Trip Log: Algonquin Provincial Park: Mew Lake, April 16-17, 2017

Easter is one of those holidays where it can be tough to get time off work, but it's also an ideal time for us to go camping because the kids get four days off from school.  Originally, I had hoped to take the whole weekend off...then it was how to manage two nights, and by the time we ended up going, we could only get one night off of work.  Sucks, but at least one night is better than not camping at all.

So, since Chris and I had to work Friday and Saturday, the kids ended up going to my parents house.  The plan was that Mum and Dad would drive them up Sunday and meet us at our site, we'd have easter dinner, and then the kids would stay and Mum and Dad would drive home.

Pine Martin - Mew Lake Campground

Since we were only going for one night, we got packed and ready to go in good time.  I think we left the house by 9:25.  We were chased down our street by a big male turkey, one of the flock (is a group of turkey's a flock?) that spent the whole winter in our little neighbourhood.  Of the five that were here, there's only the one male and one female now.  The male spent the whole winter chasing cars up and down our street.

It rained on and off the whole drive up to Algonquin, but it wasn't until we got to the West Gate that it began to get heavy.  I got out of the car to get our permit and was told they'd opened the Mew Lake gate house for the weekend so we were to get our permit there.  Mum and Dad were already there, parked at the start of  the trail by the garbage area waiting for us.  They let us know our site was empty...but it was a huge pond.  While Chris set up the inside of the  trailer for six people to sit, I walked to the bathrooms and to find the others since texts weren't getting through.  When I showed up at the parking area, they were gone, so I ran back to the comfort station, then back to the site.

The first thing the kids tell me is that they don't want to stay.  I thought they were joking. But it was chilly and wet and we couldn't actually find a place to put the trailer that didn't mean stepping out into 2 inches of water, so even though they had boots, they weren't keen on staying.  Mum and Dad weren't big on it either. As we discussed it, I was standing in the rain, getting wetter and wetter, and they all sat in the warm, dry cab of my Dad's truck.  Needless to say I gave in rather than stand there for too long.

As I was talking to them, Chris was trying to reposition the trailer onto a bit of higher ground.  He managed to succeed, sort of, and then when he went to unhook the trailer from the car, the key for the lock that he uses on the hitch snapped off, leaving us with no way to disconnect the trailer from the car.  This left us essentially stuck at the campground unless we wanted to haul the Boler with us, which we didn't.  It wasn't a big deal.  We had planned to run to Whitney and grab a few last minute things for dinner, but since it would be just Chris and I, we didn't really need extra food.  We'd have to make a run there on our way out to gas up but that was a problem for the following day.

flooded section of trail between the bridge and the rail trail

Since we were already soaked, and Biscuit was driving us nuts being cooped up in the trailer, we decided to just go for a walk.  We had our sneakers on still, and there was a good foot or two of snow on the ground in spots.  After snapping a few shots of a pine martin near the garbage area, we headed off down the trail.  The plan was to head across the air field, then cross the river at the bridge, head to the right down the railway tracks and come back via the backpacking trail and track and tower trail.

When we got to the bridge, we saw how high the water was compared to when we had paddled through in August.  We decided to explore further down the rail trail so turned to the left and continued to where the trail runs very close to the shore of Lake of Two Rivers.  Mostly this was to see how thick the ice still was, and it looked pretty solid.  We turned around and continued on to where the Highland Backpacking trail crosses, and turned down it to loop back to Mew Lake.  The solid part of the trail was only about six inches wide.  Anything on either side of that was soft and meant you would sink about 2 feet down into a few inches of icy slush. We didn't make it very far before Biscuit tugged Chris to the side and he went through the soft stuff.  Not long after that and we came to a part of the trail where the river had flooded up over, blocking our way, so we turned around and headed back to the airfield.

Now cold and hungry, we got back to camp and changed into dry socks, pants and warm boots, then Chris set about rigging up a bit of a shelter for the dutch oven.  Our Easter dinner plan had been to make beans and biscuits.  The meal usually feeds 6 with leftovers, so I had to cut back a bit in order to not have a huge pile of food go to waste.  It was yummy and very filling.

Beans and Biscuits - Yum!

Cleaning the dutch oven proved a little challenging as usual, especially since it kept drizzling on and off and I was concerned with the outside of the pot getting wet then rusting.

