It didn't rain throughout the night and we were able to leave just the screen door up without getting wet. I love waking up to a view of the trees and the lake.

It was a pretty grey and overcast morning but the sun would shine through the clouds every once in awhile and it wasn't raining so all was good. 

At about 9 a.m. the sun came out fully and the clouds disappeared. We were packed up and on the trail by 11 am.  This section of the trail was pretty much all woods. You couldn't see the lake for most of it like you can on the other sections of the trail. The trails were rougher and you can tell that not as many people go through this part of the trail as they do the other parts of the trail.

The bugs were so bad on this part of the trail! Probably the worst place for them for the entire hike was this section. It made me remember why I prefer to go backpacking in August and September. Heather stopped to put on bug spray right away. I should have too but I was stubborn and I figured it wouldn't be long before they would go away. I hate putting chemicals such and bug spray on me. 
However, after a few more minutes, I finally had to give in and put some on. Once I did that, it really helped. I was finally able to enjoy the hike. 

The path eventually led to an open area of marsh. 

At one point we were walking through some long marsh grass. I said to Heather, "All this marsh and we don't even see a turtle or a heron to make it worth while." 

And literally seconds after I said that, a blue heron flew by over our heads!

It was pretty rough going at times. If it wasn't for the blue trail markers, there were some places where you wouldn't even know the trail was there. The underbrush was very thick. 

We were happy to see the White-faced Meadowhawk dragonflies because we knew they were taking care of the mosquito situation. 
We stopped for a break when we were tired. Little did we know that, just like on the Pukaskwa trail, we were only about 500 yards away from our campsite. 

It had only taken us about 2 hours to go from site 529 to site 530. We got there much faster than we expected. This was probably because we were walking so fast to avoid the bugs. 

It's a pretty nice site, but there was very little shade to be found; especially by the picnic table. 

And over by the fire pit wasn't much better either. 

So, instead of setting up the tent right away, we both rested for awhile. I took out my sleeping bag and put it in the shade and took a nap for about a half an hour. 

Meanwhile, Heather went and sat with her feet in the water. 

​She told me later how some little fish came up and hung around at her feet. They would bump into her and gently nibble at her feet to check her out and to see if she might be food. They were mostly sunfish and minnows.

There were a lot of large tadpoles in the lake too. 

At one point, two hikers came up to our site. The minute they saw us they turned around and went back to the trail without saying anything to us. I felt bad because I am sure that they had wanted to stop and stay for awhile on our site. I knew that it would be at least 2 hours before they would get to the next campsite and find a decent place to rest,

Out in the middle of the lake we noticed a baby loon and it's mother. Momma was teaching baby how to fish. 

Baby doesn't really know how to dive yet. He sticks his head in the water but doesn't go right under. Momma would dive and swim a little ways away and then pop up again. Baby would see her and then swim towards her and follow her around the lake. 

I noticed that any time momma got too far away, the baby would start to make faint whistling sounds. Every once in awhile momma would head back to baby and snuggle up with him for a bit to reassure him that she was still there. But one time, I watched with interest when baby couldn't find momma after she made a dive. She popped up behind him but he didn't notice. So he swam around practically the whole lake calling and looking for her. It's a pretty small lake so he didn't travel all that far. Instead of going to reassure him, she just followed behind him, keeping an eye on him. Finally he made a U-turn and noticed that she was right there. I guess that is part of her training him to become comfortable being on his own. 

We set up the tent facing an area of the lake where we thought we might have a chance to see moose in the morning or in the evening of we were really lucky. But we never did see any moose. 

We did a lot of sitting and relaxing on this day. Heather spent time down with the fish and I went exploring in the rockier area at the other end of the site. 

And this female, Common Yellowthroat Warbler.

I also saw another Blue Heron fly by. As I walked back towards Heather a garter snake crossed my path. It quickly made a dash for the underbrush in an effort to hide which made it tricky to get any sort of picture of it. 

