDwUqmxA82HNPawkh5xf2OLVVtuF2ivGmRiUiSPvKH9wSydF/s200/11+-+Plucking+cattails.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5216290831617670898" border="0" /></a>We kept an eye out for patches of cattails. Ilana wanted to gather about a dozen or so cattail stalks to add as a side dish for supper later that night. In a marshy area near the golf course we backed the boat right into the shallows and we reached overboard into the water and began pulling up cattails. Within minutes we had over a dozen. Ilana later steamed them and served them with a little olive oil, salt and pepper.<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtBGM-BGhUBNj_SQYb7_P-hfFxTulMd2tL8TVVLuKWxGZ8GZjSNMEyQN6CxkAeNgXIWPiBE2HsOzum0Bcg8rXDPpqib57RXzw2rjEHL22jLEI3c2Rcwc5fvrXmGd4J2lxnwUhzluOKslPs/s1600-h/12+-+A+dozen+to+go+with+supper+tonight.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtBGM-BGhUBNj_SQYb7_P-hfFxTulMd2tL8TVVLuKWxGZ8GZjSNMEyQN6CxkAeNgXIWPiBE2HsOzum0Bcg8rXDPpqib57RXzw2rjEHL22jLEI3c2Rcwc5fvrXmGd4J2lxnwUhzluOKslPs/s200/12+-+A+dozen+to+go+with+supper+tonight.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5216290835547862722" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhibkLPeIhjxdrohT4CmcFrA0uD0iFICplTYRONdLkS69jzq3qj1IAL7cFiAI6mvCnknu1vcZQ9M7iwqTe8qqtfXToEXZN_hYH7sUeta4g7s8weSD-uB5ha9DDw0Vqx6qRbdQUmncDOBuWY/s1600-h/13+-+Cooked+cattail+stalks.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhibkLPeIhjxdrohT4CmcFrA0uD0iFICplTYRONdLkS69jzq3qj1IAL7cFiAI6mvCnknu1vcZQ9M7iwqTe8qqtfXToEXZN_hYH7sUeta4g7s8weSD-uB5ha9DDw0Vqx6qRbdQUmncDOBuWY/s200/13+-+Cooked+cattail+stalks.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5216290837961206386" border="0" /></a><br />With the assistance of the current we made it back to the Lawtons's cove by 3 pm, literally in half the time it took us to paddle out. Our next trip will likely be a two-night camping trip into Algonquin, just to shake the rust off of ourselves, but if we don't have a solid two days of sunshine in the forecast, I'm pretty sure we'll be right back here while the water's still high.PineMartynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09513857282947052058noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1800071740782233625.post-24225861438109469392008-06-14T13:18:00.010-04:002008-07-08T16:26:02.263-04:0014th: Perry Lake to Little Beaver Lake in Kearney<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpH4gLNxzNS5At4H3oWT4lwG1FmuoMEFWsaDnEaxXU71vvRGo69Qh7VhAg6rmGjyvKeKYeJU1nZQAbgXpFv0BG3pO3hz-NHtdkQvVg2yYDmW2HJQ8-aiXf-qsIKGSoU3OOcTRPmgj4kFcd/s1600-h/0+-+map.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpH4gLNxzNS5At4H3oWT4lwG1FmuoMEFWsaDnEaxXU71vvRGo69Qh7VhAg6rmGjyvKeKYeJU1nZQAbgXpFv0BG3pO3hz-NHtdkQvVg2yYDmW2HJQ8-aiXf-qsIKGSoU3OOcTRPmgj4kFcd/s200/0+-+map.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5214393258401811810" border="0" /></a> Our objective for our third day trip was to explore a possible loop route we'd cooked up a few days before when our original plan to paddle down the Magnetawan from Kearney to Katrine was frustrated by a dam and a series of dangerous rapids. The plan for today was to drive to Kearney from Katrine again and put-in at the same boat launch in the hopes of finding a stream out of the southern tip of Perry Lake which might lead into Hog Lake and from there we might work out a route through some more creeks to the creek that leads into the pond and floodplains on the Magnetawan ultimately allowing us to paddle back into Perry Lake and complete our loop. I had my river shoes on and was prepared to wade the canoe through bogs, shallow creeks, and portage across country roads, but it was all for naught as it turned out.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv4YsBHN5D0tjwMXHBIFKGZtTlGAVT13KF6xgWAJyvYhEJkcYU9gR-3PKjcxCyIusVKCtBVQN8FdHHlXZRJpePQAXPiwxMD_RT_5CpVuBInOWlqIFDZNLRVs5slLpxq2B6xLdo44-bQp0d/s1600-h/1+-+Small+Turtle1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv4YsBHN5D0tjwMXHBIFKGZtTlGAVT13KF6xgWAJyvYhEJkcYU9gR-3PKjcxCyIusVKCtBVQN8FdHHlXZRJpePQAXPiwxMD_RT_5CpVuBInOWlqIFDZNLRVs5slLpxq2B6xLdo44-bQp0d/s320/1+-+Small+Turtle1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5214386869605789394" border="0" /></a> We'd already had lunch that day so we took the canoe off the truck, loaded it up quickly with the dry bag, PFDs, paddles, throwbag and bailer, stopping only long enough to take a few closeup photos of a wee turtle sunning itself in the grass near the beach at the Lion's Park boat launch.<br /><br />The sky was a mix of sun and clouds but it was warm out with a good strong breeze on Perry Lake. We paddled down it's length only to find that their was high ground at the southern end of the lake, meaning there was no navigable waterway except perhaps in early spring flood.<br /><br />Even though it was a Saturday the lake was free of motorboats, so there was no way were going home just yet. We decided to make the most of it and paddle north, right through Kearney, hoping to find the tiny channel that led westwards out of Perry Lake north of the bridge. That impromptu goal also fell through when we discovered the channel on the map was nothing more than a roadside drainage ditch. Grrr.<br /><br />We headed further north into Hassard lake. Ilana and I have been musing a lot about buying a small parcel of land in these parts, so we hugged the shore, looking at all the waterfront properties - developed and undeveloped - talking about which ones we liked and didn't, working out what sort of thing we'd want to have if we ever decide to buy land bordering a lake. It was not turning into a very memorable paddling trip so far, but as a good friend and fellow paddler once pointed out to me when we were paddling tiny Sharon Creek for the sake of it some years ago, "Any day is a good day when you're canoeing." Wise words from Joe.