Trip Leaders for Barrie Canoe Club (BCC): Cheryl Stoltz/David Atkins

Trip Participants: Lynne & Ralph Boake; Kent Taylor & Doug Denby

Weather: 14-18 C; Sunny at home, rain Sudbury to Fox Lake, and then cloudy and overcast.

Days Events:

Kent and Doug arrive at the Stoltz/Atkins residence just after 9 a.m. Lynne and Ralph arrive just after 10. On the road by 10:45 a.m. We have "personal communicators" supplied by Lynne and Ralph for each vehicle, so that we can talk back and forth and keep track of each other. Very handy. First stop is at "Memories of Muskoka" restaurant south of Parry Sound for ostrich burgers ($4.50/burger + fries). Burgers are like lean ground beef. Fries are greasy (Ugh). Service slow (1.5 hours to get out).

Cheryl, at 32 weeks pregnant, puts up with the baby (code named "George") having hiccups for 2.5 hrs of the drive. Arrive at Fox Lake Lodge at 5 p.m. after a command stop at Tim Horton’s in Chelmsford. Dirt road in to the lodge takes about 40 min. We set up, Cheryl and David have to sew up their vestibule when the grommet tears out, arrange for dinner, and then visit with the Taylor’s from Camper’s Place in Newmarket. Dinner at 7:30 was simple but good: milk/juice; roast beef; mashed potatoes; salad; fresh rolls/bread; mixed veg; blueberry pie and ice cream; tea/coffee. Cost reasonable: $17.00 p.p. including tax. We finalize our trip plan and get suggestions of sites from Jenny and Jim over dessert. They are very flexible here. We arrange to pull out and leave a note at the Elbow if we decide to go on down the river, and then they will take our vehicles down to Agnew Lake Lodge for us (additional $140). Vicky is very concerned about Cheryl, whom she calls "Pregnant Patty". Arrange for the shuttle to leave at 9 a.m. Fireworks at 10:40, when it finally gets dark enough. Cheryl and David start a round of "Oh Canada" in the finest Hobbs tradition.

A very black night. Rain starts at 11:30 p.m. and drives all night long. Partiers next door stop at 4 a.m. Loons start at 5 a.m. Very humid in the tents, and hard to sleep.

515 km total drive from Oshawa.

Weather: 16-18 C; Fox Lake cloudy and overcast, rain on drive up to put in. Good wind from the north (which we are told is unusual). Waves 0.25m.

Everyone up at 6:45. What a great crew! All the gear is wet, and still everyone is packed up by 8 a.m. and that is with time to have a shower. Spend time looking for Doug’s knife – we didn’t find it. He is happy to still have the sheath. Breakfast was excellent: for $7.00 p.p. including tax we got milk, blueberry pancakes, sausage, bacon, scrambled eggs, herbed fried potatoes, melon, strawberries, juice, Danishes, coffee/tea. Shuttle was $80 per vehicle up to Duke Lake, plus $5 per day for parking of each vehicle back at the Lodge.

Leave with Jenny and Jim at 9:05 a.m. See a rabbit as leaving the Lodge. Fill up with gas back at highway, and am amazed that gas prices have pretty consistently been 77.9/L all the way up. Arrive at Duke Lake, just south of Gogama, and on the water at 11:00 a.m. Rain finally stops. The unexpected tailwind really helps. We do 3.5 km in 28 min without a sail. Doug and Kent’s skid plate falls off the BCC’s new Appalachian in the middle of the lake, and it sinks fast. Most of the sites we see are small. No swifts between Duke and Tenth Lake, and this is our first clue that the trip logs and maps will not give us a lot of help with the up coming terrain. The rest of swifts between lakes are too small to be noticed. Enjoy the pictographs just as we enter Ninth Lake, but are not impressed by the graffiti. Find out Doug has left his fanny pack with water bottle and car keys in the outhouse back at Fox Lake Lodge. He admits he is going to have to put up with a lot of Alzheimer’s jokes! We arrive at the first site on 5^th Lake at 2:30 and decide to stay. It is a huge flat site (with P-3) on the East Side across from a wonderful 30-m cliff. Next site is too small. Everyone dries out the gear and naps. Lynne’s poison ivy and other rash are no better, and she is very itchy. Put up a tarp to appease the Rain God. Sun peaks out for 2 min. on and off. See lots of mergansers, and a few loons. There is fresh moose droppings on the site.