Just before we were about to have supper, Momma loon made some very loud calls and then she flew away and left the baby loon all alone. Baby stayed out in the middle of the lake, quietly, by himself. He only called for Momma about 3 times and he seemed to be just fishing and waiting . After about an hour Momma flew by over head. We thought she was going to land, but she didn't. She just kept on going. 

Heather and I had supper around 6 p.m. We had re-hydrated Sloppy Joes. They were good but they gave me heart burn. As we ate supper we could hear a chorus of  frogs starting to croak to one another across the whole lake. It was not the usual low "ribbit" sound, nor did it sound like Spring Peepers. It was more of a higher "pip pip" sound. 

About an hour after supper, Momma loon finally came back. She had been gone for about 3 hours by that point. I am assuming that she was probably visiting Poppa loon on one of the other lakes we had seen him on, or she may have been fishing in a lake that had bigger fish. This lake might not have enough food for her since the lake is so small. Or maybe she just needed to stretch her wings. I don't really know for sure.

​She called loudly and came splashing into the lake like a float plane coming in for a landing. When the baby loon got close to her, he made an adorable whistling sound. Almost like a "coo". 

Now that Momma was back she had a new lesson for baby to learn. She began to teach him how to taxi across the water. He couldn't fly yet, so he couldn't lift off. Momma would propel herself across the lake, flapping her wings hard as though she were going to take off, but then she would stop. She waited and watched while the baby loon mimicked what Momma had just done. However, he was not nearly as proficient at it as she was. He flapped his wings as fast as he could and propelled himself across the water, but it was ungraceful and very awkward looking. But he was trying, and I am sure that it will only be a few more days before he gets it right. He was already diving better than he was earlier in the day. "Practice makes perfect", as they say. 

As we were looking for a place to hang our food in the tree, Heather discovered the bones of an animal. Looks like it may have been something form the weasel family. Not sure what happened to it. My first thought was that maybe an owl got it. But Heather thought that maybe this weasel got too close to the loon's  babies and the loon attacked and killed it. Could be why the loon has only one baby instead of a full brood. But then loons only lay 1 to 3 eggs. So who knows really. 

For the rest of the evening we played Quirkle at the picnic table.

From there we could see the sunset across the lake. 

We played until it got to dark to play anymore. 

Then we packed it up and moved into the tent and played Quirkle some more in there. 
We went to sleep at about 10 p.m. to the sounds of crickets, frogs, the occasional loon call, and even the hooting of an owl once or twice.

What a gorgeous morning! The sun was shining and it was a beautiful day. 

We ate breakfast and started to pack up. A little Red-breasted Nuthatch came to watch our progress.
As we packed up, a gentleman came by and asked if he was on the right trail (because it went right through our campsite so he seemed hesitant to go through). I assured him that it was and welcomed him through. 
At some point the girl from the next campsite over went by. She was so quiet that I didn't notice her until she was already past us. So I never got to say good morning to her. 

We left camp at about 11:30 a.m. The bugs were pretty bad for the first 20 minutes or so. 

But that was because we were in a  marshy area again, and well, it was July so the bugs were to be expected I guess. After awhile the bugs became less and less. 

 We followed the edges of lakes and streams for  pretty much the whole trail. 

When we had been hiking for about 45 minutes we met up with a woman who had just come from site 530 (the campsite we will be staying on the night  after this one). We stopped to talk with her for a good long time. She told us how she was backpacking alone and that she was testing out her new walking sticks that she had just bought.

We must have talked for at least 20 minutes or more, swapping stories and exchanging backpacking tips. She recommended the walking sticks and the tent hammock, which is what she used. We told her about the platypus that we use to filter water. We told her about our adventures on the La Cloche trail in Killarney and she recommended Frontenac Park. So we will have to check out Frontenac Park one of these days soon. 

   We never did get her name, but I told her about this blog. (So if you are reading this, a shout out to you! We really enjoyed meeting you and talking to you!) We eventually parted ways and continued on towards our destination, site 529.

The section from site 527 to site 529 is probably the most beautiful section of the  entire trail.  We passed many beautiful streams. 

It was so beautiful in fact, that we passed a couple that we had passed the day before. They told us that this was their second time hiking the trail in two days. 

