LAKE SAINT PETER PROVINCIAL PARK, ALGONQUIN PARK’S LOGGING MUSEUM AND EGAN CHUTES PROVINCIAL PARK, JULY 28-AUGUST 3, 2022

Lake Saint Peter Provincial Park, Ontario, Campsite number 14

For the first time in many years, I decided to book a campsite in a park that I had never visited before. After a perfunctory research, I found out that it was a small park, located on Lake St. Peter, north of Bancroft and relatively close to Algonquin Park. According to the map, some campsites offered a view of the lake and I almost manage to reserve one, but probably somebody else must have hit the button a second before me, so I booked the only remaining campsite number 14.

 

Lake Saint Peter Provincial Park, Ontario, Campsite number 14

When I left home, the traffic on Highway 401 East was moving relatively well, but after a while, I found out about an overturned trailer, blocking all lanes—and to avoid it, I took Highway 404 and then the 407, the toll highway, which, as always, was traffic-free and I could have probably drive 150 k/hr without any problems. I stopped in Peterborough at Bell Mobile, where I activated my first smartphone! I made another stop in Bancroft in Food Mart, got 2 steaks (they were delicious!) and arrived at the park. Indeed, the site was rather small and offered very little (none) privacy from the adjoining campsite and the one across the road. After setting up the tent, I drove back to Bancroft to get wood.

 

Campfire wood for sale in Bancroft, Ontario

Two years ago, while camping in nearby Silent Lake Provincial Park, I discovered a place in Bancroft selling wood. It was run on an 'honour system' and each time I went there, I did not see any owners. This year there was plenty of wood, too, and as I was loading it into the car, a lady walked from the house—and of course, we started chatting. Her husband had passed away not long ago and now she was running this business. I asked her if people ever took the wood without leaving the payment—she said never, which I found quite amazing: as I had already mentioned in my blog about Silent Lake, if she ran such a business in Toronto, in no time the money (and the wood) would be gone!

 

The Hasting Heritage Trail at the entrance to Lake Saint Peter Park. The trail is more suitable for dirt bikes and ATVs than bikes

Along road 27 there is an old rail trail, Hasting Heritage Trail. I had even thought about bringing my bike and riding on it, but some reviewers strongly advocated against it, claiming that the trail's surface was made up of dirt & gravel, very rough due to numerous ATVs using the trail. Indeed, they were right: it would probably take a mountain bike with very thick tires to ride that trail—and when I saw a group of ATV-ers and some motor-cross riders speeding on the trail and leaving a huge cloud of dust behind, I knew it was certainly NOT my kind of a bicycle trail!

 

The Alligator--a boat that could also move overland--in Algonquin Park's Logging Museum, Ontario

 

Algonquin Park's Logging Museum, Ontario. How the loggers lived

One day I drove to Algonquin Park's Logging Museum, which I had wanted to visit for a long time. Logging was probably one of the most important activities in Ontario at that time and I always admired the people who had worked there and the hardships they had faced. The outdoor museum, where I spent over 2 hours, brought that time to life. I hope that one day I will be able to write much more about logging and loggers.

 

Egan Chutes Provincial Park, Ontario

Last year, while staying in Silent Lake, I had driven to Egan Chutes Provincial Park. Unfortunately, the Garmin GPS had the location completely wrong and I ended up in a different place, many kilometers away from the park. I had to manually find the park on my GPS map and program the destination. Once I was close to the park, on road number 28, I could not find the entrance to the park—and to make the whole story short, I had not visited it.

 

Egan Chutes Provincial Park, Ontario

This year I was better prepared and entered the exact coordinates into my car's GPS. Indeed, there was a very small sign saying “Egan Chutes Provincial Park”, but it was only visible if approaching this entrance from the east—and even then it was very easy to miss. In fact, I met two girls on the trail who also had problems finding the park! The short road was quite rough and potholed, certainly impassable to cars with very low clearance. At the end of the road, there were several cars parked here and there.

 

Egan Chutes Provincial Park, Ontario

The first thing I noticed was the abutments of the old bridge, most likely once part of highway number 28. The trail leading to the chutes ran along the river and was quite easy, yet near the chutes it became rugged—and finally I had to walk across and on rocks—a very risky task if the rocks were wet. The chutes were quite scenic and I took a bunch of photos. On my way back I noticed a solid tree, partially chewed up by beavers—probably even beavers gave up at one point, realizing that the task was too challenging for them!

 

Egan Chutes Provincial Park, Ontario. Even the beavers must have given up at one point!

Bancroft still had its old train station, converted into municipal offices; the Hastings Trail ran next to it, in the former railway's right-of-way, and there were a number of ATV-ers and dirt motorcycle riders on it.

