1984 Algonquin Provincial Park 3 (8/15-17/1984)

Wednesday, August 15, 1984

It was ghastly cloudy again! So we drove up and down PR 60 looking for moose, then decided to hike the Mizzy Lake Trail.

Mizzy Lake Trail map

This was a new trail, still a little rough, and longer, about six miles. We followed a small stream that had some foamy pollution in it. We passed a tiny pond, and came to another held back by a dam. We saw a couple frogs, but not much else that was exciting.

Moose grounds

In the undergrowth we heard a fluttering, which were birds flitting around so fast that we couldn’t identify them. We crossed a bog area and came to the rather large Mizzy Lake.

Mizzy Lake

We saw a couple kingfishers, and the sun started to peek out. The mosquitoes were terrible. Along the lake we saw several piles of “moose” droppings, round things about an inch in diameter. We also saw a messy pile of excrement that we guessed belonged to a bear. Further along we found a fairly clean bear paw print.

Bear paw print?

We came to a boardwalk over more bog areas, and stopped for a breather.

Kathy on the boardwalk

It was getting hot. The trail then joined an old railroad bed, so the walking was much easier. We saw lots of dragonflies, and a Monarch butterfly that flew along to tease Kathy who was trying to get a photograph of it. It never a lit anywhere for long enough.

We began to see a lot of moose prints on the railroad bed, all heading in the same direction we were going. There were frogs in the pools along the path. We came to the boggy West Rose Lake, and took a good look around. Nothing to be seen! We continued along, and later spotted a deer way across the lake. All of a sudden Kathy exclaimed, and we saw three noses swimming along. They dove when they spotted us, flipping up long skinny tails. Otters! They surfaced, periscoping their heads to look around, and snorted at us. They continued for a long while, diving, periscoping, and snorting as they moved along the waterway, and eventually across the lake away from us. Very entertaining.

We continued to Wolf Howl Pond, and saw turtles all over the place.

Turtles

There was a blind in one of the trees. Some of the turtles had large white numbers painted on their backs. We also saw a heron in their pond. We left the railroad bed to head into the woods, and found the guestbook. We meandered along, and the mosquitoes were a pain! There were lots of itsy bitsy toads to avoid stepping on. A large variety of fungi was there to admire, in all shapes and colors. Every once in a while you got a whiff of the fresh pine scent. The only sound was a plane flying overhead. We came to a real boggy area, but found a flat rock to sit on, away from the mosquitoes. We took a water break and watched minnows in the water.

We hiked on and on, up a hill and down, and around to March Hare Lake. There we passed a family with two kids. We sat on a bridge to eat oranges, and the family passed us. We could hear them talking almost the whole way back. We continued the ambitious hike through the woods and came out on a boardwalk over a boggy area of Dizzy Lake. We had nearly caught up to the family, but slowed down to let them stay ahead. Beyond Dizzy Lake the trail went into the high woods, and we came out at the parking lot. There we saw a garter snake. So although no moose, we did see plenty of wildlife on this hike, which had taken us 5-1/2 hours. It was about 14:30.

We drove to the Lake of Two Rivers Store for Coca-Colas, then to Mew Lake Beach to think about swimming. We changed into bathing suits and shorts, but decided to go to the Lake of Two Rivers to canoe. We paddled off around the edge of the lake to the Madawaska River. We had to fight the wind and current to enter the river, and worked pretty hard to go upriver. Kathy began teaching me the different strokes, sweeps and digs, so that I could more effectively help in steering the canoe. It was beautiful and sunny. The river curved this way and that, and had several stagnant offshoots, but we just followed the main current. I had to keep a lookout for submerged obstacles. Then we came to some rapids and I successfully guided us between two majorly large rocks, only to bump into a third one in the middle of our path. Fortunately no damage. We rounded a curve to come to a very low bridge, and decided to go under. The front of the canoe didn’t fit under, so I moved forward to weight the canoe low enough to go under, and laid backwards to limbo under the bridge, pushing against the bridge hand over hand to move us along. I sat up to paddle as Kathy did the limbo and got the back of the canoe through. We continued along, passing another canoe going leisurely downstream (the occupants just lying in the canoe!). We began hearing a pleasant roar, and wondered if it was a waterfall, or the wind through the trees. For a long time we convinced ourselves it was the wind. Finally we decided it was a waterfall, and after rounding another bend, we saw the falls (of course, we were at the bottom!). We found the portage point, and parked the canoe, walking up to view the falls from a bridge.

