Algonquin Pictures, May 19-23

The start of this trip was pretty brutal. You'll notice that we have almost no pictures from the first day. Also, I'm somewhat of a freak for big rocks so rocky-things tend to get more coverage than some people would expect...

The last two pictures are actually from my visit to the Toronto Zoo on the 28th.



Jodi is tying the paddles onto the canoe before a portage. The portage heads through the muck on the left and under that low hanging tree.


Entering Maple Lake. We spent our first miserable black fly ridden night here.


The second night's camp site on Three Mile Lake.


And the view off of our front step (hmmmm, when I put the pictures together like this, it's pretty obvious that I cropped off my thumb).


Not a clue ... Looks kind of like the inside of the tent at night.


Here's another picture of the start of the portage. It goes right through the deadfall that jodi is posing on.



What can I say? A nice little waterfall thingie.


A not very good picture of some really cool rapids that we were portaging around.


A picture of the length of Biggar lake. It was supposed to be a picture of a couple of loons but, unfortunately, they can dive under water and reappear miles away. Which, of course, they decided to do right after I wound the film...


Our site on North Tea lake was sitting up on a giant rock. This picture is looking straight down off the edge of the site.


You have to put your pack up in a tree to keep it away from bears (or more realistically, from all the littler critters). On the third night, we had only tree that had a good looking branch (strong enough, no branches below, high enough that that pack is out of reach, low enough that you have a hope of throwing a rope over it). When we set up the camp, we threw the rope over the branch and it appeared to be strong enough. As the sun was setting, we decided to get the pack up into the tree while we still had light. One solid "hoist" on the pack and the rope just slide right off the branch.

After a frantic search for anything else that might do, Jodi found this bent tree with a V that would do, except it was way too high. We looked a little more and couldn't find anything. I decided to try a couple of throws to see if there was any hope. The first one was close and the second one was a moment of pure poetry. It sailed straight through the V, not even glancing any of the branches.

It was so poetic that I have this picture to commemorate the event and you had to listen to the story.


While it may appear that I'm dressing in a giant robe, I'm actually just stuffying the tent into its stuff sack (this is morning 4).


Picture of our cooking area/fire pit on Tea lake. We really liked this site.


Here's our loaded canoe (before leaving on morning 4).


Can you tell that we really liked this site? That little orange patch on the tree is about a foot tall (campsite marker). Unfortunately, that's the only thing in this picture that gives perspective to our giant rock.


Picture looking back on Manitou lake. Just reminding myself that paddling was getting us somewhere.


Neat little butterflies that were milling about at the end of a portage.


Sorry about the finger ... That mass of rocks is the tail end of some really nasty rapids. There are many trees that are caught down in this area.


If you look closely, you can see a family of baby ducks. No mother there, she's actually a little further up-stream. She'll lead us safely away from the ducklings.


On the portage just before Kiosk late, there was a small forest fire. Very small coverage but it looked pretty intense.


End of the last portage on the last day. Good thing these aren't scratch and sniff photos. That little yellow sign is the portage marker.


This is part of the really neat rapids that were behind me in the previous picture.


This picture was trying to show the foot high waves that we were paddling into with the nasty storm clouds over our heads. Somehow this picture doesn't look like that.


This is jodi's pretty truck with the canoe (duh).



Hey, if I have a picture of elephants, then T will have to look at my Algonquin pictures.


Hey, it's not every day that you get to ride a camel!

All pictures are copyright 1999, Chris Palmer. They may not be republished in any form without my consent.