Algonquin Backpacking- Highland Trails- Day 3

It had rained at about 4 a.m. and apparently there was a thunderstorm Heather tells me. But I slept through the storm though and didn't hear a thing.  One corner of my mom's tent got a bit wet. Ours was relatively dry with the exceptions of a couple places near the walls of the tent. By the time we woke up the rain had stopped but the lake was very foggy. 

There was still water dripping from the trees but it was not supposed to rain for the rest of the day. 

The American Tree Sparrows that were all over in the pine trees did not seem to mind the foggy weather at all. 

We packed up our camp and left our site at about 9 a.m. We had to skirt around the neighbours site in order to get back out to the main trail to continue on. We didn't see them but we could hear that the campers on the neighbouring site were also already awake and moving around.  

Today was going to be the longest leg of our hike and the weather was very humid. We were doing about 7 km today and heading to the campsites on the opposite end of the lake. We planned to take some longer breaks at each of the spots where the small loop joins up with the large loop of the trail plus any shorter breaks we nay need in between. We took a lot of water with us because there were no places that were close to the lake for us to replenish our water supply along the way. 

​ It was supposed to be about 39 degrees with the humidity today according to the weather reports. And I am sure it was. Today was like the bathroom after you have just gotten out of the shower and the mirrors are all fogging up; except you can't open the door or turn on a fan to clear the air. It was hours and hours of hiking through mugginess. 

In light of the humidity I thought it was fitting that I was seeing bunches and bunches of all different kinds of mushrooms and fungi everywhere. 

Somewhere near the beginning of our hike my mom and Heather were up ahead of me. The ground was pretty wet and slippery in places. I was watching my footing and looked down to my left to see an angry swarm of bees near my feet. They had built their nest just to the side of the trail and practically on the trail. I don't know if it was Heather or my mom who may have stepped on the nest or if someone had gone by earlier or if an animal broke it, but these bees were not happy that their was damage to their home. I quickly tried to jump to the right to get out of their way and in doing so I fell to the ground right beside them. My mom heard me fall but had not seen the bees and thought I had just slipped on a wet rock. She turned around and was heading back towards me and called out "Are you OK?"    "BEES!" I yelled.  She didn't quite hear me and was still coming back towards me. Again she asked " Are you OK? Do you need help?"  Again I shouted "BEES!" as I jumped up and started to make a mad dash forward so that I didn't get stung and so that she didn't either. 
   Fortunately none of us got stung and we got out of the area as fast as we could. My mom asked me if I was hurt. I had landed backwards on my palms but my butt hadn't even hit the ground so I wasn't hurt much at all. I replied "I am not hurt as much as I would have been if I had gotten stung by a bee". So that was a narrow escape. 

Eventually we made it to the intersection of the First Loop. Once again there was a a metal box with a map posted inside. We sat for a rest and took a look at the map to calculate how far we had come and how much further we had to go. It was still a long ways off yet. As we sat there taking a break we heard some people coming up behind us. It was two guys who were on their way up to the look out that was part way up the 33km trail. These two guys happened to be the campers that were our neighbours the night before. They had left their tents and gear on their site and intended to do the look out as just a day hike and then go back to camp over night at the same site tonight. We explained that we were headed in the opposite direction and were going to the other side of the lake.  They warned us that we could expect thunderstorms later on tonight and then they said good bye and went on their way. 

After our rest we continued on our way too. We knew it was 2.5 km to the next spot where the large and small trial loops intersected. We planned to stop and have lunch at that intersection. 

At about 11:30 we were pretty tired and the mosquitoes were bad. We hadn't made it to the intersection yet but we found an open area where there weren't many mosquitoes and decided to stop for lunch anyway. We took off our packs and had a good lunch and a long rest.

​ It was so humid that day that when Heather took off her glasses she found that she had a slug crawling around on the arm of her glasses. I wonder how long that little guy had been hitching a ride!  

After lunch we got our backpacks back on and started on our way again. We had ourselves a good laugh when we discovered that the intersection that we had been aiming for as our lunch destination was only about 100 meters away from where we had stopped for lunch. Once again there was a map posted here in a metal box. We checked the map again and figured we had about 4 more km to go until we reached our site. We were about half way for today's hike. 