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgj2vQ_jbee17N8SxqrO8bMFqMQ8cb0Dzg4ulpx-FEkywDURiXUBnVqqs8koW-OrVYYwCJrD2FS23lhHNJo9puKw0CkKshBTmi9AC14yyalAfhmfS3scH3lgFeMu_JAoeds0rVc9eTMDxqz/s1600-h/2+-+waterfowl3.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgj2vQ_jbee17N8SxqrO8bMFqMQ8cb0Dzg4ulpx-FEkywDURiXUBnVqqs8koW-OrVYYwCJrD2FS23lhHNJo9puKw0CkKshBTmi9AC14yyalAfhmfS3scH3lgFeMu_JAoeds0rVc9eTMDxqz/s320/2+-+waterfowl3.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5214386873301734930" border="0" /></a> We passed the occasional couple swimming from their docks, anglers in their rowboats as we moved north and then east into Beaver Lake. Here I spotted some sort of waterfowl sitting on a fallen tree which jutted out from the wooded shore. Ilana got the camera ready as I manoevred the boat slowly towards shore for her to get a closer photo. The lighting was bad, so the photo came out a little grainy even though the bird (a female Merganze, I think) allowed us to get quite close before taking flight in a loud flap, crossing the entire breadth of the lake only a foot above the water the whole way.<br /><br />We had the wind at our backs as we paddled to the very eastern end of Beaver Lake, aiming straight for mouth of the narrow channel which leads into Little Beaver Lake. We saw a woman paddling her canoe out of the channel in our direction. We could see her struggling as she left the wind-sheltered narrow channel and nosed into windy Beaver Lake. She was paddling by herself from the stern while her dog sat in the bow. The dog's weight was not enough to offset her own, so her bow was riding high and she had to paddle hard to counter the little gusts that forced her bow off course. We watched her switching paddling sides repeatedly as the high-riding bow weathervaned from side to side. Had we been in speaking distance I might have suggested she move further forward towards the middle to better trim her canoe, but before we reached the mouth of the channel where we'd first seen her struggling had already been blown towards the northern shore and was making her way around the lake by the longest possible route, apparently unable or unwilling to cut straight across. Or maybe she just wanted to draw out her trip too.<br /><br />The narrow channel into Little Beaver Lake held a surprise for us - a little swift, perhaps a few dozen metres long, with a very significant incline at the top, meaning we'd have to paddle upstream and uphill against fast-moving water. Normally one would just portage around such an obstacle or use the painters to track the boat upstream from the shore or even just wade the boat upstream, but there was no room to stand on on either bank as they were both tangles of trees and shrubs and I didn't feel like wading in the cold current either. I decided our best bet was to build up speed and paddle hard and fast for a few minutes and hope we could get over that little hill of oncoming water before our arms gave out.<br /><br />We tried that...heading straight for the darker tongue of deeper water, but as we proceeded the water moved faster as the incline increased and our arms grew more fatigued. Any onlookers would have split their sides lauging at the sight of us struggling up the deeper main current only to give up and bang our paddles on river bottom when we were forced to veer aside into the shallower parts to escape the main rush of water. We bickered the whole time, with Ilana complaining that my stern pries were rocking the boat too much for her comfort and me urging her not to give up and keep on paddling. Too tired to make it up that hill, we let the current turn us broadside and then we aimed downstream into calmer waters. We argued over whether to try again or declare the current victorious.<br /><br />Then...a miracle happened: I convinced Ilana to try it again, even though she'd be more tired on this second effort. But this time we had a plan. We built up speed as we approached the swift, paddling up through the deep part of the channel, but this time allowing the current to ferry us to one side into shallower eddies behind some exposed boulders. We rested there, jamming our paddles against the river bottom to hold us in position for fear we'd drift backwards with the current and lose precious ground. After a quick breather we nosed the bow out into the current again while paddling hard forward to gain a bit more ground and ferry upstream across the main tongue into another bit of slower, shallower water on the other side. We kept going this way, comically gaining a few feet of ground at a time by paddling maddly against the current, ferrying over a few feet into shallows, jamming our paddles against the bottom to hold us in place, until we got over the steepest part of the incline. Once over the incline we found ourselves in the center of the channel with weary arms. Even though we were over the worst part it felt like all of Little Beaver Lake was rushing at us to push us backwards down that incline again. Between gasps I shouted words of encouragement from the stern. "We're almost there, don't give up now." The most maddening part of the whole effort was that we had only travelled upstream a couple of dozen metres or so and it had taken several long minutes to do so...plenty of time for the mosquitoes to swarm us as we inched forward. This is called fun...in hindsight.<br /><br />After another minute of bug-stressed struggling we reached the calm flat water of Little Beaver Lake. Little Beaver Lake is a sweet little lake with only 3 cottages on one shore and nice island in the middle of it, but Ilana's upper back was beginning to ache after our epic upstream struggle and she wanted to head back before we she hurt herself for real. She was worried that paddle back would take over an hour and that crossing Beaver Lake might be a challenge because we'd have the wind in our faces the whole time. I guffawed and thought we could make it back in 30 minutes if we paddled straight and didn't take breaks for photos, etc.