Frontenac Provincial Park

July 27 - 29, 2004

Trip Reports

Frontenac Provincial Park

Trip Preparation
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
What worked well
Lessons Learned

Algonquin Spring Fishing 2005

Petawawa River

Day 2

It had stopped raining by morning and had turned in to one of those nice hazy mornings where it feels like the whole world is slow to wake up. Walking our youngest over to the outhouse we got see both Bambi and Faline. Bambi was maybe a hundred feet off to the left of the path and Faline was about 50 feet to the right of the path. Neither one of them seemed surprised to see us around and didn't act the least bit concerned. Faline did wander off a bit further when we walked by but she certainly didn't run away.

A little while later I looked across the lake from the campsite and saw another 3 deer come down to the water on the far shore. I once spent a whole summer working in Algonquin and I think I only saw 1 white tailed deer the whole time I was there. Here we were, less than 24 hours in Frontenac and we'd seen 6 deer already. I won't claim that I always keep my dog on her leash when I'm in a park but we had made a point of keeping Brownie on her leash here, even on the portage, and I'm glad we did.

One good thing about the route we picked is that we didn't have to go very far on any one day. The idea was to give the kids the feel of a 'real' canoe trip (also known as a 'Cool Adventure'). We had picked a route where we moved and portaged each day but there was only one portage per day and they were all under a kilometer long. So we had a leisurely breakfast and the kids spent some time fishing while we waited for things to dry up a bit and then we packed up.

The portage started almost right at the farthest campsite in the group, which also happened to be the only other campsite that was occupied the night before. If it had been any closer we might have considered just portaging straight from our campsite rather than paddling over. I'm pretty sure we managed this portage in 2 trips again. Generally I would carry the canoe on one trip and then go back and get the wannigan. The extra seat in the canoe was great for sitting 2 kids on, but it got in the way of carrying a pack at the same time as portaging the canoe. The kids carried their lifejackets, paddles and fanny packs with their water bottles. Wendy would carry the other packs on her trips plus whatever other assorted odds and ends the kids didn't carry.

Once we were across Little Clear Lake and had camp set up we went for a bit of a hike around toward the Hardwood Bay Farm. We think we walked far enough that we should have found the farm, we did find an old truck and an old well, but nothing that looked like farm buildings.

After supper the kids got to do some more fishing, they were quite happy to be catching Bluegill since they were a new fish, back at the cottage we have Pumpkinseed sunfish instead.They definitely seem to have inherited their mother's interest in taxonomy. Just around dusk I finally felt like I had some free time myself so I went fishing too. I swear I only got to fish for about 10 minutes but in that time I was able to pull in a 3 1/2 lb large mouth bass. The fish was nice, and it's the largest bass I've caught yet, but the best part was the kids across on another site going "Wow! Nice fish!".

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