Madawaska River Falls

Kathy at the portage point

We decided to head back, going at a leisurely pace. At one point we startled a heron, who took off suddenly and startled us. We went under the low bridge, and passed the rapids, scraping bottom a couple times.

Low bridge

We met up with the young couple with a child whom we had seen struggling at the mouth of the river, and they were crosswise in the river and nearly broadsided us. Kathy gave the alert command to back paddle, and we avoided the collision, but had to maneuver a bit to get everyone straightened out. We continued along the Lake of Two Rivers, passing a couple windsurfers. We arrived at the beach and got the canoe packed up, and headed to camp.

Cooked up a dinner of scrambled eggs and chicken-flavored ramen noodles.

Kathy in our camp dining room/kitchen

Every night we had to chase away tiny toads from our fire place before we started a fire. We had just enough firewood for our stay. The tent was dry when we came back, so we moved our things back in. Went on a garbage run, and this time the bag kept falling off the hood of the car. Before going to bed we played Trionimos. Heard the pit pat of rain. Oh, no! But it soon stopped.

Thursday, August 16, 1984

Kathy gave me the choice of sleeping in, packing up, or going to see moose. Of course, I chose the latter! We drove up to Weldwood Road and parked at the Hardwood Hill picnic site. We walked into the wilderness, and the mosquitoes were fierce. We saw lots of animal prints, mostly deer and moose, some wolf and maybe bear. We reached the railroad bed and went to check Source Lake without success. We continued on the railroad bed to West Rose Lake, arriving about 8:30. Lots of moose prints. I pointed out a black stump across the lake, and saw that it moved! A moose!

Moose!

A female eating breakfast. We stopped to watch, and were joined by a few other hikers. After a while, the moose lumbered off into the woods. We had finally found a moose!

We hiked back the way we came and returned to the camp site at 10:00. It took us a half hour to break camp. On our way out we left the camp site questionnaire and the garbage bags we didn’t use at the camp office. The camp personnel were surprised as we were the first ever to return bags, and we were certainly welcome to come again!

We headed down on PR 62 and I was afflicted with narcolepsy. At 13:30 we arrived in Belleville and had lunch at the Pizza ‘n’ Mug, which looked like a Pizza Hut. We got the luncheon special for $4.59 each, with a tomato soup and salad bar, and all you could eat pizza and spaghetti.

We continued towards the U.S. of A., breezing through customs. We reached Liverpool about 17:00, unloaded and unpacked, and went to Wendy’s for dinner.

Friday, August 17, 1984

I left after breakfast at 8:30 to drive home to RI, arriving about 14:00. Did laundry all afternoon.

1984 Algonquin Provincial Park, ONT 2 (8/13-14/1984)

Monday, August 13, 1984

It was still raining, so plan Q went into effect! Left at 8:00 to drive east out of Algonquin Provincial Park to follow PR 60, and kept running into fog banks. At Barry’s Bay we stopped at a bank and I changed another $80 to Canadian money. We continued, still running into fog banks, and it was still drizzling. We bought gas in Golden Lake where a guy with the local accent said the weather was a “bummer.” We took PR 41 towards Eganville. We crossed the bridge with a cute flag man, and stopped at an information booth, but no info on Bancroft. In Eganville, we found makeshift signs to follow to the Bonnechere Caves.

Bonnechere Caves brochure 1

Bonnechere Caves brochure 2

We had arrived at 10:55 and walked around a bit to see the rushing river over flat squared off rocks, and caves in the steep banks. We returned to a shed to examine stones with fossils. At about 11:10, a young guide came out to identify the fossils and explain about the caves. We were led to a door in the hillside to enter the caves. Dams blocked off water from a parallel caves. Rock formations, stalactites, and a couple fossils were pointed out. There was moss by the lightbulbs, and the bats have migrated south for the summer. The ripples along the wall felt smooth going downstream. The whirlpool effect was pointed out with water currents gouging out crevices in the wall. The present owner of the cave was also the first explorer of them. He rafted down and once when bumping the wall, he dropped his only flashlight in the water. We were given a demonstration of the pitch darkness he experienced. During the winter they flood the lower caves to save maintenance and keep out vandals. We exited and followed a path down across a stream to where an old mill once stood. We climbed the hill to see the hole where the owner first entered the cave. We used the restrooms here, where the toilets were ammonia filled buckets.

