Wanderung 7

Ogling Ottawa and Ontario's Outstanding Outdoors

September 2004

September 7 - Drive to Lake Superior Provincial Park, Ontario

In the morning the storm had cleared off although it was still somewhat cloudy, and we decided to take a walk around the bay to the point of land to the east. The trail to the point ran alongside the beach area just inside the forest, so it was easy walking. We saw more of the wild blueberry bushes, picking a small handful for a snack, and some of the biggest fungi I have ever seen. Someday I'll learn which fungi are edible and then I can snack on a wider variety of forest fare! If those big suckers (think of a mushroom big enough for a real Peter Rabbit to hide under!) were edible, which I doubt, they would have been enough for a whole meal, not just a snack.


 

Unfortunately, the trail turned into a shallow stream as we neared the point, and we turned back rather than soak our shoes and socks. We tried to come back along the beach for a change of route and had a nice view of our campsite and trailer across a corner of the bay. I was looking for driftwood suitable for making a table lamp, but despite the plethora of driftwood all over the beach I could not really find anything suitable. The really good looking roots that we did find were still quite firmly attached to their respective logs which were still buried quite firmly in the sand. Since I didn't have a chainsaw with, I had to settle for picking up a 2 foot cylinder of driftwood that I thought I might be able to turn into something.

While we were walking along the shore the waves were still crashing away. They crested very gradually starting from quite a distance out as they ran in to shore, and I inferred that the campground beach sloped off very shallowly for about 150 yards off shore. That might, just might, make it warm enough to swim in if the winds were calm and the sun was really hot, I thought. But when I asked the Ranger if anyone swam at the campground beach, she just kind of chuckled so you might take that as a cautionary note.

Having had our morning exercise, we packed the trailer and hit the road; we got into the habit of leaving the trailer hitched if we know we are just spending the night. The drive was, in distinct contrast to the previous day, quite pleasant. We rolled across the Canadian Shield area of forests and lakes interrupted at infrequent intervals (about once an hour) by a small town. One of the towns did boast an A&W, however, so that's where we had lunch. Since a grocery store was a block down the street, we walked over after lunch and bought bread, luncheon meat, and canned meat. Milk was $3.59 Canadian for half a gallon, and we decided at that price we would would rather switch to using dried milk than be milked ourselves!

Bypassing Wawa, which seemed to be a town of hotels, we curled south to camp at Rabbit Blanket Lake campground. Just outside of Wawa I saw a dog-sized animal with tufted ears slinking across the highway like a big cat. Giving the size, cat-like eyes and nose, and tufted ears, I think it was a lynx. Monika had been waiting all day for a moose to come our way and thus had the camera sitting in her lap to take a picture of the moose. Now she desperately turned it on and pointed it at the big cat, but by the time the camera finally focused the cat was gone. Very frustrating!!

The remainder of the drive was uneventful and we had our pick of sites when we came in to Rabbit Lake Campground, choosing #4, a nice pull through. The campground featured showers, which we immediately used, and a laundry, which we were prevented from using due to a broken washer. Still, we had enough clean clothes for a few more days so that was not a critical problem, yet.

At the information center a couple miles down the highway I bought a topographic map of the park for $5 Canadian, and I would sincerely recommend anyone thinking about hiking in the park to do the same. Once you are used to interpreting a topographic map, it will tell you about most of the twists, turns, ups, and downs of a trail and that is very important information.

The first trail we tried was across the street from the campground and led up Old Woman River. As far as we could go, the trail was a nice trail through deep woods that reminded me of the temperate rain forests in Olympic National Park in Washington State. Footing was difficult due to the roots and rocks everywhere, but it was not treacherous since it was not muddy or slippery, so we could go along quite well if we just took our time.


 

We were stopped, however, when we reached a bridge across the Old Woman River that had half of it washed away! Instead of the bridge, we had a close up view of some really very pretty rapids, but ultimately we decided not to risk the jump across the rapids and retraced our steps. I surmised that the storm the day before might have dumped quite a few inches of rain in this area if it resulted in trails underwater and footbridges being washed away!

Still that gave us some time to work on the computers a bit before dinner. Monika downloaded, stored, and rotated pictures while I brought the journal up to date. After dinner we had time for a nice evening fire. The folks before us had left their half-burned firewood in the pit along with wet paper towels, an empty pack of cigarettes and a big collection of soggy butts, so I had to fish all that out and split the wood a bit before starting the fire. After we got it going really well I carefully fed it the pieces of wet trash one at a time so as to not put it out. But in the end, we burned all the leftover wood plus all the wet trash, and had a fun time doing it.

Retiring into the trailer we read another Catherine Asaro book, "Quantum Rose", a bit before we went to sleep. The story line was clever and realistic enough (in a science fiction sense) to hold our interest, the characters were engaging enough for us to really care what happened, and no one as yet had been killed. The latter may sound like a funny criterion to judge a book, particularly since we both do like murder mysteries, but some writers are either too vivid (think "Psycho") or take it too an excess (think Charles Manson). We both bailed out on the previous nighttime reading book when 4 people were killed already by the end of the second chapter or so. The net effect was to give me nightmares, and I awakened just in time as I was starting to push Monika out of bed! (Of course, at that moment I didn't think it was Monika but rather some very large, very carnivorous monster with gleaming eyes and bad halitosis!) We didn't need any more of that, so we switched books.

Copyright 2005 by Robert W. Holt and Elsbeth Monika Holt
Map
Prolog
September 2004
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Epilog

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