<br /><br />We turned the boat around and paddled back to our swift, enjoying the current this time, instead of fighting it. We even practiced angling the boat so that the stern was aimed closer to the inside turn of the swift to make sure we didn't get pushed to the outer bank by the current as it rounded a bend. It worked like a charm, though we brushed very close to an exposed rock at one point.<br /><br />We eddied out on the right shore so Ilana could hop out for a pee in the woods. The mosquitoes were on her like...well, like mosquitoes on a bare exposed bottom. She was plenty bug-stressed by the time she hopped back into the boat. We tried a 'peel out' into the current, but it was a poorly executed move, so not very exciting. We need to practice what we learned last August at the Madawaska Kanu Centre before we forget it all.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDzg4FNCit7mD-wF-a1pL66q5vz7d7ggn6kUJy2rtQndsIRdeo8mjE27YVjAXYIw6nSBB43fTPGnH2VhL2yREvS5SzmHx6dEEy2mlsnPae7sBOhLYNmkJSzlSh38mcQDYo1jEAZuXmKbMf/s1600-h/3+-+Canada+Geese2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDzg4FNCit7mD-wF-a1pL66q5vz7d7ggn6kUJy2rtQndsIRdeo8mjE27YVjAXYIw6nSBB43fTPGnH2VhL2yREvS5SzmHx6dEEy2mlsnPae7sBOhLYNmkJSzlSh38mcQDYo1jEAZuXmKbMf/s320/3+-+Canada+Geese2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5214386876046018082" border="0" /></a> We headed down the wind-sheltered channel and out into Beaver Lake. Our canoe was nicely trimmed and with two paddlers it was no problem at all to keep a straight course and drive straight back into Hassard Lake, slowing only long enough to snap some close photos of several mated pairs of Canada Geese and their goslings feeding by the shoreline.<br /><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEagv9i8zlHMhsiZB8YDppb0UBGRrL9ufFpsvLDO1_Olx2MxGhuJvt4ySZZOBUx4pU9_gyjnmtB1ZGsLuJz6n91jxbt-AUa8rZGn59459GqsyosBW5FPhOgvSbX_lLklvhYM42DuemtpQW/s1600-h/4+-+Ilana+at+work4.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEagv9i8zlHMhsiZB8YDppb0UBGRrL9ufFpsvLDO1_Olx2MxGhuJvt4ySZZOBUx4pU9_gyjnmtB1ZGsLuJz6n91jxbt-AUa8rZGn59459GqsyosBW5FPhOgvSbX_lLklvhYM42DuemtpQW/s320/4+-+Ilana+at+work4.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5214386873800552610" border="0" /></a> We were back at the boat launch on Perry Lake in almost exactly 45 minutes - halfway between both of our estimates. We loaded up the boat and paddling gear and Ilana did a little excavating on the playground before we drove away.<br /><br />We had a few stops to make on the way home. First was the general store in Kearney to get a copy of the topo map for this area for use on subsequent day trips, but they had marked up the price so much we turned up our noses and off again.<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhihtZNg6hPjqteWWHZ2nq8kXbRwNrYw8CD7J0AP8otShEeO8rXbA4OFJzs8avI6dtfQzJ9i6cjx45iMV5iEykUS9tOjU3FsAmkernax4PXzw3diyqtODxDqu-3w8ekSulaVOfPT3yE7Xdv/s1600-h/8+-+Large+Turtle1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhihtZNg6hPjqteWWHZ2nq8kXbRwNrYw8CD7J0AP8otShEeO8rXbA4OFJzs8avI6dtfQzJ9i6cjx45iMV5iEykUS9tOjU3FsAmkernax4PXzw3diyqtODxDqu-3w8ekSulaVOfPT3yE7Xdv/s320/8+-+Large+Turtle1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5214387132973486850" border="0" /></a> While on Bevan road we spotted a nice large turtle on the roadside. Next stop was a hobby farm on Deer Lake road where bought a dozen farm fresh eggs.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEiErVjqHjMeNja7FuKkhMp51tFPOxoNJxxizS1fJ4WGYf-0oPGQMFugCwfH8eHzrtFflMEvOh1ZTieh1Iy1hhLTHX7QPTUsYoQy1ucrNlvYVs5wvgYNrpgdYWuFZQTyAbyXvPNmmxG_gm/s1600-h/5+-+Brooks+Falls1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEiErVjqHjMeNja7FuKkhMp51tFPOxoNJxxizS1fJ4WGYf-0oPGQMFugCwfH8eHzrtFflMEvOh1ZTieh1Iy1hhLTHX7QPTUsYoQy1ucrNlvYVs5wvgYNrpgdYWuFZQTyAbyXvPNmmxG_gm/s320/5+-+Brooks+Falls1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5214386923705083858" border="0" /></a>The last stop was Brooks Falls park. We went in just long enough to take a few photos of the rapids and falls. The light wasn't as good as it had been on the first day but we'll likely try again the next time we're in the area. We still need to collect some of those Indian Cucumber roots.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKjIyLa_I-hwyYT2QSj0Vw_sqgFBjYug-wq9r45RIVRrMgFO5ggcdK1P90Z5n6gCGXy4cQorxWcPM7PxTmZFHWELqaaR5SHpXnZqOP3m-djJhPh2VjxBMymyafPUCY0NJo9E851tnSg8JG/s1600-h/6+-+Brooks+Falls15.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKjIyLa_I-hwyYT2QSj0Vw_sqgFBjYug-wq9r45RIVRrMgFO5ggcdK1P90Z5n6gCGXy4cQorxWcPM7PxTmZFHWELqaaR5SHpXnZqOP3m-djJhPh2VjxBMymyafPUCY0NJo9E851tnSg8JG/s320/6+-+Brooks+Falls15.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5214387134727574002" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_ocXVDKQoH0QJLxXQJ1rWiwrLITZCXdCHmjjiTkRA5JTmJodFbXAyBCm5bmKuCqLLcKEVdBJt_nYoolGPww_pLWPfPGyK24aKzFX_ha3-i0LsKFgG8cmiuDEb9CzOJ2PF6D7bz_0dl_0U/s1600-h/7+-+Brooks+Falls5.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_ocXVDKQoH0QJLxXQJ1rWiwrLITZCXdCHmjjiTkRA5JTmJodFbXAyBCm5bmKuCqLLcKEVdBJt_nYoolGPww_pLWPfPGyK24aKzFX_ha3-i0LsKFgG8cmiuDEb9CzOJ2PF6D7bz_0dl_0U/s320/7+-+Brooks+Falls5.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5214387132100794850" border="0" /></a>PineMartynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09513857282947052058noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1800071740782233625.post-22855543491872134582008-06-10T12:13:00.003-04:002008-07-08T16:26:12.083-04:0010th: The Magnetawan near KearneyJust a few days after our first lilly-dip of the season we took advantage of another warm breezy and fairly unbuggy June day to explore another little stretch of the Magnetawan.