We stopped at a cute gift shop in Eganville, the Hanley’s Country Collection, but very small.

We continued down PR 41 and at the junction of PR 28, we stopped at another info booth, where I got no info, but did get a map of Ontario. We followed PR 28 into Bancroft and circled around a couple times to find an old mill, which was now an ARC workshop, no longer having anything to do with the mill. So we went to the Algonquin Art Gallery next to the Chamber of Commerce. We saw several silk paintings by Joyce Burkholder, who was a self-proclaimed feminist. The paintings were skillfully done, but as we also saw in the comments in the guestbook, she was an angry/sad/troubled female.

We had peanut butter sandwiches and fruit for lunch. The water in Kathy’s canteen was getting low, and we didn’t want to drink the camp water. We discovered a jug of water Kathy keeps in the car for her radiator, but we used that for our drinking water.

We went to the Chamber of Commerce for information on rockhounding, then used the restrooms down the hill, where the stalls had no doors. We drove backtracking down PR 28 to the Princess Mines for sodalite, but they required a hefty fee to rockhound. We parked along the road and headed into the hills. We meandered a bit, picking up rocks and examining them, throwing them on other rocks to break them, etc. Obviously a couple of amateurs!

We headed back to Bancroft and then north on PR 62 in search of other hunting grounds. The rock cut had signs stating it was illegal to climb here! We continued to Maynooth to stop at the Madawaska Art Shop, which had a large variety of very nice things, but expensive. We went next door to buy a couple caffeinated sodas to keep us awake on the drive back to the camp site.

Dinner that night was freeze-dried chicken and rice, with mushroom-flavored ramen noodles, and Gatorade.

Kathy liked to keep the garbage bag on the hood of the car when we drove for the garbage run. We tried our usual basketball slam dunk routine, but I was late in opening the garbage bin lid and it flipped open with a resounding bang surely heard throughout the park. We tried again with Kathy tossing the bag to me and I dunked it as she opened the lid. We took a hike to the marsh across the road, but couldn’t walk straight to it because of water. We had to walk all around and down the road. We stopped to gaze at our marsh, seeing frogs and birds. We walked along the woods and followed a trail that turned out to be a dead end, into a moose nest?! Saw frogs in the woods.

We returned to the camp site, and the kid from across the street came to invite us for drinks. We told him we don’t drink, but that didn’t bother him. We needed to clean up first, and went to shower at the comfort station. Kathy had a huge bug splatted across her shower stall. We returned to the tent to cover ourselves with insect repellent, and the kid came over to make sure we were coming. So we went to meet the guys; Ed (the twerp), Carl (the quiet one), and Bob, three Canadians from Toronto who were there for a week to fish. A bowling alley manager, an electronics apprentice, and an unemployed kid. The question of our age came up, and Kathy matter of factly said, “Thirty.” Oh, no! What a shock to the 19, 20, and 21-year olds! They wouldn’t have invited us over if they knew how old we were, but they liked having someone to talk to, especially from the U.S., which they put down. They kept drinking, and Ed and Bob got quite drunk. Ed wanted to teach me to swim, and he whispered in my ear that he wanted to slow dance. But he kept falling over in his broken chair and running off to pee. He and Bob went off to pee in the middle of the road, then ran into a tree on the way back. It was time to leave! Later Ed knocked on our tent to ask to come in, since he was making a bet. Hope he lost!

Tuesday, August 14, 1984

It was overcast this morning, so we decided to try canoeing. We got the canoe into the water and paddled off around the shore of Pog Lake to examine water lilies and look for the entrance of the Madawaska River. We found it and paddled up the river; all was very quiet. We then saw a swimming head, and tried to catch up with it. We got closer, but it dove. So we quietly paddled along, and saw the nose swimming parallel to us! He dove again, and we thought we had lost him. But then we heard a scurrying on the shore, and saw a huge beaver climbing out of the water onto the bank below some tree roots. We paddled in close to try for a photograph.