After dinner, we walked around the campground a bit, then headed back to camp for an early night.  We were both tired after several days of long hours at work, and our earlier hike.  Walking in snow that is solid one minute then collapses under you the next takes a lot out of a person!

Biscuit snuggled himself in between us and we had a great night's sleep.  The fireplace worked very well when it didn't have to try and combat temperatures in the -20s.

Flooded approach to the bridge over Madawaska

The next morning, we made bagels with the toaster oven like we did on our last trip.  This time we didn't have to thaw them first, which was nice.  Since we were in no real rush to get home, we decided to go back out again for another hike, this time going our usual way - head out past the garbage area and turn right onto the track and tower off shoot, then left onto the backpacking trail to the bridge.  The trail was much harder going than it had been a few weeks previous.  A lot of melting had taken place since our last trip and like the day before, we sank through several deceptively solid parts of the trail.  There were a few places where we had to build temporary bridges with downed branches because the whole trail had a creek running through it.

As we got closer to where the two trails cross, I saw that the water level was very high, as high as it had been a few years back when there was so much flooding.  And sure enough, when we turned onto the backpacking trail, we were stopped several meters from the bridge by rushing water.  The two sections of wooden platform were washed into their current position a few years ago, and were never put back into their proper place.  The water there was at least a couple feet deep.

Disappointed we turned around and headed back to camp.  With nothing left to do, we packed up and headed back to my parents house to get the kids and head home.  It was a little disappointing, having the kids back out on the trip, but sometimes it's nice to have some camping time to ourselves as well.

Trip Log: Frost Centre: Margaret Lake to Three Island Lake, July 4-5, 2017 (aka The First Hellish Portage We Experienced)

I'm going to get blamed for this trip for years to come, I can tell.  We started out planning to put in at Canoe Lake in Algonquin and go into either Teepee Lake or Little Doe Lake for two nights, but then I got to thinking about how the first portage out of Canoe Lake is so busy.  Biscuit with a lot of strangers?  Hmmm maybe not such a good idea.  So I studied the maps and decided that we could put in at Magnetawan Access and portage in for a few nights on Ralph Bice Lake.  It looked nice, it had good number of available sites still, and I'd seen pictures of some of the sites and they looked like they had actual sand beaches.

I waffled back and forth between doing two nights on one lake or the first on Ralph Bice, then a second night on Little Trout Lake, but in the end, decided to just relax for the day.  When I went to book it, on the day before we intended to go, I was greeted with an error message saying the reservation didn't meet the required window?  I was confused, but a little digging into the regulations revealed that Algonquin's interior requires you book by 9pm two days before your intended arrival.  I'd had no idea!

So I had to regroup again.  We had thought we would go to the Frost Centre on the way back and do an easy night on a little lake, so Chris suggested we just flip it.  Do a night at the Frost centre, then head up to Magnetawan Access.  I went back to the maps, now actually kind of excited because doing it this way meant we were already part way up to the Algonquin Access which should give us a head start for getting to a good site.  Since we would book a Frost Centre site, based on a specific site rather than a lake, there was less rush to get out the door (which turned out to be a good thing, since we were still not fully packed, despite having the whole previous day to find and prepare things.)

I had picked out a few sites that were easy to get to.  No big lakes to cross, no long portages. I had originally thought about a couple of the sites right on St. Nora Lake, but Chris vetoed those, saying he wanted to get at least off the access lake.

The kids tent at Three Island Lake, Frost Centre

I showed him pictures and he really liked the little island site on Three Island Lake.  I warned him the portage was a bit longer than what we had done, but he said he'd be fine.  Since we were taking two canoes, he'd be portaging both while the plan was for me to take both the big packs, while the kids took their packs.

We didn't get much of an early start, but the paddle across Margaret Lake was quick and we pulled up to the portage ready to go.

The first issue was the mud.  After a short but easy climb we got to a section of the trail where the mud was thick, deep and swarming with mosquitoes.  We managed to bushwhack around without much trouble but the bugs followed us along the trail.  After another minute or two, we reached a logging road.  It was at this point that Chris set down the one canoe, in a clearing just off the road and went back to get the yellow pack.  (We quickly realized I couldn't even lift the bigger of our two packs...some rethinking on how we distribute items will have to be done.) Also, we met up with two men who were coming out of Three Island, and Chris wanted to make sure we hadn't blocked off the put in for them.

