WOW! It has been nearly a year since I have written a post. That means its been almost one year since my last big hike, and I am not okay with that! Since this hike, we spent a weekend on Bethune Lake and have a backpacking trip planned for early October. Hopefully that will make up for my long lived absence from the backcountry.
ANYWAYS...in an attempt to get away from the hoards of folks that visit Algonquin each summer, we decided to canoe instead of hike this time. This trip was planned a few hours (@10pm the night before we left) ahead of time, so our campsite choices were limited. We headed up and hoped for the best! After visiting the park office, we were told that Rock Lake had a few sites left on it. We set off, and felt we were racing the crowds to get to an open site. We took to the lake around 11:30 am, and surely enough, every single site was occupied. Instead of finding a site, laying out the tent, and then canoeing around for fun, we hurriedly scoped out the lake to find the last remaining site. As frantic as it was, if I had to pick a site out from the map ahead of time, this would have been the one I picked! It looked secluded from other sites and out of sight of the main campground. It was the furthest away from the boat dock, but was nestled in the quiet, private Echo Bay. It was just before a portage, so we didn't see many other people once we got there. We spent a nice night under the stars, after spending the rest of the day swimming and fishing. In true "Meredith" fashion, my jitterbug was snatched by something too big, so if you happen to catch a big sucker with a jitterbug, you know who to contact! We were lucky enough to be out fishing when we looked up and saw the northern lights, appropriately accompanied by howls of the Algonquin wolves. Truly a magical evening, and it only took an hour or so canoe trip to get there! I highly recommend this trip for someone looking to get away, but I would leave earlier to make sure I got this perfect site on Echo Bay again!
On the way out, we decided to go for a quick hike on the Hemlock Bluff Trail. It is only 3.5 km, so easy enough to do a hike after a few long days canoeing. The trail was not too bad, it lead through a nice cool forest and had some views of the lake from bluffs. It was a nice, short hike to end the trip. The real excitement didn't happen until we were headed home and saw a few bikers stopped taking pictures of a lake on Hwy 60. We, of course, gawked to see what they were photographing, and saw the biggest bull moose I have ever seen in person, just munching away on some vegetation (picture below- you can kind of see the outline of his antler by the downed tree-sorry, only had a phone for pictures, silly me).
ANYWAYS...in an attempt to get away from the hoards of folks that visit Algonquin each summer, we decided to canoe instead of hike this time. This trip was planned a few hours (@10pm the night before we left) ahead of time, so our campsite choices were limited. We headed up and hoped for the best! After visiting the park office, we were told that Rock Lake had a few sites left on it. We set off, and felt we were racing the crowds to get to an open site. We took to the lake around 11:30 am, and surely enough, every single site was occupied. Instead of finding a site, laying out the tent, and then canoeing around for fun, we hurriedly scoped out the lake to find the last remaining site. As frantic as it was, if I had to pick a site out from the map ahead of time, this would have been the one I picked! It looked secluded from other sites and out of sight of the main campground. It was the furthest away from the boat dock, but was nestled in the quiet, private Echo Bay. It was just before a portage, so we didn't see many other people once we got there. We spent a nice night under the stars, after spending the rest of the day swimming and fishing. In true "Meredith" fashion, my jitterbug was snatched by something too big, so if you happen to catch a big sucker with a jitterbug, you know who to contact! We were lucky enough to be out fishing when we looked up and saw the northern lights, appropriately accompanied by howls of the Algonquin wolves. Truly a magical evening, and it only took an hour or so canoe trip to get there! I highly recommend this trip for someone looking to get away, but I would leave earlier to make sure I got this perfect site on Echo Bay again!
On the way out, we decided to go for a quick hike on the Hemlock Bluff Trail. It is only 3.5 km, so easy enough to do a hike after a few long days canoeing. The trail was not too bad, it lead through a nice cool forest and had some views of the lake from bluffs. It was a nice, short hike to end the trip. The real excitement didn't happen until we were headed home and saw a few bikers stopped taking pictures of a lake on Hwy 60. We, of course, gawked to see what they were photographing, and saw the biggest bull moose I have ever seen in person, just munching away on some vegetation (picture below- you can kind of see the outline of his antler by the downed tree-sorry, only had a phone for pictures, silly me).