Beaver butt and a bit of tail

We maneuvered the canoe around so Kathy could have a closer look. Nothing seemed to bother the beaver as he groomed himself. Then we noticed two other fat beavers in the same hollow, one lounging on the other. Wow! We watched for a while, and heard a little sneeze. We heard a beaver sneeze!

We paddled off to the Lake of Two Rivers, and started along one shore. I was in the front, warning Kathy of submerged logs and rocks, which were actually deep under water! Halfway, along, we heard thunder, and it began to look and sound ominous. We hightailed it back to Pog Lake, paddling as fast as we could. We heard more and more thunder, and then there was a light rain. We took time out only to marvel at a loon that had dived, and it was swimming just under the surface of the water, with its white markings shimmering eerily. Kathy told me there was a mosquito buzzing around my head, and I kept hitting my head under her direction until I got him! We beached the canoe, and now things didn’t look too bad. We contemplated going for a swim, but then more thunder and raindrops. We hurried to put the canoe back on top of Kathy’s car.

We drove to the Park Museum. Outside they had small pools, one with a snapping turtle and the other with several painted turtles. Inside were lots of stuffed wildlife. You could push buttons to hear the wolf howl, or different birds twitter. We tried to memorize the different bird sounds, but they seemed impossibly similar! We saw fish and snakes, and went into the theater for a nice slide presentation about the park. The museum was tiny and we were soon done. We drove out the west gate in search of moose. No success, even though the museum promised the 5-km marker was the best for moose-sightings! We continued out PR 60, turned down PR 35 towards Haliburton, and then on PR 21. We were looking for an arts school, but only found an elementary-looking school called a college, in the general area described. We drove into town, and I asked at the post office, and we were directed back to this “college,” which was closed up.

We headed west to Bracebridge, getting momentarily on NR 11, then exiting to take a back road into town. We made a pit stop for us and the car, and asked directions to the octagonal villa. We went into the town that appeared full of tourists for crafty type shops, then crossed the river, at bridge level on one side and into a very deep gorge on the other. There up on the hill we spotted the house. We followed signs around the top of the hill to reach it. Next to it was a museum in a little church.

Woodchester Villa octagonal house

We entered the house, and no one seemed to be at the entrance to collect our $2 fee. We wandered around the ground floor and ran into a few other wandering tourists. It was decorated in Victorian style. There was a cute office and a square dining room. The sitting room appeared to be the back hall, and the parlor was gaudy. We took the stairs down to the kitchen and laundry rooms. We returned to the ground floor when a guide came down the stairs with a group of people. We paid our fee and got brochures.

Woodchester Villa brochure 1

Woodchester Villa brochure 2

We continued upstairs to walk all the way around on the balcony and peek into two bedrooms. The rest of the rooms were closed off, so we left and found our way back into town. We asked directions to get onto NR 11, and headed to Huntsville where we picked up PR 60 and returned to Algonquin Park. We made a stop to buy marshmallows.

Dinner was beef stroganoff and beef-flavored ramen noodles. It began to rain when we toasted the marshmallows, so we went into the tent to play backgammon. The deluge continued, and we began to notice that the floor of the tent felt like a waterbed! We tried trenching the tent (a little late!) and decided to go to the store for large plastic bags. Kathy asked the guys across the way if they needed anything from the store. Yep, matches, marshmallows, and milk. We went to the Lake of Two Rivers Store to get what they needed, but there were no plastic bags for us. We picked up a supply from the camp office. Coming and going we saw the eerie phenomenon of the storm cloud above us, but far away was the sun setting at its lower edge! Coming through the campgrounds, we kept seeing frogs in the road. I had to get out and chase them away so that Kathy didn’t run over them!

Tonight we slept in the car!

1984 Algonquin Provincial Park, ONT 1 (8/10-12/1984)

Friday, August 10, 1984

Left work early to start driving to Syracuse. I hadn't slept well last night, and ended up stopping twice to doze, then started drinking Coca-Colas, and used caffeine to get me to Syracuse, arriving at 18:30. Kathy C was expecting me later, but this gave us time to plan. We decided to go to Algonquin Provincial Park that has a bottle and can ban. We planned our meals and went grocery shopping, then repacked all the food into plastic containers or aluminum foil.