Shortly after we crossed the road, we came to a stand still.  With mosquitoes and black flies (and deer flies probably) like a cloud around us, the kids and I stared at a whole lot of recently downed trees.  So recent, in fact, the leaves hadn't even started to wilt.   The whole area looked like a tornado had gone through in the past, but there were a lot of really recent, really big trees blocking the trail.  We dropped our packs and scouted around for a sign of where others had went.  Finally, we scooted around a wall made by a trees roots, ducked under a fallen tree, and then climbed over a few...and we were home free...except then the trail went through more mud, a lot of raspberry bushes and a nice big patch of ferns, all of which were havens for even more mosquitoes.  As the lake came into view, the underbrush thinned out and we got a bit of breeze to keep them away but that only thinned them out a little.  Chris came back a minute later with the pack, then headed back for the canoe he'd brought part way in.  We ended up launching it with the kids gear and letting them paddle out onto the lake so they were at least out of the bugs while Chris and I went back for the last items (the second canoe and the food bag)

Biscuit contemplating a swim to escape the bugs

Chris was dripping sweat and blood by the time we got everything into the canoes on Three Island.  He was also cursing a bit.  Nobody was happy, knowing we would be enduring that portage again the next day.  Even the sight of the cute little island site we would be camping on, didn't cheered us up.

Chris and Squatch went for a swim.  Bubbie was going to but then we spotted a leech, so she changed her mind.  I got started on supper.  On a previous trip I had taken a box of Beef Taco hamburger helper and instead of adding hamburger, added peppers, beans, lentils and corn.  This time, I didn't even bother adding the seasoning packet since I'd dried a can of Chili spiced diced tomatoes.  I did add a few tablespoons of nutritional yeast to give it a cheesy texture, but don't tell them!  So basically I bought a box of Hamburger Helper...just for the pasta...might have to rethink that one for future trips...anyway the meal was really good...though there wasn't quite enough since I sort of spilled a little bit on the ground.

Early morning on Three Island Lake

When we arrived at the site, Chris was surprised to see a stack of firewood sitting beside the fire pit.  We got a fire going to help drive off the bugs, though they weren't as bad in the middle of the lake.  Since we hadn't gotten a very early start, the sun was getting low, and once it sank behind the trees, the bugs came out more aggressively, so we doused the fire and settled into bed.  None of us were looking forward to the next day.

I woke early.  I'm not sure what time exactly, but Biscuit figured it was time to get up, so I crawled out of the tent with him, taking along the cameras.  The lake was glass and there was a little bit of wispy fog dancing along it's surface.  I love mornings like this, and it kind of bums me out that everyone else sleeps through this beautiful time of day.  I'm pretty much always alone, waiting for everyone else to pop their heads out of the tents.

I watched a few loons circle the island, and a few birds flit around the trees above me.  It was relaxing, and yet  I was anxious too.  I knew once everyone else got up, we'd be heading back to that portage, and it was already getting hot.

This is the third island, where a campsite used to be

We opted not to make breakfast, though the option of granola bars was there for everyone.  Since we were heading to the Magnetawan Access in Algonquin for two nights, I wanted to get an early start and I knew if we waited until I made breakfast and cleaned up, we would be very late getting there.

So we packed up and headed back onto the water.  The trip back was just as miserable as the trip in had been.  Poor Chris had to make three trips, I made two.  After the first trip, I loaded the kids and a few of the packs into the canoe and told them to paddle out a bit like they had on the way in.  This kept them out of the bugs but it also left them sitting in the hot sun.  Chris had thought it would be a good idea to put one of the rain coats on, since the sleeves are elastic, and bugs wouldn't be crawling up his arms.  It worked, but by the time he got back with his third load, he was sweating so much it literally looked like he'd just poured a bottle of water down his shirt.  It was kind of scary and I was a bit worried about him.   We loaded up quickly and headed for the car where there were two bottles of sports drink (which were miraculously cold...)

We all agreed the site was cool but we wouldn't be coming back again until the portage was cleared and the bugs had died off.

