Having had the gear meeting on Wednesday night, I figured out how to pack my sleeping gear and a 4-person tent in my pack and carry my drybag of clothes in hand while portaging. Good thing my parents' tent was available and waterproof otherwise we would have had really squishy sleeping arrangements.
Thursday morning Mel picked up Tim and me hand headed over to Connie's to meet the rest of the group, minus some time to go back to my place because I forgot the burgers in the freezer. Tim, Mohrgan, and I kept Connie company to Killarney in her car while we listened to a mixture of folk music, ABBA, and Sesame Street. We put our canoes into Bell Lake mid afternoon and we had a short paddle to our first campsite which was next to our morning portage. Looking back, our first campsite had the best combination of water for swimming, lack of bugs, and overall layout. Once we got there, a bunch of us went swimming right away and then more towards dinner time I started reading the new Neil Gaiman book. That night we had Mimi's homemade burgers, so I'm glad we went back for them.
Friday morning we had a pretty casual morning since we did have to pack up and canoe to our next campsite, but the trek wasn't that far. We had a 750 m portage that I started with the canoe and my pack but I had to put the canoe down since it was pinching my neck funny. This is the day we found a waterfall, and Connie got a very good picture of Tim and me. This day's campsite on David Lake we were advised to take by some campers headed the other way since it was pretty nice and no bear sightings in this area. Here we saw a snake in the process of eating a frog, a snapping turtle that we called Yurtle. On our afternoon adventures, Tim picked a whole bunch of wild blueberries which we saved some for pancakes, and I went with Connie, Mel, and Mimi on a hike up in the trail behind the camp site. Mimi and I were wondering if the people back at camp would start dinner, but since we were the two food coordinators, we figured they were just starving until we got back, ha.
Saturday we had a short canoe trip to our campsite that we'd be spending a full day at, which was on our own private late (Little Bell Lake). It was much grassier than the previous sites but didn't have as many bugs as the previous day's. There was a little archway between two of the canoe entrances to the site that always had a lot of dragonflies, so when you walked through, it felt kinda magical. On the map we saw that there was an unmaintained shortcut between our lake and Bell Lake, where we put in, which would have cut the next day's portage from ~3 hours to less than one. Tim and I went exploring but quickly found out that with some branches not far below water surface, we would not make it through with our gear. Mohrgan later did the same trip as us but carried his canoe over a few impasses and got back to where we started on Bell Lake. As he came back, Mimi decided it'd be a good idea to tip his canoe. And then chaos ensued.
That evening was the only rain we had on the entire trip, which was very lucky. We had lots of warning so we got the big tarp up to have a dry space for making dinner.
The last day was a bunch of canoeing with two portages, a ~200 m one and a 30 m one, and lots of canoeing which was fun. We made it back to the cars in good time, packed up, and Mimi got her mandatory bacon burger on the way home.
I definitely think that Killarney is superior to Algonquin for quality of sites and the scenery, still not having seen any bears or moose though.
No comments:
Post a Comment