Day1:
Aimed to be on the road at 6am. Actually left house at 6:40. We just happened to hit toronto during rush hour, and missed the 407 cutoff.. After sitting in traffic for a half hour, making almost no headway, we turned around, and headed for the 407.. It's a toll road, so I figured it would be less congested. And it kinda was.. After a couple detours (damn city planners) it was smooth sailing up the 400 to 11 to algonquin..
12:40 - Checked in. Got our interior permits, and added both the first day, and an extra day at the same time. Did you know that you have to reserve three and a half days in advance? Bought fishing licenses, rented canoe, picked paddles, life jackets, and bought worms. Also realized that we'd left our 4L water jug at home, so purchased another one for $4. Yup. That's a buck a liter.. But it's not like you can go anywhere else.. :) Signed up for a 1:30 water taxi to the north arm of Opeongo.
Two ready voyageurs. Gear is packed, and we're just waiting for the water-taxi... Note the relative level of cleanliness...
2:30 - Boarded the 1:30 water taxi to Proux. Got dropped off at the start of the portage. The one thing that I found strange about the experience, is they never asked if we had any clue what we were doing. They just dropped us off and left. *shrug* Weird... At this point, we are in the interior, and our canoe is still nice and dry..
After landing, we decided to trial our one-trip portage that had been our goal when packing. We split up the packs, and made sure that everything else was tied to the outside. Big pack on back, little pack on front. Canoe on head. Dumped out the $4 jug of water, and took a step. First step, the strap on my front pack broke. This was only kinda annoying, but loaded the way that I was, I wasn't thinking that it was going to be all that much fun to try to re-don my gear so we just forged ahead, leaving the four other folks behind us, still applying bug repellant.
We started the portage. I don't know if it's because that all my relatives are from around that area, or that I grew up playing in the bush, but I figured that any place that catered to city folks would have beautifully groomed portages with guiderails to prevent folks from hurting themselves. The first few feet proved me wrong. It was about a 30 degree incline, with a zillion protruding little rocks. I made it up to the top of the hill with my two packs, and my canoe, but my deskbound legs were shaking. That's about the point where I decided that a two-trip portage would make a wee bit more sense. :) The one-trip portage attempt for the trip was now a chucked concept.
Halfway through our portaging (after that short hilly section that kicked my butt, it is a nice wide trail that we would come to appreciate in the days ahead. Our only vindication, is that the other four folks that we were dropped off with were having a much worse time with the portage than we were. We felt kinda vindicated.
4:00 - GF applied mosquito repellant, and the canoe is in the water. As she's never canoed before, we have a quick canoe safety and paddling technique lesson, and push off. No dunkings, minimal wobblings, and we're off.. Our shiny new canoe is now wet, and it holds water!
We clear what we think is proux, and turn into the river. It looks like a pretty dang wide river. We're still in proux. We keep paddling. We're starting to get in the groove of it, and actually start to make decent time. We hit the really windey section of river between Proux and Little Crow. I found it kinda funny that no sooner had GF asked if we were going to see any wildlife, I had the great pleasure of pointing out the young bull moose on the side of the bank. And the cow a couple of turns down. And the swimming moose. It would appear that this section of river is the equivalent of the local drive-in for moose.
Moose! Not an overly shy one either.. The bull calf we saw
earlier
was a bit more apprehensive...
Eventually, we clear the windey section of river, paddle across Little Crow, and into Big Crow. We decide to paddle a bit further to take the campsite recommended to us by an older couple going the other way that we met at the end of our first portage... They said that it was quite nice, and had an excellent view of the sunset. Trusting them, we headed there.
7:00 - Reach camp. Y'know, there's just something about being in a canoe that makes you feel like you're working your ass off, and not getting anywhere. We could see the campsite, but the more we paddled, it didn't seem to be any closer. There's a deceptive nature to canoeing when you haven't done it for a while. It lacks the drama of a powerboat, but is still making deceptively good time.
This campsite has log benches, a nice wooden shelf, and a nicely located tent spot. It's also got a nice flat rock next to the campfire for those hot items from the fire, and a small hunk of particle board that makes an excellent table. After the portage, we are defiantely feeling pampered. Not much wood ready at hand. It also has a nice sandy beach that feel really nice on the toes.. And not a leech to be seen..
First night camp. Note comfy logs, etc.. Not much in the way of wood though.. Little fire...
GF breaks out the tent, while I start scavenging for wood. In our haste that morning, we had kinda jammed the rest of the gear into the packs, and had never gotten around to eating. We're kinda famished.
8:00 - Tent is up, wood is gathered, and the fire is going. The welded grate in the fire-pit is removed in favour of a small one lying on the ground. We make a small fire. It's like my great-grandfather once told my dad, who told it to me. White man make big fire, sit way back. Indian make little fire sit close. And since there was a scarcity of larger wood, my grandfather-through-dad's words rang true. Tiny fire. Put the water on to boil, and broke out the can of beans (yes, I said can.. I'll explain later) and the package of weiners. Cooked them in the fry-pan while the newly boiled water was cooling. GF poured a glass of wine and we toasted to what would be our daily reward for the rest of the journey.
We ate like famished wolves (or hungy folk who hadn't eaten yet). After hanging the food pack (the only convenient spot we found was on the tree over the water, but with me lifting, and gf pulling, we hung our bear pinata..), we watched the sunset, and vegged for a while.
10:30 - Climbed into bed. Darkeness had set in during our veg period, and we had not the energy to hunt for the pillowcase. This was a pillowless night.
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