 

Nearby was a very interesting museum; I spoke for quite a while to the lady inside the museum—she used to be a nurse in Toronto, but also had a degree in Canadian History and Native Studies—so was very knowledgeable on topics relevant to the local history—I wished I could have spoken with her longer! The museum had a lot of really fascinating exhibits related to the Bancroft area pioneer and native history.

 

The bear trap

One of the exhibits was a simple, yet effective bear trap, made of an old barrel spiked with nails. I remember a similar contraption, probably from the 17th or 18th century, in an old church in Poland—but it was not meant to trap bears, but thieves who had attempted to steal money from collection boxes: once they put their hand down into the bottom of the wooden box to grab money, the spikes made it virtually impossible to withdraw it without having the spikes impaled all over the hand.

 

Perhaps by today's standards such devices appear to be cruel, but I have always been against judging our ancestors' actions by the current standards, as has become so trendy recently. Besides, considering extremely lenient or even non-existent penalties for petty crime, many people would probably be quite content to see such an antiquated anti-thief device make a comeback!

 

 I left Bancroft and headed back home, taking various back roads and hoping to stop at various towns and other places. Unfortunately, it soon started raining and I only stopped in Barrie, where even a quick run from my car to the store caused me to get quite wet! Amazingly, the sky was blue over the Toronto area and it had not had any rain for weeks! 

Algonquin Park's Logging Museums. Reproductions of Tom Thompson's paintings on logging. By the way, today they're worth several millions of dollars!

Blog in Polish/w języku polskim

More photos

Canoeing in Kawartha Highlands Provincial Park and Camping in Silent Lake Provincial Park, Ontario—June, 2012.

Blog in Polish/po polsku: http://ontario-nature-polish.blogspot.ca/2012/07/pywanie-na-kanu-w-parku-kawartha.html
More photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jack_1962/sets/72157631372460608/




Our first ‘real’ camping trip of the season! I visited Silent Lake Provincial Park in 2009 with about 20 people from Meetup; this time only Catherine and I went there. The park is located south of Bancroft, near highway 28—and just north of Kawartha Highlands Provincial Park. This park, encompassing 376 square km, is the largest park in Ontario south of Algonquin Park. It was established less than 10 years ago and until 2010, it was possible to camp there for free—however, as of 2011, permits are required and camping is allowed only on designated campsites. The park has plenty of lakes and canoe routes—some require portaging and thus access to quite pristine and motorboat-free lakes. Since there are quite a few private properties (cottages) in the park, motorboats are permitted on many lakes, yet to prevent the use of motorboats for camping, overnight mooring of motorboats is prohibited in the park.



Because neither Catherine nor I have visited this park before, we wanted to explore its various lakes—and Silent Lake Park made a perfect ‘base-camp’. A week or so before the trip I had done an online research and jotted down numbers of the best campsites in the park. Upon arrival, we managed to get a nice campsite. In less than two hours we set up the tent and unloaded all the other stuff. Early in the evening the weather abruptly changed and we knew something was brewing—at one point it became dark literally in 15 seconds (yes, like in a movie theatre!), a strong gusts of wind hit the campsite, we heard thunder and later saw lighting. It became so windy that I was afraid that tree branches might fall and damage my car (as it happened in 2002 in Arrowhead Park, when a sudden wind blast made a lot of damage in the park—and falling twigs made indentations in my then just-purchased vehicle), so we quickly drove and parked near a comfort station. Thirty minutes later the storm moved away and we even succeeded in starting a campfire. Soon a bunch of raccoons paid us a visit and thus we had to hang our garbage on a cloth line, as they were extremely adept in spreading it all over our campsite. On a few occasions we saw deer (or doe) in the park.



While staying in the park, we made four canoe trips, each time driving with the canoe to Kawartha Highlands. Our first trip was on Wolf Lake on June 20, 2012. Since it was our first canoeing trip of the season, after paddling about one kilometre, we realized we had forgotten... our life jackets (which we usually do not wear on smaller lakes and during nice weather), so we had to paddle back to the car to get them. Later we stopped on a small island to have lunch and continued paddling to the end of the lake, to a relatively short portage leading to Crab Lake (140 m) and then leisurely paddled back. We saw at least one campsite with two campers occupying it—as well as met a solo windsurfer who tried to surf to his cottage, yet was practically stationary as there was hardly any wind. We struck up a conversation with him and eventually gave him a lift, or rather a tow.



