Massassauga Provincial Park

Oh, I have to apologize!  The week just got away from me and I haven't posted since Monday.  Wednesday and Thursday are my busy days, sorry!

I do have pictures of two of the northern canoe trips we went on, after I'd switched to digital photography, so here's one of them, dating from 2011.  This trip was to the Massassauga Provincial Park, just south of Parry Sound on the eastern shore of Georgian Bay.  It's not a river, but an area of lakes, rocks and pine trees almost entirely wild.  There are a couple of old fishing lodges that we never saw.

Once you re close to Parry Sound, you find you're on the granitic rocks of the Canadian Shield.  It's that classic northern canoe country.

You register at Oastler Lake Provincial Park, where I was taken camping as a child, and then you follow a winding road through the bush to the docks on Three-legged Lake.  After paddling for half an hour or so, to the farthest corner of that lake, you arrive at the portage.

Packs slung onto our backs, and canoes overhead, we trundled down the path to the other side, at Spider Lake.  Usually canoe owners prefer to hoist their canoes themselves, and a portage usually takes two trips.  Spider Lake where we've arrived, is the heart of the park, large, ragged and with several deep bays, shaped sort of like a spider.

Guess what Massassauga Park is named after!  We found a campsite, beached the canoes, and got our tents put up.  In fact I think it was the next day when I was walking up the short path from the water that I noticed this pattern in the leaves and pine needles, a metre or so off the trail.  I stood very still!  This looked like a mature Massassauga Rattlesnake, but if you don't bother them, they won't usually bother you.  

Not far away, in the water between the beached canoes, was this enormous Snapping Turtle!  I expect previous campers had inadvertently trained it to visit for food scraps.  Not everyone is careful about their washing up.

Sunrise on Clear Lake - As our canoe group was aging, we picked some gentler trips.  This was one, with no whitewater at all, just flatwater paddling, but plenty of different places to explore over ten days.

This was sunrise on our final day, camped at a different spot on Spider Lake.  No-one wanted to leave!