<br /><br /> The plan was to start at Perry Lake and paddle downstream along the Magnetawan as far as we could before coming to unrunnable rapids. Our map of the area lacked topographic features so without contour lines there was no way to know where such rapids might be. We knew from the area map we had with us of a dam along the way and hoped we could portage around that. Our hope was to make it downstream to the cottage which had marked our destination on our last trip upstream paddle from Katrine. The current had been slight enough that we thought we could put in a couple of hours of downstream paddling and still have plenty of energy left to paddle back upstream to our starting point at Perry Lake.<br /><br /> We drove from Katrine to Kearney via Highway 11 south, took the Deer Lake road exit eastwards. I was disappointed to see that where Deer Lake road passed over the Magnetawan there were some serious rapids on the left. We continued on Deer Lake Road to where the road abruptly changes from pavement to dirt and gravel. This is actually the beginning of Bevan Road and we followed it right to the end, turning right onto highway 518 into downtown Kearney. Parked at the Algonquin Park office to get directions to the nearest boat launch where we could put in on Perry Lake. On one of the walls was a series of maps of Algonquin park and the area west of the park, including a good scale topographic map of the very part of the Magnetawan we intended to paddle. I noticed several places where contour lines crossed the river. Not good.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGBB9U_jEM2anF02oxBXwpUWW7HMgfKi4MuqiUuFfhK18LvETjBI5gp5jTvq9XKvxbMYWEmJzd9bnu_aycBxEWW5XvigbZIXiwyDT5Fa4qfVJWZ2DyW3c2lID6XpqiAojhUFHkPT0JCMab/s1600-h/1-+Perry+to+Magnetawan.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 516px; height: 234px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGBB9U_jEM2anF02oxBXwpUWW7HMgfKi4MuqiUuFfhK18LvETjBI5gp5jTvq9XKvxbMYWEmJzd9bnu_aycBxEWW5XvigbZIXiwyDT5Fa4qfVJWZ2DyW3c2lID6XpqiAojhUFHkPT0JCMab/s400/1-+Perry+to+Magnetawan.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5213998995881120114" border="0" /></a> With this weighing a bit on my mind we drove the short distance to the Lions Municipal Park and had a snack of bread and cheese before heading out straight across Perry Lake and down the Magnetawan. To our surprise, despite being a cottage-ringed lake, there were no other boats on the lake at all. A midweek day trip during buggy June seems to be the recipe for having the water all to yourself.<br /><br /> There are numerous cottages lining both sides of the river near Perry Lake, but they become more widely spaced apart within a few minutes of leaving the Perry Lake area and they disappear completely after a few bends in the river. The weather was warm and breezy. No bugs to worry about at all on this day.<br /><br /> This stretch of the Magnetawan was a little different from the last one we paddled near Katrine. The river here is significantly wider and the banks are lined by large cedars with lots of impressively large trees leaning out from the banks of the river into our path and threatening to collapse into the river from their own weight and horizontal growth.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPs_H-wLERJYhpvDn_eAIMpG43TJEkydxxpp2TC119HBtc2dYOkhbD4x02uKpESY4RloGUavSLND33h6OyFY-phOuvPlLrbffewuEn4RTExj3wx0HNdxGof83vul6Xv7HQtgodG2qmS9Zu/s1600-h/4-+Floodplain+on+the+mag3.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPs_H-wLERJYhpvDn_eAIMpG43TJEkydxxpp2TC119HBtc2dYOkhbD4x02uKpESY4RloGUavSLND33h6OyFY-phOuvPlLrbffewuEn4RTExj3wx0HNdxGof83vul6Xv7HQtgodG2qmS9Zu/s400/4-+Floodplain+on+the+mag3.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5213999679499667026" border="0" /></a>The lovely floodplain we eventually came to presented us with the option to proceed down the Mag towards the dam or to paddle southwards down some winding creeks to who knows where. We stuck with our plan and stayed with the main channel and soon came within sight of Galbraith (Ayers) Dam right where highway 518 crosses over the river. There was no sign of a trail or portage route on either side of the river and both banks appeared to be privately owned by full-time residents. On river left we saw a small fishing boat with outboard and fishing tackle in it. We landed on the bank beside it, hopped out and dragged our boat ashore alongside the fishing boat. We were standing on someone's grassy waterfront property so we were eager to see if we could somehow dash across the highway with the canoe and put in on the other side of the dam.<br /><br /> As we walked up the hill from the water's edge to the highway to see what lay beyond the dam the owner was pulling his pick-up truck into his driveway. I waved to him and approached and explained that we'd just taken out of the river on his property in the hopes of getting around the dam. Could we leave our boat there for a few minutes while went ahead on foot to see where we could put in on the other side? He was very genial and thought it no imposition at all, though I had some difficulty understanding some of what he said as he spoke in a very thick German accent. When I asked if he knew where we could put in on the other side and if the river was runnable he pointed behind me, across the highway, and assured me we could put in over there and that there was only one other dam a long way downstream and that the river went all the way to Georgian Bay. I knew the Mag emptied out into Georgian Bay, but I also knew there were many damns and rapids along the way. I had the feeling he wasn't that familiar with the course of the river beyond the dam. I also knew that there were rapids immediately downstream from where the river passes under Deer Lake Road since I'd seen them myself on our drive to Kearney. So, I took his advice with a grain of salt and hoped the river would be safely runnable between the dam and the rapids at Deer Lake road. I thanked him and promised not to leave our boat on his property for long and Ilana and I hurried across the highway for a view of dam.