There were many places along the water's edge where Cardinal Flowers were growing in a rich and vibrant red colour. 

We stopped for lunch just past the loop that branches off of the Essens loop (where the Abes loop starts).
It was a nice enough spot but if we had known, we would have gone just a little bit farther where there was an even nicer spot up ahead that would have been a great picnic area. 

There wasn't a good spot to set up our little stove so we ended up setting it up right in the middle of the trail. We could see if people were coming and we were close to the water. So we figured it was better to set up there than on a slanted hill close to the trees. It turned out to be a wise call. 

As we waited for the water to boil for our soup and noodles, the hiker that had passed through our campsite this morning came back down the trail towards us on his way back out again. We chatted with him for awhile. He told us how he wasn't going around the whole loop and that he just went as far as site 529 (our destination site) and was now on his way back. He explained that he was not a backpacker, only a hiker. We told him all about the pros and cons of of backpacking and gave him lots of tips in case he ever wanted to try it. By the time we finished chatting and he was ready to head off, he said that we had him convinced that backpacking was the way to go. So who knows, maybe one day we will meet up with him again on one of our backpacking trips. 

We ate a quick lunch and rested up for a bit before we carried on. After only travelling for a very short time we came across the spot that would have been perfect for a picnic lunch. If you ever hike this trail you will know it when you see it. There is a spot with a little mini water fall (not very big at all, but it is cute). 

There are lots of rocks to sit on and the view is quite nice. 

There were Ebony Jewelwing damselflies hanging out among the Cardinal Flowers. 

Actually, the Ebony Jewelwings were very plentiful here. 

There were also a number of Variable Dancer damselflies (also known as a Violet Dancer).

Our journey took us to another little waterfall.

And then we came to a place where the trail became tricky to navigate. The trail markers were not as clear here. There was a big beaver pond to our left.

And on the right was a huge grassy marsh. Can't go right and can't go left, so all you could do was go straight ahead. 

And what do you do when there is a large beaver dam in the middle of the trail, right in front of you? 

Well, you just climb over it of course. Yep, that's right. The beaver dam is part of the trail. 

On the other side of the beaver dam we stopped to watch a blue heron fly by overhead. The vegetation all around us was up to our shoulders. I was almost beginning to think we should have brought a machete.

​But we pushed our way through. There are no boardwalks here. One false move and you are going to be wearing wet hiking boots for the rest of the day. We managed to make it to the other side without getting too wet though, and once again we were in among the trees. 

It seemed like no time before we were passing the sign for site number 528. There were people already on that site so we didn't go down to take a good look at it. 

But we could tell, even from a distance, that it seemed to be a pretty nice site out on the point. 

Finally our campsite came into view. Site 529. It was only 3:35 pm. Hiking "51 dots " only took us about 3 hours (not including stops for lunch and breaks).

Our site was pretty nice. There is a great view of the lake. The sound of a loon greeted us as we arrived. 

The rocks go right down to the water. The lake bottom doesn't seem to be gooey and muddy, but since a cool wind was up and we were too tired, we didn't go in for a swim to test that theory out. It looked like a good place to swim though. 

The only down side to this campsite is that you can see the neighbours on the other campsite across the water from you. They were far enough away I guess, but you could still see them there most of the time. It was a little disappointing.  But we did have privacy for the bathroom this time!

For one thing, there was a huge boulder acting as a wall between the campsite and the thunder box. Plus, the thunder box was off the beaten path a little. 

We got water and then we put up our tent. We chose a location that was not in direct view of our neighbours. 

As I was unpacking I came across a little hitchhiker. It was what I know as a shield bug.  What I didn't know at the time is that this is also known as the "Green Burgundy Stink Bug" and if disturbed it could let off a foul smell. But I guess I didn't disturb it because I did not experience any foul odors from it. 

Once we were set up, we did a little exploring of the area. We were pleasantly surprised when Heather found 2 folding chairs stashed beside a bush near the fire pit. When you are backpacking, you don't bring chairs with you, so we felt spoiled to be able to sit in these ones for the evening. 

