SATURDAY 8TH - ALGONQUIN

Well that's it for phase 2. We are in Arnprior (in what is not the most luxurious accommodation we have enjoyed) about 80 klms from Ottawa. We return the hire car tomorrow and join the Quark group for phase 3 – the Arctic cruise. We fly to wherever we board the ship on Monday. I expect that wifi on the ship will be poor and expensive so there may be a delay in keeping the blog updated but we will see.

 

Today was an extremely virtuous day mainly spent in that part of the Algonquin Provincial Park accessible by road. Most of it isn't. We did the Ragged Falls walk, the Whiskey Rapids walk and the Beaver Pond walk. We saw the Oxtongue River in some of its many moods.

The Park is home to an extraordinary number of lakes several of which we visited. At Canoe Lake, we gained some understanding of what is a very popular pastime in the park, paddling canoes.

Perhaps the most interesting walk was the Beaver Pond walk. Thanks to very informative brochures which are available at every walk, we learnt a lot about how beavers dam what start out as small forest streams and create enormous lakes in which they build their mound like nests.

What looks like an untidy jumble of sticks in the middle of a shallow lake is actually a nest. It isn't possible to determine by observation which are actively being used and which have been abandoned.

 

When we were visiting Provincial Parks in British Columbia on the other side of the country some years ago, there was a lot of fuss made about the threat of bears in that you always had to walk in groups and make lots of noise The bears are present here too but obviously not regarded as a threat in that the only warnings given are that campers need to keep their food securely locked away. There were no warnings given about their threat to walkers using the numerous trails in the Park.  I don't have any bear photos to post.