<br /><br /> There was a wide path on the other side of the road, running right to the dam. The roar of the water pouring over and the turbulent stretch of water visible beyond the dam filled Ilana and I with excitement, rekindling the rush we had experienced last august running the Madawaska and Ottawa rivers as part of a white water course we'd taken at the Madawaska Kanu Centre. We walked along the shore of river left, peering as far ahead as we could to see hoping the river widened enough for the water to slow down, but as far as we walked and looked ahead all we could see was churning water, froth, ledges, and granite boulders in mid stream. This was one long looking set of unrunnable rapids. Portaging was also out of the question, since there was no trail along the water's edge and there were signs warning that both sides of the river were private property, including the river bottom (??) and that trespassing was prohibited. This was the end of the line. Our hope of paddling and portaging all the way to where we'd stopped on our first paddle of the season a few days before ended right then and there. Still, it was worth that bit of disappointment to feel that thrill-seeking rush at the sight and sound of those rapids.<br /><br /> We walked back across the highway and agreed that this had been too short a day trip, so we decided to paddle back upstream to the floodplain and explore some of the small unnamed creeks. Checking our map again it looked as if it might be possible to paddle from the pond and floodplain southwards, then eastwards and hop from one small pond and creek to another until we could make our way back into the very southern tip of Perry Lake. The small scale map we had made it appear very feasible though it would likely make for a long day of paddling if we couldn't close the loop. I really wanted that topographic map we'd seen at the Algonquin Park office, but they hadn't had any for sale.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqlNuT2RwmbsX00nqsQf0EH9nUuscd8jA-pR5bWPCn68RdQIjvTxM4FB5GdznkYjfZu-2U9HbTauhr-YHhuoYDn9k6QRwnHIKlLBmsYgKYFkevc-4mxpQeMoSf8bgQEW4z00D80-LfokLJ/s1600-h/3+-+Floodplain+on+the+mag4.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqlNuT2RwmbsX00nqsQf0EH9nUuscd8jA-pR5bWPCn68RdQIjvTxM4FB5GdznkYjfZu-2U9HbTauhr-YHhuoYDn9k6QRwnHIKlLBmsYgKYFkevc-4mxpQeMoSf8bgQEW4z00D80-LfokLJ/s400/3+-+Floodplain+on+the+mag4.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5213999682703978242" border="0" /></a>We paddled quickly back to the floodplain and slowed right down there. There's something about shallow, grassy, reedy floodplains and marshes that just makes one want to take it slow. Ilana broke out the camera and took a few shots of red winged blackbirds perched vertically on waving last year's cattail stalks. We happened upon a duck floating very nearby and Ilana was able to snap a good clear photo of it as it took flight.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIC3NbTrqhTb9vWFh2fM9z5TE-NA1zKY8WNJTITxSjpc-DnGfGXhFVYVViFQh4acY0SX0VgN7mwbHSA3S1dCqSjvlyUB_Nu-bgYlQhpFeBuiMhjmep3BMD2968BjLD9ljkPyDNwh_6mTTf/s1600-h/5+-+A+duck+on+the+magnetawan2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIC3NbTrqhTb9vWFh2fM9z5TE-NA1zKY8WNJTITxSjpc-DnGfGXhFVYVViFQh4acY0SX0VgN7mwbHSA3S1dCqSjvlyUB_Nu-bgYlQhpFeBuiMhjmep3BMD2968BjLD9ljkPyDNwh_6mTTf/s400/5+-+A+duck+on+the+magnetawan2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5213999673130387090" border="0" /></a>The pond, floodplain, and creek turned out to be the nicest part of this trip. There are only two cottages on east side and they are set well back from the water and the tiny channel we passed through from the banks. There's all kinds of bird life here and the shallow pond water is strewn with submerged and partially exposed tree roots and stumps, proof positive that the dam downstream flooded and drowned what had once been forested.<br /><br />We lilly-dipped a bit too much however. By the time we arrived at the first country road blocking our path we realized that it was getting a bit late in the day to portage across and test our theory that we could loop our way back into Perry Lake. If the loop was possible, it would be no problem, but if we almost made it and were blocked at some point, it would be a needlessly long paddle back. We discussed it and resolved to head back the way we'd come and return to Perry Lake within a few days and see if there was in fact a southern channel out of Perry Lake which could potentially hook up with this creek we were on. We beached the canoe by the roadside to stretch our legs on dry land for a few minutes then headed back for the Magnetawan.<br /><br /> On the way back out of the creek we happened upon a white tailed deer in the tall grass, but it saw us first so we mostly saw it's white rump and the white underside of it's tail as it bounded out of view into the treeline. The sight of all those cattails in the pond gave Ilana a hankering to taste some cattail stalk to see what it was like at this time of year at this stage of growth. We both enjoy wild edibles so we plunged the canoe into a grassy part of the pond and Ilana stabilized the canoe while I reached over the gunwhale in the water to pull up one of the larger cattails. Uprooting a cattail shoot is harder than it sounds. When small, they just pull up easily, but by the time the plant is several feet long, the base of the stalk is a good inch across and it doesn't yeild easily. As I struggled to pull the stalk up the stern of the boat sunk deeper and the boat listed to my side. Ilana leaned the other way to prevent my gunwhale from getting too low. When the stalk finally came free it was like pulling a stubborn cork from a wine bottle. It came free suddenly and we were rocked in the boat comically. But, it was worth the near mishap. The white base of the stalk at this stage is tender and delicious, having much the texture of palm hearts. Most wild stalks get woodier or more bitter after early spring, so this was a pleasant surprise. So much food for so little effort.