The next day we paddled on Long Lake—its name being very appropriate, as it was a very long lake indeed! Next to the parking lot was the Long Lake Lodge with several cottages located on the top of rocky hills (later we met and talked to the owner of this lodge, http://www.longlakelodge.ca/,—we got quite interested in the cottages and might rent one in the fall). It was a very nice paddle—until the weather deteriorated! We stopped on a campsite, donned our rain suits and soon it began to rain. We waited for well over one hour for the rain to stop... Even though it was one of the longest days of the year, it was almost 8 pm and we decided to head back in spite of the rain and reached the parking lot just before 9 pm.



On June 22, 2012, we drove to Anstruther Lake, one of the largest in the park. We thought we could do a lot of paddling there... but when we saw the lake, we did not like it: it was too big and too open—and because it was windy, we knew it would be difficult to paddle on it. Catherine, disappointed with yesterday’s rain, suggested that we go back to Long Lake and paddle to the very end—and it turned out to be a very clever decision! Soon we were passing the familiar shores of Long Lake, left behind the campsite where we temporarily stayed on yesterday (it was already occupied) and reached a portage leading to Buzzard Lake. A canoeists with his two kids was about to start portaging his canoe & camping equipment there; since Catherine wanted to see Buzzard Lake, she grabbed a few of his belongings and accompanied him while I took several photographs of some old shed and boat. Later she told me that this gentleman was a school principal at a Christian School.



As we were paddling on, we saw a canoe with two young guys; they said they were going camping for the weekend (it was Friday). After a short time the lake became larger—we saw a number of cottages along its shores as well as a few campsites on its southern shore. We decided to stop at one of them and have cold beer. We were very surprised to see that it was occupied by a lonely raccoon which appeared to be sick and was trying to approach us.



Although raccoons are very common, it is highly unusual to see them during the day—especially tame ones! We tried to scare it off and eventually it disappeared in the forest. Fifteen minutes later we saw the canoe with the two guys who were actually planning to stay on this campsite (it was probably the greatest campsite in the area!). We chatted with them for a while, then paddled to a very nice island just meters from the campsite, sat on a bench and admired the sunset.



At 9:00 pm we got into the canoe, said ‘bye’ to the two guys at the campsite (they had already set up their tent and a huge tarp) and paddled back, arriving at the parking lot at 10:00 pm. Altogether we paddled over 13 km.



On Saturday, June 23, 2012, we went canoeing in the evening on Eels Lake. We spent some time in a bay near the put-in, full of dead roots, and later paddled north and then turned south into a small bay. The area appeared to be quite wild and after several minutes we reached a long beaver dam—with a beaver sitting on the other shore.



We carried the canoe over the dam and got into another part of the lake, created by the beaver dam (otherwise it would have been a very shallow, swampy area). It was absolutely worth it—it looked very pristine and natural, some of the lake was very shallow and swampy. We spotted a house (cottage?) hidden in the forest, but it appeared nobody was living there. After paddling around the lake, we observed the sunset and then headed back to the car.



It rained on Sunday, starting in the morning. Unable to go paddling, we drove to the nearby town, Apsley near dinnertime for a nice meal. It turned out that the local restaurant, “Swiss Bear”, closed at 3:00 pm on Sundays. We found another place which was closing in 15 minutes but the waitress/cook/bottle washer graciously accommodated our requests.



Later we went back to Apsley; Catherine bought ice cream and later we went to a dollar store where we found a few interesting items at great prices! We also went to Bancroft—a very picturesque town; after walking down the main street, we went to a supermarket where, due to power outage, no credit/debit cards were accepted and most shoppers were unable to pay for their purchases (luckily, I carried some cash with me). We also bought a bag of firewood at Home Hardware and then headed back to the park.

On Monday we packed up and began driving to Toronto. On our way back we visited the town of Lakefield, stopped near the old train station and then drove to Peterborough—the road was following the Otonabee River and the former railway bed—we even saw an old rail bride.



In Peterborough we stopped near the Duke of Wellington Loyal Orange Lodge, built in 1852 and now owned by Trent University. There was a pedestrian bridge over the Otonabee River/Trent Canal—and nearby I saw an abandoned railway swing bridge, as well as the old railway embankment: as the bridge swung, it linked with the rail tracks on the embankment and the train could pass over the channel.



Of course, the tracks must have been lifted long ago as the embankment was now overgrown with vegetation and the bridge quite rusty. There were lots of scullers plying the waterway in their small, sculled boats.



I am really glad we visited this park—it is located relatively close to Toronto and it offers pretty good canoeing and camping opportunities. I am sure we will go there again to canoe and camp!

Blog in Polish/po polsku: http://ontario-nature-polish.blogspot.ca/2012/07/pywanie-na-kanu-w-parku-kawartha.html
More photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jack_1962/sets/72157631372460608/