We saw a rather large toad. There have been quite a few toads on this hike. Mostly tiny, baby ones. You had to be very careful not to step on them while you were hiking. This one was much bigger in comparison. 

Supper tonight was re-hydrated Kraft Dinner. Every day we have a different hydrated food in a container attached to our backpacks. We just add water in the morning and carry it around all day. By the time it is supper time the water has soaked in to the food and we are able to cook it and eat it. It's a simple way to carry in meals that are light weight. 

We also dehydrate foods that we don't need to cook or add water to, like these dehydrated raspberries.  Sometimes we make beef jerky or fruit roll-ups using real fruits. 

We dumped our Kraft Dinner into a cooking pot made from a coffee can and some wire. We cut up some beef jerky to mix in with it and give it more flavour.  It may not have been high end cuisine, but it hits the spot when you have been hiking for hours. 

The previous campers not only left us some chairs, but they left us some wood too. So we used it to cook our supper. We didn't burn it all. We left some for the next campers too. We sat around the fire and watched the fish jump in the lake. There were a whole lot of fish jumping at this spot. One would jump probably every minute or so; and that isn't even an exaggeration! 

The loon that had called to us when we first arrived swam closer to us so we could watch it while we ate our meal.

Then a beaver slapped it's tail on the water not too far away from us. It sounded like a loud crack. Not long after that it it swam right by us. 

Then sun was going down and the bugs were coming out. We put our food up in the tree just as the bugs were getting really bad. We had to escape into the tent to avoid them.

Inside the tent we played Quirkle for awhile.  But we had to put our game on hold while Heather made a trip to the bathroom. When she stepped out of the tent, she called out to me "Dana! You have to see this!"  In the sky the moon was big and orange. The reflection of the moon on the lake made it look almost like there were two moons. It was very beautiful. We both grabbed our cameras and hoped that the pictures would turn out ok in the dark. The cameras did capture the image but didn't do it justice. 

We weren't expecting rain so we decided to leave the solid door of the tent open and sleep with just the screen door up so we could see the moon. It was such a lovely night.

    The morning was beautiful and quiet. We couldn't hear any of the sounds you usually hear in a campground setting. There were no kids yelling, no loud talking or sounds of nearby campers moving about. There wasn't even the sounds of the noisy flocks of crows and other birds that you hear in a campground. It was so quiet that it almost seemed as though we were already on the trail.  It is so peaceful here. 
   We ate breakfast and got ready to go to the art exhibition. We decided we would come back to the campsite to get our backpacks later. We made a quick stop to the bathroom before we went. Outside the bathroom was a little girl and her parents and they were looking up at the green roof of the bathroom. Tucked in under a ledge was a little nest with two baby birds quietly waiting for their mom and dad to come back and feed them. They were so quiet that if the little girl hadn't been pointing them out to her parents, I never would have known they were there.

By 10:30 a.m. we were off to the art exhibition and sale. The show was much bigger than I had expected. Apparently they host this show annually and if you happen to be around one year while it is on I highly recommend that you stop in to take a look. And bring some money because I am sure there are things you will want to buy. I certainly wished I had more money on me at the time, that's for sure! 

This section of the park was filled with rows and rows of tents filled with fantastic works of art. 

One of my favourite booths was that of ​Ted & Sheri Oosterlaken who made gorgeous concrete furniture. I bought a couple of cement coasters from them. One day I hope to buy a bigger commissioned piece from them. I will leave their website address right here so that I ( or you) can find them again.  :)
http://www.tuscanyconcrete.com/index.html

Heather and I instantly fell in love with an oil painting of some storm clouds over the mountains done by Rick Phieffer. Heather is going to save up so that she can buy it from him. 

I spoke for awhile to David Dossett who paints on the screen of screen doors. He has a little shop in the town of Kingston which is hidden down a little alley.