Traveled 17 km.

Weather: 5 C a.m. – 25 C p.m.; Sunny and clear. Little wind, constantly changing directions.

Lovely reflection from cliff across from site viewed by Doug, David and Cheryl who were all up by 5:50 a.m. Cold morning – eggs started to freeze. Packed and out by 9:30 when the mist clears. Last site on Lake Five is small. Nice site on Third Lake. Didn’t find site on Drive Road Rapid. Kent and Doug (who are now in separate tents due to keeping each other awake snoring) get hung up at the ‘S: curve right after the aluminum boat wreck. Snake Rapids are pretty. Try to walk the portage, but there are too many downed trees from an obvious microburst. Love the constantly changing shoreline: sandbanks; pine forest; cedars; cliffs/canyon; marsh.

Lunch is at the first site on Expanse Lake. Small but O.K. Kent finds a pool of blood in the bottom of his boat. He must have picked a leech up on his foot when they pinned and never noticed it!

No wind on Expanse, it is hot and sunny. Site on west side has nice beach. We can’t decide if this is the site that we are recommended not to use because of all the broken glass in the sand. Saw loons and a waterfall on the East Side. Kingfisher Swifts had lots of Kingfisher birds swooping around us. Shallow and had to do some walking. Hit the Forks just after a train passes. An otter swims in front of us. See another train 25 min. later, and are surprised, as we had been told that trains only ran once per day. We learn quickly that there are several trains throughout the day and the night.

First site is taken at Upper Athalone rapids. We all run this lovely class II after some debate over the route. Cheryl and David are the only ones to carry gear around and Cheryl manages to slip and fall on the return trip, which scares everyone, but doesn’t even wake George up. Skins her knee, but no damage done. Kent and Doug take on quite a bit of water. The two Appalachians run to the right, and the Madawaska runs to the left. Nice class I after that to the Lower Athalone site. Sites are in the middle or end of the rapids, and both had p-3’s. Both sites nice, but the second is cleaner. Everyone takes a swim in the cold water. Leeches at the bottom of the rapid, deeper and better pool at the top. We donate quite a bit to the mosquito’s blood bank in the evening. Chocolate Silk pie for dessert.

Everyone tired: covered 33 km.

Weather: 7 - 28C; Sunny with scattered clouds. Wind from the North.

No bugs in a.m. due to the chill. Slow morning – pancake day! London group from first site stops to ask where we are going to stay tonight (they told us the Elbow yesterday). Kent, Lynne and Ralph negotiate and win the Cliffs (26 km away), and they agree to go further, and think they will try for Spanish Lake (38 km). On water at 10 a.m. Lots of great swifts and a few small sets of rapids. Stop and see falls at Pogamasing River and find a nice small site off the railway tracks. Heard many trains in the night, and hear more during the day, so the pots would definitely rattle. See a rail repair truck cross the bridge at the river. Had lunch at first site past Pogamasing (up a bank on the right side). Did not see ghost town, much to Kent’s relief. Kent had dreamed twice that Cheryl went into labour on the trip and delivered in the ghost town!

Kent and Doug are now the daily entertainment team. They run a swift around the wrong side of an island and disappear when they get hung up again! Hot afternoon. Pull into the Cliffs campsite at 3 p.m. Small site with lots of cedars and lots of TP floating about. No thunderbox. Cheryl takes to the tent to avoid the bugs, and after two days of being quiet, George decides to get active and demonstrate his karate moves. Lynne swims and then takes to the tent to snooze and try and find some comfort from her itches. Not a great place to swim because of the current, and you can’t see or get back up to see the cliffs. After supper, Lynne meets up with a 2.5’ black snake that comes out of the water and then up under her canoe!

Plan an easy day to Spanish Lake tomorrow.

Weather: 10-28 C; Hot, sunny and clear. Tail winds from the north.