The following week, Chris and I were driving back from Dorset and noticed a great deal of fresh blowdown in the area just north of Margaret Lake.  My parents had told us that a few days after this trip, they got a really bad storm, so we weren't sure when these trees feel, in the same storm that knocked trees across the portage, or the storm a few days later.  Either way, the area got hit pretty good with wind lately, so hopefully the people responsible for maintaining the routes will be out clearing the trails soon.

Trip Log: Algonquin Provincial Park, Mew Lake, March 13-14, 2017

I hate admitting to have given up.  For a while, I considered writing this trip log as if we had stayed the second night, but I hate the thought of lying even more, so here it is, we wussed out and headed home a day early.

There were multiple reasons for this, but I'll get to that later in the trip report.

We arrived at the West Gate at 4:30pm, half an hour after they closed.  I knew they were closed but I suggested to Chris we stop in and see if there were further instructions posted for people with reservations arriving late.  As I was reading the sheet on getting self serve permits for people without reservations, the woman working the gate house saw me and let me in.  Bonus!  This meant we wouldn't have to drive back out and pick up the permit in the morning.

Not long after we arrived at Mew Lake.  I had promised everyone I hadn't picked a site that was right at the bathrooms, but when we got there, the site we had, was pretty much right across the road from the comfort station.  I swear, when I was booking it, it looked further down the road...  Anyway, the kids hid in the car while we got the electric fire place going, but everything in the Boler was cold because we had been getting temps of -21 for the past several days at home.  The cushions that make up the larger bed actually had ice under them and were frozen to the fibreglass.  It looks like this spring we are going to have to do a lot of work on the little camper, because water is clearly getting in somewhere.

We have two pieces of an old 2 inch thick foam mattress topper that Chris and I put on our bed to make it a bit bigger since I tend to fall off the outside edge a lot, especially with the dog.  Normally we can roll them up and stuff them in the compartments under our bed, but they were so frozen stiff (and a bit wet in a few spots) that they wouldn't roll, so we ended up having to store them in the car while the bed was set up as a table.  While we were setting up though, Chris put them on the roof of the car.  Yeah, we are the super classy campers...

Also the super unprepared campers.  I realized the morning we left that I must have donated my old winter coat or tossed it.  This left me with a not-warm-at-all pea coat, or a bush jacket.  I chose the bush jacket because it at least could close up higher on my chest.  So yeah, there we are surrounded by people in nice, warm parkas and I'm wearing a bush jacket I got on sale at Giant Tiger.

We got the kids into the trailer, but the fireplace was really struggling to warm the place up.  It was -21 according to the weather report posted in the laundry room.  Thankfully there was no wind, as the trailer is less than perfect when it comes to drafts.

While everyone else sat in the relative warmth of the Boler, I braved the cold and made dinner, sloppy joes and instant mashed potatoes.  Normally, we would butter and toast buns in a frying pan, but with only two burners, and it being so cold, I knew I couldn't toast enough for us all in one batch.  Since we wanted to all eat together, we settled on mashed potato.  The kids were't impressed with them though.  Also, we could have made the sloppy joes with toast.  Chris had the idea of bringing our toaster oven from home.   We figured if it worked out well enough, we'd buy a little one that was just for in the Boler.

After dinner was cleaned up, we started to play a game of Sequence when Squatch started to get a stomach ache.  I walked over to the comfort station with him and waited for him to finish.  We picked up the game again, and a few minutes later, again, he got bad stomach cramps.  So again, I walked him over and this time waited in the laundry room.  I'd be able to hear if anyone flushed and could pop my head out to see if it was him, but otherwise I'd stay warm.  While I was there, I saw the Environment Canada weather report and saw that the next day was supposed to be just as cold but very windy on top of it.  My stomach dropped.  When I'd booked the trip, a few days before we'd left, I had checked the weather.  At home. we'd been getting a lot of days of -20 and strong winds, but the reports for Algonquin looked a lot nicer, closer to -11 and sunny.  I had a feeling nobody was going to be happy the next day.

After the second bathroom trip, we got back and the game was packed up and Chris was setting up the beds.  This is such a chore, and involves a lot of shuffling, frustration and complaining.  Eventually we all got into bed and everyone read for a little bit, then we turned off the lights and called it a night.

