Posted on by Susan Sheppard

Ant Kingdom (The nickname for our campsite)

This past weekend, we did a little family overnight canoe trip into Kawartha Highlands Provincial Park.  The last time we ventured into this park was for a weekend in 2015 where we went into Wolf Lake then Crab lake.  It’s actually hard to believe it’s been almost 2 years since we have gone back. Mainly due to the fact that we have been camping and finding adventures in many other locations.

Canoe Camping at Crab Lake August 2015

This time, I was looking to explore another part of this park and mainly focused on Bottle and Sucker lakes.  They offered minimal portages and short canoe distances.  This is key when we have only the weekend to travel due to both myself and my son being in school (him as a student, although I don’t usually mind taking him out of class for these things, and me as a teacher, where I can’t really miss work).

 
About a week prior, I was watching the weather and checking out multiple Ontario Parks through the reservation system, as I usually do in my free time.  I was waiting for the perfect time, weather and location to magically appear!  The weather was promising, and without actually consulting my hubby, I booked the Saturday night on Bottle Lake.  There was 1 site open (site 107) and I took it happily! I then informed him that we were going to go canoe camping on the weekend. My son, Hayden was jumping for joy because he loves camping and especially loves canoe camping (I have raised him well so far LOL). 

Ready to go! (Photo : Danny Sheppard)
Thursday and Friday night I was busy prepping and gathering all our camping gear and we were ready to go Saturday morning. Since we are technically not permitted on our site until 2pm that day, I wasn’t in a huge rush to get going that morning. I wanted to give anyone who might have stayed on that site Friday night the chance to pack up and get themselves together before having the next group show up. (hmm…hold this thought for later….)
 
We started our journey around 10 am, with a nice drive through the twisty and curvy roads from home to the west side of the park.  We have been along the route a few times now and passed by Petroglyphs Provincial Park.  If you haven’t been there, I would highly recommend it.  We arrived at the Bottle Lake access point at noon, ate our lunch that we picked up at the Tim Horton’s in Havelock, and unloaded the gear.  There is a 218m portage from the parking lot to Bottle Lake.  I decided that I would carry the canoe first, then Dan carrying on the way home.  He set up his go Pro to get some footage of me and obviously to have fun with this new toy. This went really fast and probably took us about 15 minutes to get all gear to the lake and loaded.

We headed out and within a couple minutes, spotted a mother and baby deer on the island in front of us, and we tried to get close enough so that Dan could get some pictures.  The baby was foraging in the water and mom was up in the trees.  We managed to get fairly close and they didn’t seem bothered by us at all.  Such a pleasure to see wildlife so close.  Plus the baby was cute!

 
Photo: Danny Sheppard

  
Our paddle didn’t take very long and we passed the other sites and had a quick look, checking out future paddling locations.  We come close to the beach areas where I know the site is located, and everything is occupied. Uh oh. Remember this little hint from prior.  We get to what I am sure is our site, and the people still have all their gear up, they are eating lunch, and just enjoying their day.  We paddle past, and I noticed the creek next to the site. I look to Dan and say, I am positive that is our site.  It was only 1:20 pm, so technically they have the site until 2 pm as per the Ontario Park system. We turn around and head back to the site, just to double check. We land on shore, and I quickly ask… “Is this site 107?” Sure enough it is.  I say, “Oh, we have this booked for tonight”. Their response “We have this booked for tonight as well”.  I have not yet come across this, but we all get out of the canoe and my hubby asked the question before I did.  “Do you have your permit?”  “Sure” said the old man, I wrote down my information on this paper.”
RED FLAG!!

I then politely said “Oh, I have my permit printed off from the reservation system, with the information that we have this site booked for tonight.”  Getting more into the story, the old man insists that his information was correct, that he had the site, but his son was skeptical as I had a printout from the website, and his father just wrote down the information.  It even says in your reservation email that you MUST print off the permit and CARRY IT WITH YOU at all times.  This would have resolved this issue.  I’m pretty sure that the man must have booked “Friday-Saturday” thinking he was booking for Saturday night as well.  Now what?!?

The son was mulling this over the whole time we were talking about the permit, reservation number, possible reasons, etc and he said,”well, I guess we will have to pack up and find another place”. It sounded like they were just going to take over the next site which people vacated that morning, but this whole lake was sold out.  After we waited on the beach, I realized that there is an emergency site for use.  I mentioned this to the son and he actually acknowledged that this was what they would use. Sounds like they know these lakes enough to know about that site. Phew… I didn’t want to see them have to pack up again and move sites.  So, lesson learned.. make sure you know your full booking information, even review it with someone else to double check and carry your permit at all times!

Waiting for our site to be ready (Photo: Danny Sheppard)
And more waiting…. (Photo: Danny Sheppard)

Alright, back to our actual trip. Sorry about the side note, but really needed to be included.  As we were getting things ready, we noticed that this site had ants…. LOTS of ants… as in I don’t think I could even count that high!  I would guess that there must have been at least a million ants on this beach and site.  No Joke!  The ants were really the most annoying piece this whole weekend. I was able to deal with the mosquitoes, but these ants BITE! I am positive that the bites around my ankles are mostly from the ants.  I had to find places where I could keep my feet off the ground for the majority of this trip.  Not really that big of a deal since I have a new Thermarest Slacker Hammock.  This is the reason why we nicknamed this site “ANT KINGDOM”!

Photo: Danny Sheppard
  
Photo: Danny Sheppard

 

That evening, after we were all set up, including our the Eureka! NoBugZone shelter, we went for a swim and had a lovely fajita and potato chip supper. (yes these are a staple on our trips LOL).

We had some bannock for dessert, and I’m sure there is some Lord of the Flies theme with this next picture!

Cooking Bannock (Photo: Danny Sheppard)
Then we just enjoyed the evening, walking the beach, watching the sun set, sitting next to the fire, maybe some shenanigans happening, the usual things we do on a trip.
 
 
 
Nothing can beat the beautiful sunsets while camping!  With the sun down, the mosquitoes came out in full force. We decided that our fire was done, and we headed to bed. The next morning the mosquitoes were out in full force again, and we had to resort to our bug jackets for the first time this weekend.  Yes, the shenanigans continue!
 
Dan insisted that this would be a great look for a future bank robber LOL!

 
 
We packed up fairly early, as we wanted to do a little exploring in the area on our way home.  It was a rough take down, as we were shaking ants out from all of our gear, and we knew that when we got home none of this was coming in the house without a further shake out.
 
We made two stops on the way home, first one was at Burleigh Falls (we will be returning in the fall when we do our waterfall tour), and back to the Petroglyphs to check out the day use area and the lake that has cool colors.  The lake was actually a little ripply, so not as clear as other trips.
 
 
 
 
Overall, this was a great weekend away, and I’m looking forward to many more trips this summer. Both Hayden and I have the most bug bites as they don’t seem to bother Dan as much, we have way too much gear to clean and wash before our next trip, but none of that matters since I love getting outside and getting that connection to nature.
 
Keep reading all summer as I will have many more posts on our adventures. Next big trip will be the 150 for 150 event in Algonquin park. 

This is a little video clip from our Go Pro that Dan compiled for me 🙂  Check out his webpage to see the work he does. Danny Sheppard Photography

 
 

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