<br /><br /> From there we headed back upstream along the Magnetawan. The sunny weather was still holding up so I took off my shirt to get some vitamin D. By the time we arrived at our boat launch on Perry Lake Ilana's back was getting stiff, she discovered her forearms were mildly sunburned and my palms were near the blistery stage, but we ended our second trip of the season with three new paddling objectives:<br />1 - Return to Perry Lake to see if the loop we had in mind could be completed.<br />2 - To start out on the Magnetawan from Katrine again and head upstream as far as possible to see how far we can get before coming to more unrunnable rapids.<br />3 - Buy a copy of the 31E/11 (Burks Falls) topographic map the next time we're in Huntsville.<br /><br /> We drove back the way we had come, stopping shortly after the bridge on Deer Lake road where Ilana had noticed some sort of municipal park called Brooks Falls Municipal Park. This turned out to be a little gem of a spot for a picnic as it affords visitors a really impressive, close-up view of a long series of rapids, including a river-wide chute.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUsulB-OMfosvHn-AldSD40qw4YSqCiGhIv5vVhaHaHtfD2dnwbr-9JIwWGcFBnMzCsSnzLoFmnryW1e5zAj3QEaQPnEfmT57CKCDnzX3iA1qUqsNGFsqKLUwVwv5AXt2CCUl8Dyy3mvpU/s1600-h/6+-+Brooks+Falls.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUsulB-OMfosvHn-AldSD40qw4YSqCiGhIv5vVhaHaHtfD2dnwbr-9JIwWGcFBnMzCsSnzLoFmnryW1e5zAj3QEaQPnEfmT57CKCDnzX3iA1qUqsNGFsqKLUwVwv5AXt2CCUl8Dyy3mvpU/s400/6+-+Brooks+Falls.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5214002476723974322" border="0" /></a> Unfortunately we left the camera in the truck in the parking area and neither of us felt like walking back to get it, though the light on that day would have made for some great photos. Here are a couple of photos of the falls taken on another visit.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwL8PlMhJJSrj0yIzRdzNE9dOpcp9OF0-iVCbKVqdDVh9XYG2MeAEGaz49jPYYL7Qh9Tgv2qYhJCLfDlhuyTOsuTZe22qGynYs99v-mJBxjxzEbM15aXprAK0OMNfCBRrxTF806aSd7H8w/s1600-h/7+-+Brooks+Falls18.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwL8PlMhJJSrj0yIzRdzNE9dOpcp9OF0-iVCbKVqdDVh9XYG2MeAEGaz49jPYYL7Qh9Tgv2qYhJCLfDlhuyTOsuTZe22qGynYs99v-mJBxjxzEbM15aXprAK0OMNfCBRrxTF806aSd7H8w/s400/7+-+Brooks+Falls18.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5213999254737605170" border="0" /></a> We walked the trail along the river left bank in both directions and it was one long succession of dangerous rapids. Along the way Ilana spied a delicious and choice wild edible, Indian Cucumber root. Indian Cucumber root is that rare wild edible - delicious tasting by any standards, right out of the ground, without any preparation. In fact, there was a large patch of it, so we determined to return another day to harvest a few and take some photos of the falls and rapids. Two delicious wild edible finds in one day! That alone makes for a great day for us. Can't wait to come back.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwL8PlMhJJSrj0yIzRdzNE9dOpcp9OF0-iVCbKVqdDVh9XYG2MeAEGaz49jPYYL7Qh9Tgv2qYhJCLfDlhuyTOsuTZe22qGynYs99v-mJBxjxzEbM15aXprAK0OMNfCBRrxTF806aSd7H8w/s1600-h/7+-+Brooks+Falls18.jpg"><br /></a>PineMartynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09513857282947052058noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1800071740782233625.post-22777730113255511782008-06-03T13:54:00.002-04:002008-07-08T16:26:25.286-04:003rd: The first lilly-dip of the seasonWe've spent the last two summers here in Katrine, Ontario where the two branches of the Magnetawan River meet. During those two summers we only paddled two little stretches of the river between Katrine and Burks Falls. This year we hope to explore more of it.<br /><br />The route of our first day paddle of the season was occasioned by a small exploratory day hike which began at our campground. We're fortunate that Almaguin Campground is situated on a small lake (Owl Lake) which has a network of paths that ring and radiate outwards from the lake. One such path led us through some dense, hilly and buggy woods and terminated on someone's secluded summer cottage right on the banks of the Magnetawan.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrNJ4Fx80SKvqv4GwSyt-exZR66HzwIEe47_9QnnNy7uahQYoDe_x3kyi0ymqBKe5tadNvNB-ZjEVA3Lv4Mlv9czmHD10GJNrcaVRWSrXr0-M3R4-mLcVpZS_KhJmZG9TWRm81idEpK-sY/s1600-h/01.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrNJ4Fx80SKvqv4GwSyt-exZR66HzwIEe47_9QnnNy7uahQYoDe_x3kyi0ymqBKe5tadNvNB-ZjEVA3Lv4Mlv9czmHD10GJNrcaVRWSrXr0-M3R4-mLcVpZS_KhJmZG9TWRm81idEpK-sY/s400/01.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5213656992224388050" border="0" /></a> It was clear from the poor and seldom traveled ATV trail we'd followed to get here that the owners of this lovely piece of real estate traveled to and from it by boat along the Magnetawan. We weren't sure where this choice cottage location was along the Magnetawan but we had a pretty good idea since we could hear highway 11 construction noises in the distance and we could see a short stretch of train tracks running closely parallel to the part of the Magnetawan we were looking at. We decided then to plan a short afternoon trip to this location via canoe just for the satisfaction of pinpointing where this trail ended on a map.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzvw5Fib3BfybakVwVgEoUi4x4N3l_Q0NFxSnDWXzdNb_ESIWiqjEN67oDzKtXGBcbVUp67j0B9FpMgL-xiBTpEHEc4JqvIDH2-s6pFcQnBLfFaucnYslbJO84kgGTmVJEx1l5A28nLhFw/s1600-h/03.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 421px; height: 202px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzvw5Fib3BfybakVwVgEoUi4x4N3l_Q0NFxSnDWXzdNb_ESIWiqjEN67oDzKtXGBcbVUp67j0B9FpMgL-xiBTpEHEc4JqvIDH2-s6pFcQnBLfFaucnYslbJO84kgGTmVJEx1l5A28nLhFw/s400/03.