The Morning After the Storm

It rained through the night and when we got out of the tent at about 7, conditions were still overcast and little drizzly. In good news, the temperature had come down to a more comfortable 21°C. One odd thing that we noticed was a remarkable number of flies at the site, they are buzzing me as a write these notes — maybe because of the temperature change?

This morning William sent the "We're OK" message on the Spot device. Katherine did it the previous night so they decided to alternate. That evening they changed their minds, because this system would mean William doing all mornings and Katherine all evenings. They each wanted to know "what it feels like to send the message at the other time." The system they settled on was get two turns in a row, and then switch to the other person.

Breakfast

We got the food barrel out of the tree and found everything as we left it — take that squirrel.

Breakfast was packaged oatmeal. We were out of firewood so it was a chance to try out the new camp stove. Very impressive — the pot of water was boiling in about two minutes. I was really impressed with this stove throughout the trip. It worked well and packed down to almost nothing — easily fitting inside the pots along with things like camp soap and the scrub pad.

That was good, because getting this stove was a minor ordeal. If I had more time, I would have ordered online, but we changed the trip plans less than a week before leaving, so I needed to find it in stock somewhere in Ottawa. In the original "short trip" plan we were going to use the two burner Coleman, but it was too heavy for our more ambitious plan. After visiting many stores and leaving empty handed, I found that there was a single unit left in stock at the SportChek in Orleans. SportChek is not where I expected to find camp gear so I called ahead to make sure it really was there. It took about forty-five minutes to drive out there, so I'm happy that it was worth it.

Morning Relaxation

After breakfast the kids played on the rocks and around the island. Climbing rocks around the shore is one of William's favourite camp activities. He learned about this during our trip the previous fall, and had talked about it off and on since then. He was happy to have Katherine play this game with on this trip. They made up a game where they pretended to be Pokémon characters. For some strange reason there were bad guys on the rocks that they had to fight off. I felt safer knowing they were on the job ☺

I used the new camp chair while drinking instant coffee and making notes about the overnight storm and morning activities to this point. We hadn't thought of it yet, but on other mornings the kids had morning hot chocolate while I had coffee. When done I put the notebook and pencil into my shirt pocket, thinking that it would be good to have it handy for instant note taking.

Packing Up

The overcast skies had cleared by this point and we had a sunny morning. It was tempting to spend more time sitting and playing, but we started to add up how much we had to do that day. We didn't know how long it would take for us to do the portage, and we didn't know if it would be easy to find a site that would be good for the next two days. This was not a time for relaxing, we needed some action!

Packing up went well. The pesky squirrel had already made sure that we had packed our food right after eating, so we just had the tent and tarp left. We were underway by about 10:30.

Shallow Ledge in Lake

From the island we were able to see something in the water to the south of the island. It looked like either a reflection of the far shore, or maybe a shallow rock shelf in the middle of the channel. We canoed over it on the way out and discovered that it was in fact a rock ledge, shallow enough to reach by paddle. In warmer weather it would be a good swim destination — we could get a photo of standing in the middle of the lake. We didn't get a picture of the ledge, here is one of our firepit.

130 Metres, Easily Done

Our first portage of the day was a short 130m trail. We had some trouble landing because of rocky shore and lower than normal water levels. After getting to shore we spotted a slightly easier landing about twenty feet from the main one. A short trail through the grass showed that it had been used by others.

I unloaded the canoe, handing bags to the kids who piled them off the trail. They headed down the trail with their first loads while I worked on getting the canoe out of the water and onto my head. They were back just as I was heading out. As I got to the other end of the trail it was starting to rain. I put the canoe over our bags and headed back for my second load.

It was a short trail, easily done by all (even though we had not yet developed our official portaging system), about thirty minutes total. We piled everything under the canoe to keep it out of the light rain, then stood under the trees to have a snack and see what would happen next.

Heavy Rain

What happened is that the rain got heavier. We gave up waiting, put on our rain gear, loaded the canoe, and headed out into it. It was a very short paddle to the start of the next portage. Just across a small bay, under an old trestle bridge, and then across another bay; that's how you get to the next portage. Despite the short distance we still had some trouble finding the way. The heavy rain reduced visibility to about fifty feet, and not wearing glasses (because of the rain) didn't help.

Before getting to the old rail bridge, we saw a heron, William was excited since it is the first that he remembers seeing. We missed getting a photo because both cameras were in backpacks under rain covers. We didn't get the cameras out until getting to our site later in the day.

Wet Notebook

This was about the time that I realized the flaw in my clever "notebook in pocket" idea. Far from being clever, it was in fact completely terrible. I and the notebook were drenched. The book was already soaked, so I left it in my pocket for the rest of the day. When I did get a chance to deal with it, I found that it was too wet to use, and it stayed that way for the rest of the trip. I switched to using the back of our canoe rental paperwork for notes.