August Long Weekend In Algonquinn
Here are the details of our August long weekend spent in Algonquinn park back country camping on Penn Lake. The weekend started in hectic fashion. Upon arriving home from work on Friday, I proceeded to pack and then headed for Toronto to stay with Jackie at Sue-Sue's place. We spent Friday night in Sue's wonderful pad. The next morning Jackie and I awoke bright and early. We had to make it up to Honey Harbour to pick up Sarah and Alison from Camp Queen E. We set off at around 7 am after packing the car up with the canoe on the roof rack and most of the gear carefully tucked under the canoe.
We made it to the 401 in good time happy to be beating the holiday weekend traffic. Sue had informed us that unless you make it to hwy 400 by 7:30 am even on a Saturday, you could run into traffic. After driving a while on the 401 we realized that we had missed the 400. This was not a good sign since we needed to make sure we weren't late to pick up the girls in Honey Harbour at 10:30. We got ourselves turned around and managed to find the 400. The problem was we began running into the traffic that we thought we'd missed. After a few heartstopping traffic jams we managed to get up to Barrie in good time. From there it was smooth sailing up to Honey Harbour where we met our independent little girls Ali and Sarah.
Meanwhile Katie, Lauren, Brad and Nick were driving up from Waterloo. We ended up meeting at the Algonquinn Outfitters at Oxtongue Lake just on the perimeter of Algonquinn park. We put our canoes in at a beautiful little creek that runs into Rock Lake. Rock Lake is known for its high rock cliffs that adorn the shores of the lake.
The canoes were fully loaded with gear and kids. The Baechler canoe had Lauren in the bow, Nick in the middle and Brad in the stern. Jackie took both Katie and Alison as she had a light canoe and needed the extra weight. I took Sarah.
We canoed through Rock Lake for about 1 1/2 hours until we got to the Penn Lake portage. The portage wasn't too bad but it was getting late in the day and the kids were getting hungry. The adults were hoping we'd find an early campsite on Penn Lake but it was not to be. We canoed for about another 1 hour checking campsites as we went. All were full. Finally we came to our campsite of last year. Thankfully it was tucked away and probably was missed by the canoeists ahead of us. We settled at this familiar site.
We awoke the next morning and were planning to take a day trip to Clydesgale lake. This was a lake we had been to last year when we had come on our Algonquinn trip and the lake was very beautiful. Unfortunately we faced a strong headwind and were unable to make any headway towards our destination. It took all our effort just to make it safely across the lake. We spontaneously changed our plans to suit the wind patterns and settled on an interesting island on the other side of the lake from our campsite. This island was fantastic for swimming as it had nice large granite rocks to dive off of into the water. It also had some amphibian inhabitants as identified below.
After spending about 2 hours exploring the island we decided to head back to camp for an early dinner. This would allow us to have a trip after dinner if the wind died down. The weather cooperated and after dinner we headed out for the portage to Welcome Lake. The interesting thing about this portage is the entrance is a challenging little creek that snakes its way through a swamp. The creek is deep enough for a canoe to get through but it is challenging for the person who is steering to make it through without beaching the canoe. We crossed a rock bed to the portage area. We left our canoes at the entrance to the portage spot and hiked the portage route to get to the waterfall. The kids spent some time playing in the
rushing water of the water fall.
It started to get dark so we decided to begin canoeing back to the campsite so as not to get stuck in the dark on Penn Lake.
We awoke the next morning at about 6 am. We were greeted by a brilliant sunrise. We had breakfast of porridge and bacon and then packed up camp. We managed to make it out on the water by about 8 am. Which was amazing timing given that we had the kids but they were very helpful with the packing up camp activities. However, many other campers had the same idea as us and we met a lot of people at the Penn to Rock Lake portage. Canoeists however are much more patient than drivers in a traffic jam. They are a helpful group and it was nice to see one man portage an older couples canoe. We had a bit of difficulty making it back to the cars as the wind picked up on Rock Lake. Jackie in her Featherweight canoe had to use all her canoeing skill and strength to get back to the cars. We reached the cars around 12:00 noon.
It was a another memorable canoe trip of 2006!