Saturday, August 11, 1984

We woke up and packed Kathy’s car. We dragged out her 15’ canoe and set it next to the car, before hefting it up onto the roof of the car. Kathy showed me how she wanted the knots to be tied on the ropes holding the two ends of the canoe. Then there were the straps over the middle of the canoe, and it was secure. We put my car in her garage, and left at 8:30, heading up I-81, crossing the Canadian border at lovely Thousand Islands at 10:30. We took Canadian National Route 401 to Belleville, then Provincial Route/PR 62 north. I had made salami sandwiches for lunch, and we finished the cans of Dr Pepper before reaching the park. We found an open bank in Madoc where I exchanged $80 for about $103 Canadian dollars. Then we stopped at a rural gas station for $17 worth of gas; expensive! Farther along, we spotted a beaver dam and stopped to take pictures.

Beaver dam

Kathy's car and canoe

As we headed back to the car, a long-bed truck was backing down the gravel path we were on. We thought he’d back into us, or at least block us in, but we managed to squeeze to one side and sneak past. I then saw a great blue heron.

We continued on PR 62, headed west on PR 127, then PR 60 going into the park. At the gate we were given a map and some other literature. Kathy also bought a canoeing map. We picked out a campground based on availability and seclusion, and because it was on a lake. We drove in to the Pog Lake Campground and went to the office to check in. we first had to go claim a site in Section A of unreserved sites, then bring the number back to the office. We drove all through the area, and of course, the best sites were taken, but we found a fairly secluded one at the end of a loop road, near latrines and a water faucet. We arrived at 15:15, and took nearly an hour to set up Kathy’s tent, which has 26 stakes! We drove back to register for site #66, paying $6.50 per night for 5 nights. We were given a white slip of paper to put in the pole at our site, and a pink slip for the car.

We stopped at the woodshed to buy two bundles of hardwood (birch) for $4.50 each, and to collect our own kindling from scraps. We returned to the site to unpack. We decided to walk this time to the office, to get some garbage bags, and saw flattened garter snakes along the road.

We drove to check out the camp stores, going first to the Lake of Two Rivers Store to see the gift shop and choice of groceries. They had a snack bar where we got ice cream. Then the Portage Store. Along the way we kept an eye out for wildlife. We turned back to investigate one animal that turned into a stump. We saw a deer ahead on the road, but by the time we reached it, it had disappeared into the woods. We bought some postcards and stamps at the Portage Store. We returned to our camp for dinner of sandwiches, peaches, and water. The water from the camp site was yellowish and tasted funny. We drank from Kathy’s canteen that had Liverpool water. We tried to start a fire, and had to resort to lighter fluid. Kathy played her guitar while I made a garbage run in the dark. I kept hearing scurrying in the underbrush next to the road. Most of the sites had tents, but I didn’t see any people. We didn’t plan on partaking of any of the camp or park programs, but would have liked to have participated in the wolf call trip, except it was on the day we would be gone.

Sunday, August 12, 1984

You could hear loons calling in the night; eerie! It was lightly raining when we awoke at 7:00. Decided to take one of the hikes and drove eastward, ever on the lookout for moose. We started the Spruce Bog Trail at 9:30, and took two tries to find the start of the trail! At the start were guide pamphlets for which you put a quarter into the pipe.

Spruce Bog Boardwalk trail guide cover

The written guide was very informative. The mosquitoes were atrocious, so we doused ourselves with insect repellent.

Trillium sp.

We first walked through a dark spruce bog, partly on boardwalks.

Boardwalk

A bog is water taken over by land, in a very broad sense. Bog water is acidic and has no oxygen, so a special breed of plants lives here. We came to the edge of the water to see sedge, or a grass that begins the floating mat process in a bog. Beyond the area where a beaver built a dam that kept the middle area flooded, was a mat with sphagnum moss and leatherleaf bushes.

Beaver dam

The last of the invaders of the mats are the black spruce trees. We searched for a Labrador tea plant where indicated, but didn’t see one until later, that has adapted to life in the bog. We passed through some spruce woods, where it looked like wildlife had trampled through, and came to Kettle Bog. We signed a register that was on a post in the middle of the trail! We picked up a Pepsi can we found, and looked for pitcher plants. Couldn’t find any, nor did we see any of the birds mentioned: kinglet, gray jay, or spruce grouse. We did follow a dead end trail that led us to a pitcher plant and some examples of mushrooms we had also seen growing under the boardwalk; tall delicate white mushrooms.