By now the fog was lifting and the sun was starting to come out. We walked about a half a kilometer or less and met a man by himself heading to the intersection on a day trip to have lunch. We told him that we just passed it not long ago and that he didn't have too much farther to go. He thanked us and we carried on.

We hiked on for about another hour and were on our way up a particularly long and steep hill when we met a man and a woman near the top of it. They told us that we had about 2 or 3 more hills between us and the site we were headed to. So we started calculating distance in hills. "Only two more hills to go!" we said after we climbed the next hill. 

We finally made it to our new campsite at about 3:15 p.m. (5 hills later). It had taken us just over 6 hours to get there. We were hot and tired and very glad that we didn't have to go any further today. Before we even put up our tents we all went in for a swim to cool off.

The water was a bit cold but refreshing and it was clear with no mushy bottom. It was a great place to swim. Even the loons thought so too. 

After having our swim we were ready to set up camp. And what a nice campsite it was. This one was even better than the last two we were on. If you looked to the right you could see the other side of the lake in the distance and how far we had come.

If you looked to the left you could see the part of the lake we had just rounded. There were no other people camping at this end of the lake so it was so peaceful and beautiful. There were about 5 blue jays flying back and forth across the water and calling to each other. 

This site even had a huge flat rock that we could use as a table to play cards on at night. 

Someone had left a clothes line behind so we used it to dry out my mom's bedding that had gotten wet the night before and to hang our bathing suits on. 

There were only 3 small problems with this site. The first was that there was literally only 15 feet between our site and the trail. Buit it was well treed so we still had our privacy.
    The second was that the boom box was quite a ways away on the opposite side of the trail, way back in the thick dense bush. It's alright in the day but a little dicey at night due to there being not as much light and a high volume of rocks and roots to trip over.
    Then there was the third problem. When we first got to the site we had just plopped most of our stuff down on the ground in a little grassy area. After our swim we came back to find that everything that was in the grassy area was covered in a mass of flying ants. Apparently the grassy area was filled with multitudes of holes in the ground all of which were home to hundreds of flying ants. We quickly moved our stuff off of the grassy area and shooed the flying ants away. Once our stuff was off of the ants homes they calmed down and went back into their holes and didn't bother us the rest of the time we were there. 

It was at about this point that the battery on my camera went dead.As you can well imagine, I take hundreds of pictures on my trips and I rely heavily on my camera. I had predicted this might happen at some point and before our Killarney trip I had gone out and purchased a Power Bank from Mountain Warehouse. Luckily I had brought it along with me. It was not clear on the box or with the instructions whether this would act as a charger or as a portable external battery. I had even asked the staff at Mountain Warehouse how it worked exactly and they didn't know. They went online to look it up at the manufacturers website and it didn't say there either.  I was hoping it would be a charger since carrying around a portable battery and cord every time I wanted to take a picture could become cumbersome. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it could act as both. You can take pictures while it is hooked up and it had fully charged my camera after about a half hour. According to the booklet it has about 3 hours of charge in it so I could have recharged my camera or phone many times over. I had got it at half price so it was a great buy. I highly recommend it for anyone who is travelling. 

We set up our tent away from the grass and started getting ready for dinner.

For supper we had rehydrated a mixture of chicken, rice and grains. It tasted pretty good; especially the broth it was in. 

And for dessert we made chocolate pudding in a bag. That didn't turn out quite so well. It tasted fine but the pudding never thickened up the way it was supposed to so we ended up eating chocolate pudding soup. 

It had been a long day and we were all pretty tired so we did not end up staying up very late. Heather and my mom went to bed while I stayed up and tended to the fire for awhile. As I sat there I wondered to myself...what ever happened to the older gentleman we had passed earlier in the day who was going to the intersection for lunch and then turning around and coming back? We never did see him pass by us again. Perhaps he did while we were swimming. Or perhaps he went all the way around the lake. I guess we will never know.
     I sat in the twilight watching the fish jumping in the lake and listening to the crickets and the loons. There must be a flight path through here for planes though, because the low rumbling sounds of planes passing could be heard about every 15 to 20 minutes and it was a little disappointing.
​    Soon enough I headed for bed too. It was a hot and humid night but it was cloudy and overcast so there was to be no star gazing tonight. Since we were told to expect thunderstorms tonight we did not sleep with the tent door open. Tomorrow should be a good day because we do not have far to go tomorrow.