Days Events:

Up with the bugs and on the water by 9 a.m. Rapids and swifts all easy. Pass three possible campsites on Spanish Lake and entering into Spanish River. The first site at the north end of the lake is nice but uneven and small. Nice view. The second is in cedars, and people have been using the back of it as a dump. There is room for four tents. Next site, .5 km above rapids, is in cedar hummocks with huge leeches and is buggy. We have lunch here. Current really moves after Spanish Lake, and we are constantly surprised by how quickly we get to our next landmark. Rapids are simple, but we find a place to play and do a bit of surfing. Geneva Creek area is pretty, and there are three more lovely sites after the Creek and before the Elbow. All of these are on river left and the last before the Elbow is the nicest, up a bank and in a pine forest.

Decide to go to the Elbow and do our own shuttle with Ben Taylor’s truck as we are so far ahead of schedule. Kent, and Ralph head off to arrange this while the rest set up camp and fight off the hordes of bugs. It takes them 45 min. to walk up to Fox Lake Lodge. They bring us back cold pop and beer from Mary Taylor.

David and Cheryl "swim" by laying in the shallow but swift current and hold on to the rocks on the bottom. Lynne is all swollen up, and reads in her tent. We are all hoping she is better for tomorrow, and do not know how she stands it. A group of kids from the YMCA camp beside us and wander through the site peeking in our tents. One finally asks if we found the outhouse. We had, but it didn’t look safe enough to use!

Drivers return from Agnew at 11 p.m. in high spirits after a wild ride with first Doug and then Ben driving. They saw a moose on the way back in to Fox Lake. Kent finds out the guy at Agnew is surly, but only charges $120/vehicle for a shuttle to Duke Lake.

Weather: 13 - 28C; Sunny, hot and sticky.

We all sleep late – 7:20 a.m. and have a nice slow pack-up. Cheryl gets up with one eye swollen shut, but Lynne gets up and is all swollen up and has a huge rash – it looks like a reaction to the sun.

This is the big day – the Graveyard! The YMCA kids leave before us, and we do not see them again. We run first part of Little Graveyard (R.I.P.), but there is no route for the second section, and have to portage it. Great team work getting the packs around quickly, and Cheryl is pretty good about curbing her tongue over her frustration of being able to carry packs, but not lift them. Find half of a yellow canoe on the riverbank. Didn’t find much that matched the descriptions or the map today. Was looking forward to the five sections of the Graveyard, but only identified three. Had to portage what should have been a lift over, and then lifted over the Cascades, and had lunch. A little more water, and we might have been able to run more of it. Beautiful canyon/valley area. Bump and grind swifts at Agnes. Had to go right, and this made for an interesting and entertaining run. See pheasants on the portage trail.

Several swifts not on the map. Highlight of day was watching Kent and Doug ground out in a swift. We all decide to go right, but they end up going left. It was hilarious watching Doug dive like a beached whale on the back of the canoe as the canoe finally takes off with his hiking boots pouring out liters of water. Kent is needed as ballast in the bow, so he in the sandals manages to keep his feet dry.

Check out sites on the way, and not many are good. The ones at the Graveyard are really not sites at all. Find some of the remains of a logging camboose. We run Cedar Rapids without scouting it. Only cover 11 km today and are ready to take out at 4 p.m. at the Shuttle Spot at Cedar Rapids. Not a great site either, even though there is room. Vote is 5-1 to stay, so David and Ralph go downstream to check out the next site, which turns out to be wonderful and has a p-3 instead of a an old counter top on 4 legs. While they are gone, we have big fish jumping beside the boat. We watch Ralph and Dave come the 1.5-km back up stream for their gear, and are amazed by their strength and prowess in moving against the current. We set up camp, swim, fish and fry chocolate chip cookies. Watch Kent and Doug debate the making of the blueberry cobbler. The consensus is a lay over day for tomorrow. Good drying breeze from the north. Hear wolves in the night.

11 kms today.

Weather: 5 – 10 C then 28 C; Sunny. Mild breeze. A good hammock day.