Squatch woke up around 4 and got out of bed to check the time, he also told me he was very cold.  I realized he had a t-shirt on and no socks, even though I'd given him a nice dry wool pair after he was in bed so he wouldn't get them wet walking on the Boler floor.  After a brief argument, I got him to put his sweater into his sleeping bag for a minute, then to put it on.  The next morning both kids had said they were cold through the night.  This was the point I started thinking maybe we should head home early.  I knew if they'd been cold when there had been no wind, they'd be miserable with cold wind whipping in through the gaps around the door.

We made our bagels, which had frozen solid over night.  We had to run them through a toast cycle to thaw them enough to cut in half, then toast them  We also had a box of corn pops that we just handed around.  I made coffee and hot chocolate, but the wind was picking up a bit and kept blowing the stove out.  I admit to being a little depressed at this point.  It seemed like nobody was having fun, and we were likely to end up sitting in the trailer all day reading or playing on phones/ipads.  Luckily, Chris got everyone dressed and insisted we do a short hike to the water fall.

There were protests.  Neither of the kids wanted to go outside at all, but we talked them into it, and headed out to the start of the trail.  When we got to the garbage area, I saw some movement and we realized there was a pine martin in the tree.  We spent quite a while taking pictures and then another one showed up.  They chased each other around for a while then scampered off out of sight.

We made our way to the bridge along the backpacking trail, and stopped to photograph a gray jay who was curious about us.  Normally we just head back, but we decided to continue on along the backpacking trail for a little ways.  The kids started to complain a bit, but kept going.  After a few minutes, we came to the rail trail.  I tried to check the map on my phone and the battery, which had been full when we left, died almost instantly.  We ventured to the right for a little ways, then came back and went to the left.  When we went to the left, we came across a sign for the Bike trail with a map, and I realized we were close to the bridge that you would cross if you were taking the Old Railway Bike Trail.  We opted to cross there and head back over the airfield and back to camp.

We decided to head to the visitor centre for lunch, mostly just as a way to warm up.  On the way back to Mew Lake we stopped at the Spruce Bog Board Walk Trail to try feeding the birds.  Squatch wouldn't keep his gloves on, because no birds would land on them, and I was starting to get worried and irritated.  My hands were frozen with gloves on, so I knew his had to be even worse.  We weren't getting many birds anyway, so we headed back to the car and tried a bit more there.

I was trying to get everyone to get back into the car when I looked towards the trail and saw a fox just sitting there watching us.  My first thought was that it was kind of odd behaviour, so I ushered Squatch back down from the snowbank he was standing on.  The fox calmly walked around the car, came within 5 or 6 feet of us and began eating all the birdseed previous visitors had tossed around.

A little cold, but in good spirits, we headed back to the Boler and turned on the fireplace again.  Crackers were handed around and I headed back outside into the cold to make dinner.  I had planned to make a sort of tex mex thing over rice.  Basically it was canned beans, corn, green chilies and tomatoes thrown together into a pot.  Unfortunately, all the canned items were frozen solid.  I was able to scrape most of them out, but that meant that the corn and beans weren't drained and so I had to boil them longer so the meal wasn't all soupy.  With the temps now dropping, and the wind whipping through camp and blowing out the stove every little while, it seemed to take forever to get the food hot, let alone have it boil down a bit.

Eventually, we were all cozy in the trailer eating and I brought up the possibility of going home.  It was around this time that the stove stopped working.  Chris went out and checked the plug and it turned out the switch on the electrical hub had kicked off.  Not a big deal but in the middle of the night?

Nobody argued against going home, but my big concern was that Chris would make fun of me the whole time.  It was about 7pm and already we were cold, even with the fireplace pumping out heat.  So we called it, did a quick lock down of the stray gear, and got back into the car to head home.

All in all, I don't regret going, nor do I regret leaving early.  The trip proved to be a valuable learning experience for us.  We now know that the Boler needs a bit of work done before we can comfortably camp in very cold weather.   But we saw lots of wildlife, and had a good time.  We were able to leave on a good note rather than in the morning when everyone had spent a miserable night, which would have left us all with a negative impression of the trip.  Now, when we look back we will remember that, yes it was really cold, but we saw two pine martin, a fox and had a great time.