Have you ever taken a floaty on a canoe trip? It’s not something you’d normally take on back country trip – I did take a small one on the trip I took for my 40th birthday – but this trip with my son had no portaging, so we brought something a little bigger. What did we bring? Well you will have to continue reading to find out.
When school is out for the summer there are two main trips that I try to plan. One being a solo trip (which I completed in Kawartha Highlands) and the other one where my son and I head somewhere for a night or two. This year I planned a trip into Kingscote Lake which is on the south end of Algonquin Park. I knew this lake was easy to access, but I was unaware of site conditions (more on that later).
Tuesday Afternoon
I had all the gear ready to go a week before. Yes a full week. I had to postpone this trip by a week due to experiencing some crazy vertigo that made (canoe) tripping impossible (regular tripping was easy!). Having a week out of the summer disappear like that was not pleasant, but luckily I was able to modify the reservation and did not have to cancel the trip, so when Tuesday morning came, our gear was ready to go. We got in the car and drove North until we found our access at Kingscote Lake.
I made quick work of getting the canoe in the water with all our gear, plus the few extra items we took for fun, and headed out to find a campsite for our two nights. We started paddling to where I thought the narrows in the lake was located, but I soon realized we were heading the wrong way! Once our course was corrected we passed through the narrows and started searching the coastline for those beautiful orange camp signs. I was aiming for a particular area and wanted to find a site on the East side of the lake so that we would get the afternoon sun as well as a view of the sunset.
This is when we realized that this lake must have been hit by the wind and rain storms that had passed through in June because the first few smaller sites we found were littered with downed trees. We did find a bigger site, but it was located in a marshy section which is not the best for swimming and the next site was already occupied, so we continued on and eventually found our home for the night. The site was small and had just enough space for 1 small tent and a bug shelter, which really was just perfect for us.
Entering our site 
Windstorm damage 
Just enough space for the tent 
Beautiful landing spot
Once we landed we got started right away doing the camp chores. I am trying to get Hayden to do more around camp, so I got him to help set up the bug shelter, the tent, and to help organize his sleeping gear. He might complain a bit, but in the end he does a great job. When all the camp chores were complete we were ready to enjoy the water with our BIG floaties. We recently purchased these floaties at Costco and Hayden didn’t have to be asked twice to fill them up for our swim. I ended up tying them to the tree stump on the shore so that we could just hang out without getting blown down the lake. It also made for great games of “who can pull themselves quicker to shore” and “who can kick the rocks and push themselves out faster into the water”. I had asked Hayden to take a picture of me on the floaty, which resulted in him also taking a selfie. Funny kid.
Tuesday Evening
The water was so enjoyable that we could have stayed on the lake all afternoon and evening, but I had a hungry boy asking for supper. For supper we had fresh honey and garlic sausages from a local butcher with a side of bannock and mashed potatoes. The bannock was made from a Bisquick mix that I bought from a dollar store and I only used half a package for the two of us.
To prepare our meal I used the Waxed Canvas Ground Cloth from Man Camping to keep my items clean and free from the pine needles that littered the ground. Highly suggest this for backcountry trips as I hate getting pine goop and other unknown dirt on my gear.
My sausages split! 
After supper I tried to do some fishing, but was unsuccessful, so I sat by the lake watching the beautiful sky slowly transition. The water was calm so we decided to head out for an evening paddle to check out the portage and the site at the north end of the lake. Well, this is where we should have camped. This site had a nice rock shoreline, plus two places to set up a tent. The only downside was the swimming was not as nice. No worries as we thought our site was the perfect location for us and the view of it from the water proved that.
Love my Keens! 
See his Dragonfly Wingman? 
Once back on our site I decided to try to cook up some Pilsbury cookie dough… Note to self: this doesn’t really work and it is best to use a campfire cookie recipe. The cookies turned out to be more of a cookie crumble once completed, but Hayden and I still ate them up.
As the sun went down we finalized our plans for the next day. Originally we were going to paddle and portage to a set of falls, but once I had realized that it would take us about 6 hours to complete the trip there and back we opted for plan B.
What was plan B? Come back next week to keep reading about this trip.
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Good companionship this time and he is learning lots. Did he eat any potato?
lol. no potato for him.