Algonquin Park - Canoe Trip

This weekend we decided to join the McMaster Outdoor Club on his Canoeing Trip to the Algonquin Park, which is in the North of Ontario. We started on Friday afternoon and experienced the luxurious quality of the yellow school busses for 4 hours (our legs still hurt), until we finally arrived at the first campground. After brushing our teeth in the middle of the forest, we went to bed in our beloved tent.

The next day we travelled to the Portage Store at the famous Canoe Lake and after a short introduction to canoeing we started paddling around the various lakes. We really enjoyed it, but sometimes it was quite tough. We also had to do a portage, which means that we had to lift our canoe off the water and carry it on our back to the other lake, including the other equipment like tent and sleeping bags. Andi was the first who tried it, me carrying the backpacks.

In the afternoon we arrived at our wild camp place, not even self-registration - can you imagine? We decided to build up our tent on a small hill, where we had a spectacular view over the lake. You can see it on the picture beside. In the evening we cooked some pasta over the fireplace and later that night we came into contact with roasted marshmallows on the fire and warm apples for the first time. We also experienced the delicious taste of marshmallow sandwiches (marshmallow + chocolate + cookie), which is typical for America!

After sitting a long time beside the fire, we went to bed, but not so our other group members. They stayed awake for a long time and so the next morning they didn’t wake up until 11am. We are late-riser, but this was even too long for us, but we enjoyed the morning and discovered the area around our camp place. In the morning we brushed our teeth while sitting on the rocks and looking over the lake.

The only bad thing was that at the time the other group members woke up, it was too late to carry on with the original route - so we had to take the route, which we did the day before. Back at the portage it was my time to carry the canoe, but to my astonishment it was not as heavy as I expected it. We also went swimming in the lake and rock jumping which was very cold, but the weather was very warm and sunny. You can see more pictures in our Algonquinpark photoalbum.

It was a very amazing journey, because Algonquin Park is a very unique landscape, especially when there is Indian summer.