Sarracenia purpurea/Purple Pitcher Plant

Monotropa uniflora/Indian Pipe Plant
(actually not a mushroom!)

And we saw a toad. We headed back to the car, passing a rock to get a general view. The hike took us about an hour. We drove over to Beaver Pond Trail, where it was still raining steadily, but not as hard as when we were in the woods. There were pamphlets here, but our quarter did not fit in the slot in the pipe. We would have to let the ranger know.

Beaver Pond Trail guide cover

We did not see any trees cut down by beavers, unless they were six-foot tall beavers. We followed a chipmunk down the trail a bit. Came to a huge pond to look out over piles of wood in the water; the larger piles being beaver lodges, and the smaller ones being food storage. There was a boardwalk over the beaver meadow created by the dam and the subsequent ecological changes. We hiked into the woods along the other side of the pond. In one tree was a chattering red squirrel who seemed to want to keep us at bay. We obliged and continued on. The pond was full of lily plants, some in bloom in yellow and white. We then came to a beaver dam. Beavers build the dams by instinct according to the sound of running water. In a stagnant pool we caught sight of a frog. We arrived at another pond and counted to see if we could see seven beaver lodges. The seventh was a grass-covered peninsulette in front of us. We did not see any wildlife except a distant duck and mosquitoes. We were back in the woods, which became a deer habitat because of logging and forest fires clearing out the forest floor. Now with modern forest management and fire suppression, deer populations are declining. So much so that we didn’t see any deer! We hiked up and down, and finally caught up with a couple older women at the cliff view spot. Here we could get a view of the whole beaver-created environment.

Beaver-created environment

We returned to the car, and sat to decide what to do next. A Mercedes sports car drove up and two guys got out to get cans of Coca-Cola out of the trunk (a no-no). They added rum and headed down the trail. After only a couple minutes they came back and drove away. A pit stop? I made peanut butter sandwiches as Kathy drove all the way through the park to the west gate, which had wooden sculptures of a pair of bears, a beaver, and an eagle. We followed PR 60 beyond the park and stopped at Dwight at an information booth. I picked up literature on the Muskoka Pioneer Village, and the lady told me about a general store that won Canada’s Best Country Store of the Year Award, and we shouldn’t miss it. We continued to Huntsville, following directions to the Pioneer Village. We paid the full $2 admission so that the cashier didn’t have to figure out the discount!

Muskoka Pioneer village map

It began to rain harder and harder the farther we went. We didn’t bother checking out the farm machinery on the floor above the gift shop. The first house we saw was in “Ontario Vernacular” style, with Victorian knickknacks and an old man to explain things to us. In the log cabin, a pot of water was boiling on the stove, with things floating in it. Were they dying something? In the stable we saw the rear ends of a couple horses, and outside was a white mare with a black foal. The blacksmith shop was locked up, and we peeked into another log cabin. We went to the inn with a very Victorian parlor and well-appointed bedrooms. A woman was making soup in the kitchen and there was a drying rack with apples. A girl in period dress was there to explain things in the general store. The sawmill, craft house, and workshop were closed. What happened to the bell at the schoolhouse? We went in the museum to see a quilt up for raffle, some interesting stair carpet runners, and other implements and artifacts. We climbed up to the small church, and skipped the driving shed to return to the gift shop.

Before leaving Huntsville, we stopped at a McDonald’s for large Coca-Colas, since we were getting sleepy and needed caffeine. In Dwight we found a post office where I mailed a letter to Kent. We drove down PR 35 to Dorset, and decided not to climb the tower to see rain and clouds, but drove into town to see Robinson’s General Store. What a disappointment for the Country Store of the Year! It was a series of shops next to each other, one for hardware, one a grocery, and one a tacky gift shop. They were sold out of the newspaper, where we had wanted to check the weather. We were sent to another hardware store across the river for the newspaper. Kids were diving off the bridge. We stopped in a couple more gift shops, but left to return to camp. We stopped to see a waterfall and the pool below with a few parked boats with partyers on shore. One girl was swimming around and clothes had been left at the base of the waterfall. Not very scenic.

Our camp site

Back at the camp site we made a fire to make the freeze dried spaghetti and hot cocoa. After washing the dishes, we played backgammon. We made JiffyPop and drank Gatorade. Kathy drove for the garbage run since it was still raining.