Heather bought a couple of prints of a moose from the artist Gerry Wright. (Sorry my photo is pretty blurry and does not represent his work very well at all... but you get the idea. For better pictures of his work, click on the link below)
https://galleryraymond.com/artists/gerry-wright/

Every one of the artists here were very talented. If you are interested in art, then here is a list of the artists that attended the exhibition and their websites. 
https://www.bonechofriends.ca/art-exhibition-and-sale-2018
​​
Since we were in the middle of the park, there were no ATMs or debit machines. So to purchase something with a card, the artist would write down on a slip of paper, the piece of artwork that you wanted and the price. Then you take the paper down to the park's gift shop (which is a cute little cabin in the woods) and pay for it there. Once you have paid for it, you take the receipt back to the artist and then you can get your art. We did this for Heather's moose prints.  

On the wall inside the gift shop was a wall decoration of "Mazzie" the local lake monster. I didn't even know they had a lake monster until I saw this. 

More art was for sale inside the gift shop. I don't think any of it was from the same artists in the exhibition.

This print caught our attention. There are a number of hidden animals in it that you have to find, Where's Waldo style.  This piece is called "Spirit Path" and is done by Blake Richardson.  You can find more of his Earthprints as well as his Earthen Sculptures on his EarthArt website:
https://blakerichardson.com

I bought a new compass and a nifty grey and blue Bon Echo T-shirt. The prices of the T-shirts were pretty reasonable here. Heather was going to buy a hat for the trip because she forgot hers at home, but the ones she was looking at either only came in children's sizes, she didn't like the looks of them or they were a bit too pricey. So she didn't buy one. 

The gift shop is also where you can buy tickets for the boat that takes you to see the pictographs on the cliffs and to the cliff top trail on the other side of the lake. But we didn't have time for the boat. that will have to be another day.

Directly across from the gift shop is the Visitor's Center. There used to be an Inn in the park before it burnt down decades ago. The Visitor center is a cabin from the original inn. 

They had a diorama of the original inn inside. It looked like it was a pretty grandiose building at one time. 

There was a young lady on staff there who told us a bit about the place. She said that somewhere in the cabin the previous owner had carved "Dollywood" into the boards somewhere. She was going to show us but she got side tracked by other people before she had a chance. But, not before she gave us a map for our backpacking trail. Up until this point we were having difficulties finding a map. All the brochures and such had information on the trails but no map. We were thrilled to get a map and were even happier to find that it was made of water resistant paper. But even this map did not have the distances from site to site in it. We know that the whole trail is about 19 km, but we didn't know the breakdown of those distances. 

After picking up Heather's moose prints from Gary Wright, we went back to our campsite and packed up. We had to be off the site by 2 p.m. and we made it by a hair. We were off the site at 1:50 pm and headed to the park office to register for the Abes and Essens hiking trail. 

The guy at the office asked us the usual questions "What colour is your tent? What is your license plate number?" etc.  Then when he had us all registered he gave us two permits; one for the car and "one for the post on your site"......We said thanks and then left. On our way out the door, Heather and I said to each other "There are posts at each back country campsite? That's different."  There actually isn't any posts in the back country campsites. I think the guy just has a little blurb rehearsed and he says it so often that he didn't click in that we wouldn't have a post to put it on. 
      
We had to drive back a fair distance the way we had come to get got to the parking lot at the trail head. We finally got there at about 2:25 pm. Since the first site that we had reserved is closest to the end of the trail instead of the beginning, we were going to be doing the trail backwards. This meant that we had to walk a little ways up the road with our backpacks on before we even got to the trail. But it also meant that when we came out of the bush on the last day, we would come out just across the road from our car. 

We stopped to check out the trail head sign and map and then we began our hike. The Abes and Essens Trail  has 3 loops. The shortest loop is Clutes Lake loop, followed by the Essens loop and then the Abes loop.  So the first part of our journey is hiking the Clutes trail. We were happy to finally begin.

The trail itself was extremely well kept,  wide, and easy to maneuver.  In my opinion, this is a perfect trail for beginner backpackers. It's not very strenuous with the exception of a few uphill climbs from time to time. 

