Had another short trip with my older boy back to Gun Lake in the Frost Centre. Unfortunately left the camera's memory card in the computer at home when last downloading photos. The old point and shoot could only hold about a half-dozen shots in its internal memory so just have a few photos to share.
The weather was pretty decent the first two days (even got sunburned!) but then it started to turn for the worse. Our extremely wet and cool summer meant no fireban this year and water levels were about 10" or so above last year. Unfortunately that meant more bugs (many people have said this is the worst bug season in years) but our elevated campsite meant that breezes off the lake kept the bloodsuckers at bay. Perhaps the fear of bugs also kept other paddlers away because we had the whole lake (with 7 or so campsites) all to ourselves for the first 2 days.
The day we arrived, a crew from the Haliburton Highlands Water Trails came to the site to dig a new hole and install a brand new cedar thunderbox. It smelled awesome which is pretty weird when describing a toilet. They also removed all the garbage and food that previous campers dumped into the privy despite warnings written all over NOT to do this disgusting and dangerous habit. Glad that this potential bear attractant was removed from our site withing an hour of us arriving.
A short paddle from the site was a marshy stream and a waterfall. There were signs of fresh beaver activity too including what looked like a bank beaver hole dug into the muddy shoreline and lots of side channels from the main creek.
Later on that evening a beaver swam right off our site while we were sitting on rocks by the water. We were basically about 15 feet away and stayed perfectly still while it calmly swam right by us. My boy has never seen a beaver in the wild and thought it was the highlight of the trip! Next goal is to see a moose but we will have to go deeper into the bush for that.
Further down the lake were amazing stone cliffs with trees growing out of seeming impossible places. The echo along these walls was neat and probably helped to amplify the loon calls in the evening.
Fishing was good enough to keep him occupied for hours. There was a large shallow rock shelf right off the site that dropped at least 8 ft down. Within minutes of casting he started getting hits including a huge bass that jumped right out of the water but got free of the line. He was disappointed that he couldn't reel it in but for the rest of the trip we kept talking about the "big one that got away".
Much of the rest of the trip was spent just lazily paddling around and practicing some strokes. The little guy is learning pretty well and makes for a great bow paddler. He's really good at drawing left and right quickly when given the command and we practiced some sculling draws to help pull the canoe sideways to the rocky shoreline dock.
All in all a decent trip!
The weather was pretty decent the first two days (even got sunburned!) but then it started to turn for the worse. Our extremely wet and cool summer meant no fireban this year and water levels were about 10" or so above last year. Unfortunately that meant more bugs (many people have said this is the worst bug season in years) but our elevated campsite meant that breezes off the lake kept the bloodsuckers at bay. Perhaps the fear of bugs also kept other paddlers away because we had the whole lake (with 7 or so campsites) all to ourselves for the first 2 days.
The day we arrived, a crew from the Haliburton Highlands Water Trails came to the site to dig a new hole and install a brand new cedar thunderbox. It smelled awesome which is pretty weird when describing a toilet. They also removed all the garbage and food that previous campers dumped into the privy despite warnings written all over NOT to do this disgusting and dangerous habit. Glad that this potential bear attractant was removed from our site withing an hour of us arriving.
A short paddle from the site was a marshy stream and a waterfall. There were signs of fresh beaver activity too including what looked like a bank beaver hole dug into the muddy shoreline and lots of side channels from the main creek.
Later on that evening a beaver swam right off our site while we were sitting on rocks by the water. We were basically about 15 feet away and stayed perfectly still while it calmly swam right by us. My boy has never seen a beaver in the wild and thought it was the highlight of the trip! Next goal is to see a moose but we will have to go deeper into the bush for that.
Further down the lake were amazing stone cliffs with trees growing out of seeming impossible places. The echo along these walls was neat and probably helped to amplify the loon calls in the evening.
Fishing was good enough to keep him occupied for hours. There was a large shallow rock shelf right off the site that dropped at least 8 ft down. Within minutes of casting he started getting hits including a huge bass that jumped right out of the water but got free of the line. He was disappointed that he couldn't reel it in but for the rest of the trip we kept talking about the "big one that got away".
Much of the rest of the trip was spent just lazily paddling around and practicing some strokes. The little guy is learning pretty well and makes for a great bow paddler. He's really good at drawing left and right quickly when given the command and we practiced some sculling draws to help pull the canoe sideways to the rocky shoreline dock.
All in all a decent trip!