Layover day. Lynne’s face all swollen and she is really itchy. What a trooper! Cheryl’s stomach is sore from the struggle to get up when sitting on the ground, and the Braxton-Hick’s contractions are in full swing. David is patience extraordinaire over helping to get her socks and shoes on. Everyone spends the day sleeping and reading. Kent and Ralph go down stream and find and ATV trail, bears dens and a hunt camp. We swim in the afternoon. A mouse scurries about the site. A chipmunk gets into Kent’s barrel. Can’t get over the "battling" of the calling loons in the night.

Mosquitoes get bad for a while at supper. Nice moon, but clouds over so we put up a tarp to appease the rain God. Kent spent the morning digging out some steps to the put in. This helps a lot but still steep. The foam in the river amazes us. There is piles of it, and it doesn’t look like algae foam. Doug provides the evening entertainment when he goes to pull out a boat and steps on his shoe lace. Whoosh! He slips, fall and goes right under. Not hurt, but comes up sputtering and asking "where’s the world gone?" He couldn’t see out of his wet bug jacket. His dry shoes are now wet again. Tonight’s Laurel and Hardy routing is over the making of a Harvest Food Works chicken dish. The instructions clearly say to take the separately packed chicken out of the package, but at no point are you told to add it back in. In the end it turns out fine, and their apple/apricot cake is great.

Wolves are heard in the night again.

Weather: Cool then warmish. Sunny with scattered clouds. Hit a head wind after Reynolds Creek.

Amazing, we are on the water at 8:15 a.m. Good current, but water is lower. A little bumpy on the Royal Ride, and none of the 2’ waves we had been promised. We do 21 kms in 3 hours, and that is with stops.

Do not find the first site on the map. Second site good for 3 tents, but rocky. We see part of a green canoe before we get to Reynolds Creek and the two Appalachians get to see a moose! Don’t care for Reynolds Creek sites. It is cedars and the water is very shallow. There is an ATV trail, shot gun shells and no P-3, meaning lots of TP flying about. Several possible island sites down stream. Only ones to get grounded and wet feet are Kent and Doug. Front skid plate falls off Doug and Kent’s Appalachian when we get into the flatwater section. The bow and stern D rings have also come out. It is now clear that the outfitter forgot to sand the boat before gluing pieces on!

Head wind exhausting on Agnew Lake. Have a nice lunch on rock outcropping before Eagle Rock. Nice fern and pine site on river right before Eagle Rock, but hard to find. Travel down to the last site – the sign is well hidden in the trees-don’t actually notice it until we are all set up! Not great, but flat. Lots of grouse around, and they squawk about us being there, but don’t run away. Sit/sleep on point for 1.5 hours hoping that the winds will die down so we can cross Agnew and get Lynne home. Cheryl flags down a fishing boat for a weather report, and we learn the wind and rains are overdue. So we set up camp and cook a hodgepodge but good supper. A dark evening, and everyone goes to bed early.

Traveled 31 kms.

Weather: 15 C. Hot and sticky. Rain and then overcast. Winds from South for half way across Agnew, and then calm.

Lynne, Cheryl and David awake through the night. It rains off and on lightly (or is it the bugs or snoring?) and the wind doesn’t die down. There are owls calling on the site, and the grouse constantly scrabble about and call. Agreed to get up at 6 a.m. At 5 a.m. we hear thunder, and 45 min. later it begins to pour. Everyone packs up his tent in a hurry at 5:50 when the rain slows down. We are on the water by 6:30, once the thunder has stopped. There is still a light rain, mist, and a head wind. Rain stops by the time we get to Target Rock. Enjoy seeing the cliffs on the west sides, and the interesting sand beaches with huge logs on the east side at Sutherland Point. Make Agnew Lake Lodge by 7:45 a.m. The owner is miserable and surly, and overcharges us for the parking. So we head out to the Busy Bee restaurant on Hwy 69 – good value and a great meal. Doug kindly treated us all to breakfast. Lynne and Ralph surprised David and Cheryl with a Beanie Bunny (to be named Billy) for George!

It rains most of the way home, and we only make one Tim’s stop.

A great trip!!