Camping on Bug Lake

The put-in to Bug Lake from the portage was the easiest of the trip because a large tree had decided to become a dock. The root-end was still on shore and the rest was heading straight out to sea, with most of the log still above water. We put the canoe beside it and walked along the top to toss the gear in. With only a short paddle across Bug Lake, toss is the right description.

Setting Up

There are two sites on this lake, both near the other portage. One is actually right at the portage, so close that they share the same landing. It is large enough to have several nice tent pads, and would make a good group destination from Cedar Lake. The kids preferred the look of the other site though, and I liked the idea of getting further from the portage — even though we really didn't expect to see anyone.

The feature the kids most liked about our site was the huge rock at the shore (more on that later). Although it looked nice, it did make it tricky to get the canoe to shore. After paddling around looking for landing sites we decided to use the portage instead. We left the canoe and paddles at the side of the trail and bushwhacked the rest of our gear about 30m to the site.

Tent Pad

Our first setup job was to pick a place for the tent. The site had only three possibilities, one of which was filled with logs (waiting to become firewood). All of the choices had some amount of sloping ground, we picked the available one that had the least.

Our next check was for leaning trees, we didn't want to repeat the late-night move that we did at Laurel. I'm glad we learned something because we found a very large, very dead, very "leany" tree. With two choices ruled out we settled on "last chance pad". This one was a bit closer to the fire than I liked, so close that we couldn't walk between it and the bench. But we didn't burn down, so that was good.

The Shore Rock

This photo gives an idea of the size of our shore rock — William was standing on it, towering over Katherine and I when he took the picture.

The rock is something like 40 by 60 feet, not separate boulders, but a single smoothly weathered rock. It has a bit of a cliff on the land side, but gently slopes to the lake on the other side. In September we weren't doing much swimming, but I can imagine that it would get warmed by the summer sun and be a nice place to dry off. A destination for that swim would be (what we decided to call) "Hippo Rock", visible from our lookout.

Karma

Katherine was the one to find the smashed beer bottle beside the thunderbox, which disappointed all of us. This is pretty much the definition of why the Park started the bottle ban in the first place — yahoos that can't hold their liquor. Seeing that garbage with no attempt to pack it out was not much fun for us.

I picked up the remains and wrapped them into a newspaper, which I then wrapped with duct tape, so we could take it out. There was a large part of the bottle, including the cap, smashed on a rock beside the box and another pile of smashed bottle beside a tree on the other side of the trail.

Someone had to cart that thing (I'm guessing in a heavy cooler) up the low maintenance routes, only to have it smashed. Since I found the cap, I think the bottle was full when it smashed — karma. It took me about fifteen minutes to pack up all the bits. I think that after all that work getting it there, the smasher could have spent their own fifteen minutes on cleanup.

The thunderbox was almost brand new, with no weathering on any of the wood. The bottle was broken on top of a rock that the box rested on, so I don't think that it happened very long before our visit.

Fixing the Internet

When we got home, I searched the Google on the off chance that I could find a trip report for Bug Lake in August 2020. That didn't work, but I did find the campsite on the Paddle Planner website. That huge rock is visible from space, so I was able to tell that the location was in the wrong place on their satellite photo.

I got in touch with the site admins and sent the location as reported by our Spot device. I am happy to report that corrections were made and internet is now accurate again! After all the emailing with the admins, I felt obligated to give them a site review.

Hang It Like Batman

Behind our site was a steep hill which we used to help setup our bear hang. By standing higher on the hill, I thought I could throw the rope straight out and get it over a fairly high branch. When complete, our barrel would be more than 30 feet off the ground. Like all clever plans, this turned into an adventure on its own.

The problem was that I couldn't find any suitable rocks to weight the end of the rope, so I tried a heavy stick instead. I learned that another name for a stick used in this way is grappling hook.

Apparently, my grappling skills are spectacular, at least as good as Batman — a single throw was enough to get my rope well and truly stuck in that tree. The heavy stick was not heavy enough to pull the end of the rope back to me, but it was very good at wrapping around the rope and staying there.

I tugged on it for a while, thinking that eventually either the branch or the rope would break, but neither happened. Katherine came to the rescue and we somehow got the rope down. She had the idea of throwing another stick up there, which knocked the heavy stick enough to untangle it. Things fell to the ground the way they should, and we had another bear hang ready for use.

Dinner

Most of our food on this trip was either fresh or a normal packaged thing; Kraft Dinner, easy-make rice, pancakes, etc. However, we also packed a meal of packaged dehydrated meals (which Katherine has artfully photographed). These are light to carry, easy to make, and last forever (or fifteen years, whichever comes first); so, we saved them for last. The only work for that night's dinner was to pour boiling water into the food pouches.

I got enough of a fire going to boil water, but it was a tough slog. Once again, the wind and damp wood worked against me. As mentioned, there were several logs already at the site, waiting to be cut into fire wood. However, after laying on ground they were not really dry anymore. I didn't want to be wasteful by finding more dry wood so we used what was there as best we could.

I did manage to get something burning, it just took a long time for it to boil the water. While waiting someone proposed our favourite activity — pre-dinner dessert. We finished off the marshmallows which meant we didn't need an evening fire.

Given enough time, the water finally boiled and we ate dinner sitting on the huge shore rock. Katherine's was at least twice as big as she could eat, and William and I were also well filled. If we do this again, I think we'll plan two meals for the three of us.

I ate what I could of Katherine's leftover, but we had to feed quite a bit to the fish. I checked in the morning to confirm that it was all gone — they seem to like pasta alfredo.

Katherine's comment on this photo was "My hair looks ridiculous!" — we decided to use it anyhow because the others didn't turn out. Using the camera in timer mode is the at the limit of our skill.

We arrived at camp late and cooking dinner took quite a while, so when dinner was done, we headed for the tent. We were still feeling good about the candle lantern the previous night and decided to do it again, even though we didn't have rain. It was very nice to have the homey glow of a night light. I also liked the extra light because of something that I spotted that afternoon.

Hearing Bear

Earlier in the day, while bushwhacking to our site, I noticed some bear skat in the woods. Thankfully it didn't look very fresh. It shouldn't be too surprising of a find, there are estimated to be about 2,000 bears in the park. They nearly always high-tail it for safety when people are around.

At the time I decided not to mention it to the kids, I thought they might get scared in the middle of the night. That worked well to keep the kids calm, but didn't work so well for me. My ears played tricks all night and I had to get out of the tent a few times because of "hearing bear". Of course, there was nothing, I'm not even sure if I actually heard a sound. Between that and the sloping tent, it wasn't a restful night for me.

The next morning, I took the kids to see the droppings. They were pretty ambivalent about them, so I probably could have just pointed them out the previous day.