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5213655735419123026" border="0" /></a><br />When we returned to our trailer (affectionately known to us as 'the keep') in Almaguin Campground we pulled out our map of the area to see if we could infer where the trail had taken us and to figure out where to put-in with our canoe and how long it would take to paddle to where we thought that secluded cottage was.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjevBksmlJWds6iKyn8PWPW9lAdrFPkiQxoRxA7yTFN6b2BKyABXnaPf7M_pjnHhdvB7RnF2qGfvHhPlqM64vQ5NTqv9haw2oouh6P7L-lnuWb4JvN_OGUOYEhsV12vc3VL1vRQJgZvJyvU/s1600-h/02.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjevBksmlJWds6iKyn8PWPW9lAdrFPkiQxoRxA7yTFN6b2BKyABXnaPf7M_pjnHhdvB7RnF2qGfvHhPlqM64vQ5NTqv9haw2oouh6P7L-lnuWb4JvN_OGUOYEhsV12vc3VL1vRQJgZvJyvU/s320/02.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5213654907515679586" border="0" /></a> Some days later (the first week in June) we noticed the bugs were not as numerous as usual, so that clinched it. I loaded the canoe atop the truck and we packed a dry bag with the usual day-tripping gear: water bottles, some snack foods, map, camera, sun screen, bug repellant and GPS. Although it was a sunny, breezy day the Magnetawan is a narrow, winding river that's heavily wooded so we brought along our bug jackets just in case we found ourselves paddling through swarms of black flies on those narrow wind-sheltered stretches of the river.<br /><br /><br />With gear and canoe ready we drove the 4 kilometres from our campground to the boat launch at Lawton's Cove on Little Doe Lake in Katrine. The two branches of the Magnetawan flow westwards from Algonquin Park and converge just before Little Doe Lake where we were putting in that day. From there the river flows further westwards out of Little Doe into other lakes and westwards on towards Georgian Bay.<br /><br />As usual, I unstrapped the canoe and portaged it to the water's edge while Ilana carried the dry bag, paddles and PFDs. Shortly before lunch our paddles were in the water and we paddled along the beach of towards the mouth of the river. You really have to love that feeling of lightness and freedom that washes over you during those first few minutes of paddling after a long hiatus. It never fails to impress me how effortlessly we glide along in a canoe, even when I anticipate that very feeling as I step into the boat and push off from the water's edge. That satisfying feeling gave way to awkwardness minutes later though when we rounded a bend and came into a strong breeze. Effortlessness immediately turned into self-conscious effort to paddle in unison and make course correcting strokes, but within a few more minutes muscle-memory took over and the head-on breeze gave us the false feeling of fast travel.<br /><br />Within minutes we came to the confluence of the two branches and headed down the more southernly branch in search of the secluded cottage. The black flies were out in force, but the breeze kept them off us for the most part. Provided we didn't stop too often they trailed harmlessly behind our heads as we paddled along.<br /><br />For no good reason I thought this branch of the Magnetawan would be flowing out of Little Doe Lake and we'd have the slow current with us, but a glance down at the reeds bending with the current under the surface of the water set me straight. Had I considered more carefully what was obviously implied by the map of the area I would have seen that it would have been a hydrodynamic miracle of the very first order if this branch of the Magnetawan flowed the way I had assumed. Duh.<br /><br />The first 30 minutes of this trip was unremarkable. The river banks are a mixture of woods, grassy fields and manicured waterfront cottage properties and small wooden docks with parked outboard pleasure boats. But after one passes under the highway 11 overpasses these signs of civilization give way to dense bird-filled woods on both sides. Except for the distant rumble of highway trucks one can trick oneself into thinking one is paddling a remote river.<br /><img src="file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/All%20Users/Documents/My%20Pictures/Gone%20Canoeing/1-Magnetawan%20Day%20Paddle,%20June%202,%202008/04.jpg" alt="" /><img src="file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/All%20Users/Documents/My%20Pictures/Gone%20Canoeing/1-Magnetawan%20Day%20Paddle,%20June%202,%202008/04.jpg" alt="" /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAy2t8WdGIBuAoOgnR3Gbp0AyCuLz4GyKQ3R6cJ-KAwLl-lF9q-zP9PUOoTwwcHnfehQSpiaq8Sa87kQZIJzSC1dt9hC3LJsZGbr6hDZj2s16S5UOINyBI0V26uOqzJVplxxCU0bjFVKlX/s1600-h/05.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAy2t8WdGIBuAoOgnR3Gbp0AyCuLz4GyKQ3R6cJ-KAwLl-lF9q-zP9PUOoTwwcHnfehQSpiaq8Sa87kQZIJzSC1dt9hC3LJsZGbr6hDZj2s16S5UOINyBI0V26uOqzJVplxxCU0bjFVKlX/s400/05.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5213659342429173986" border="0" /></a><br />We were lilly-dipping our way along against the gentle current, taking in the bird sounds and peering into the shallow water at the bends in the river, checking to see at what stage of growth the pond lillies were, when Ilana noticed a red squirrel swimming across the narrow ribbon of water right in front of us. That's a rare enough sight that we decided to take a photo. Ilana fumbled hurriedly with the camera while I did a few gentle stern pries to move the canoe parallel to our wet and nervous photographic subject for a closer shot. It was then that I noticed a sudden movement on the river bank wed been approaching. Our approach had startled something very big and brown - possibly a moose or a deer - into crashing away from the river bank into the tangle of tree. There was no characteristic flash of white tail fur so I was hoping to get a glimpse of a moose...but it was gone. My urgent cry of "Look! Look!" startled Ilana and the red squirrel...and it doubled back away from us to the other bank of the river before Ilana was able to take a well-focused photo. Sigh.