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.