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMWyPThQvWXHZWCWUuuuI7GU_LGJ-620H9yfRdWarXECk9e3ZM57UXq6YDG6MFdW8rwTn8IDktr2jyFxYjyrWrhR468NdkEwYITsRo1Saf17tKvu3iAgjti4ZZGxk63wYQfwNd5NUwRx7p/s1600-h/06.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMWyPThQvWXHZWCWUuuuI7GU_LGJ-620H9yfRdWarXECk9e3ZM57UXq6YDG6MFdW8rwTn8IDktr2jyFxYjyrWrhR468NdkEwYITsRo1Saf17tKvu3iAgjti4ZZGxk63wYQfwNd5NUwRx7p/s400/06.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5213659684680718626" border="0" /></a><br />Right near here I made an amusing navigational blunder. Both sides of this part of the Magnetawan are heavily wooded, making it impossible to see much beyond a few yards inland. We thought we were paddling along a narrow series of bends when in fact we had completely circled a fair-sized island which didn't appear on the small scale map we had with us. I was quite disoriented until I recognized a very distinct dead cedar which I remembered passing a few minutes before because it was the only red spot in dense field of green.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigkDGHFSfAJTNZIy_mU1JenqPN2ZKg_nTSuXUe9QTeXAWihAQjbTn3ZUBkV8ewrAWjw2axLm69ihu8istFUsMulYKnI_MWfMEhdtryIrie3RXB80uSroAG08Q-q6lfyEo9dS05hUumFAtf/s1600-h/08.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigkDGHFSfAJTNZIy_mU1JenqPN2ZKg_nTSuXUe9QTeXAWihAQjbTn3ZUBkV8ewrAWjw2axLm69ihu8istFUsMulYKnI_MWfMEhdtryIrie3RXB80uSroAG08Q-q6lfyEo9dS05hUumFAtf/s400/08.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5213660057310267714" border="0" /></a><br />We paddled on and knew we were closing in on our destination when we sighted a small golf course which is bounded on one side by the Magnetawan. We paddled past the barren course and passed underneath a small train bridge. Vestiges of an older train bridge were still visible directly beneath the one we paddeled under. Paddling parallel to the raised train tracks we expected the cottage we were looking for to come into view at the next bend. It did and we passed by it, admiring it's seeming remoteness despite being only about 45 minutes paddle away from a heavily used lake and boat launch and 5 minutes past a golf course.<br /><br />We passed the property, turned the boat around, put down our paddles and let the canoe drift back downstream as we nibbled on some snack bars and peppery meat sticks. With our tiny mission accomplished we paddled back the way we came, this time avoiding the needless circling of the island, and paddling a little faster to escape the blackflies that seemed to have an easier time keeping up with us on the way back.<br /><br />Ilana snapped a few more photos of her view from the bow and we waved at the construction workers hard at work on the highway 11 overpass as we slipped quietly underneath it and back to the cottage-lined part of the river. Our timing was pretty perfect. The skies had been mostly clear on the way out but clouds were gathering as we made our way back and there were small whitecaps on Little Doe Lake as we paddled perpendicular the wind back to the Lawton's Cove boat launch. We beached the boat and began the ritual of removing our emergency throwbag, plastic bailer, paddles, PFDs and dry bag, all of which Ilana brought to the truck while I carried the canoe back and loaded it atop the truck. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgd8amfVeQVDbiTja7kx9ypMkQyZQ0D1RfIy5LzD5l7dEEIH1n_PmlTKbZIGWpR8LIqRKZlgmOnIqgZ0BSBhrMML-4ARtuwQWKj7FO-mjOH1m6ZNQL7kKOLWtkwmyM8ZJ3DppNR_1N25W1k/s1600-h/10.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgd8amfVeQVDbiTja7kx9ypMkQyZQ0D1RfIy5LzD5l7dEEIH1n_PmlTKbZIGWpR8LIqRKZlgmOnIqgZ0BSBhrMML-4ARtuwQWKj7FO-mjOH1m6ZNQL7kKOLWtkwmyM8ZJ3DppNR_1N25W1k/s400/10.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5213660885506364354" border="0" /></a>We were happy to have accomplished our little mission and the first 90 minute lilly-dip of the season left us both with the beginnings of paddling calluses on our hands.PineMartynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09513857282947052058noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1800071740782233625.post-167880033809034452008-06-01T12:05:00.002-04:002008-07-08T16:25:23.132-04:001st: A New Leaf<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig3ByAeoH4awmi8TW43PQwPJfK6WsBKp_9YdrhmaTgeBNUUopNYitSFyQpHgFlghCta2OE8CrxR2iHkLqiyx8KpoW6nOAhRwTV6_l8h1aXwAURVg7uRJ2bduxsNasWQ7-ym6UnLG5kP2OO/s1600-h/Martin+Paddling+on+Copper+Lake.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig3ByAeoH4awmi8TW43PQwPJfK6WsBKp_9YdrhmaTgeBNUUopNYitSFyQpHgFlghCta2OE8CrxR2iHkLqiyx8KpoW6nOAhRwTV6_l8h1aXwAURVg7uRJ2bduxsNasWQ7-ym6UnLG5kP2OO/s200/Martin+Paddling+on+Copper+Lake.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5212893535527093330" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:arial;">I've never been the type to keep a diary or journal but have always admired those who keep good detailed logs of their canoe trips. There are just so many good memories of places, sights and things done on a canoe trip which begin to blur together in one's mind when trying to look back on these trips.</span> <span style="font-family:arial;"><br /><br />Where was that campsite that had all the delicious wild blueberries? Was that spectacular waterfall where Ilana took a shower and where I nearly fell and broke the camera before or after the long, steep portage into Copper Lake? Has it actually rained on </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:arial;" >every </span><span style="font-family:arial;">trip we've taken with Liz and Joe or does it just feel that way?</span> <span style="font-family:arial;"><br /><br />So, with a view to remedying that, I've decided to keep more accurate tripping notes, take more photos, and publish the logs here as a record of our trips. For those who enjoy reading about other people's paddling days, enjoy!</span>PineMartynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09513857282947052058noreply@blogger.com0