We were only in the bush for a minute or so when we were swarmed by mosquitoes. And I mean swarmed. I counted about 15  on Heather as she walked and a whole bunch more flying around her. It was bad enough that we actually had to stop and put on long sleeves and spray some bug spray (and I rarely use bug spray). 
I was already thinking that if the bugs were going to be this bad then I was probably going to be miserable for the whole trip. What had I gotten myself into? We realized that the reason for so many mosquitoes was because we were passing right by a marshy area on our left. 

Fortunately, the further into the woods we went and the further away from the marshy area, the fewer the mosquitoes. After about 5 to 10 minutes there were no mosquitoes at all. And the wind picked up a bit so that also helped. 

One of the things I like best about this trail is that, for about 3 quarters of it, you have some sort of view of a lake as you are walking. 

Where the Clutes meets up with the Essens trail there is a cute little boardwalk bridge. It is the perfect place for a picnic lunch because there are plenty of open spaces to put a picnic blanket down or sit on some rocks and it is very scenic. 

There is a little pond on one side with a whole lot of water lillies.

As well as a bunch of white Buttonbush flowers. ​Buttonbush is a swamp/marsh shrub. It likes to grow where there is water all or most of the year. Most people don't get to see this shrub because of this.

The area near the bridge was so nice that a little garter snake was enjoying it too. 

After a short break we started down the second loop of the trail; the Essens Lake loop.

When you weren't looking at a lake, you were often times looking at a marsh of some sort. 

It wasn't too long before we got to site # 526. 

It is a beautiful site. But as nice as it was, it wasn't our site. Ours was number 527. According to the map it wasn't too much farther ahead, but we stopped here momentarily anyways so that Heather could use the bathroom. It was not very easy to find on this site. Despite this, I think that this site was one of the nicest ones on the trail. If I were to reserve again in the future, I would try to get this site.

Someone left a frying pan behind at site 526. I can only imagine that either they forgot it or that it was too heavy to carry. A frying pan on a backpacking trip is not something that seasoned backpackers usually bring. Could be a day tripper who left it behind though. 

And someone also left a green, plastic, water bottle behind, hanging above the fire pit, instead of taking their garbage out with them.

Our site was just over the ridge. The signs for the sites here are bright orange easy to see. There is no confusing which site is which, like the problem we had at Pukaskwa.

​​And the campsites all have picnic tables! Now that's glamping for backpackers! 

Our site was pretty nice too. It was big and it had plenty of shade. There were really only two downfalls to it. The first was that it was up on the top of a hill. That meant going down a large hill to get to the water. 

It was definitely an incline but not so steep that we feared we would roll down the hill or anything like that. There were some nice big boulders to sit on at the bottom.  

And once you were down the hill there was a beautiful view of Lake Essens. 

The second problem with the site was the thunder box. As difficult as the bathroom was to find at site 526, we had the opposite problem with ours. Our thunder box was in full view of anyone who happened to be walking down the trail. The trail runs right through site 527.  You had to just cross your fingers and hope that no one was hiking past when you needed to go pee. 

When we got to our campsite, we didn't even set up camp right away. We took off our packs and went into the lake for a swim. The water churned up little bits of debris when you stepped into the shallow end of it, but the water was warm and it was nice. 

After a swim, we set about setting up camp. As we were doing this a guy and a girl hiked by from the opposite direction that we had been travelling in, and each was carrying a grocery bag. They told us that they had gathered up a grocery bag each of garbage from the campsite they had passed through awhile back and they were taking the garbage out with them. We were all disappointed that anyone would leave garbage out there like that. We thanked them for cleaning up because it was where we were headed tomorrow and it would have been us trying to carry the garbage out with us from site to site. 

While we continued to set up a new girl came by. She didn't say anything but  headed straight over to use the thunder box. As, I mentioned, the thunder box is in full view of everyone near by. So we saw her reach the box and then stand there and look at it for a moment or two deciding if she wanted to use it. Heather and I looked away out of politeness, but it didn't matter because she changed her mind and came back up towards us to the main trail. 
   We asked her if she was staying on site 526 and she said yes and that she was staying there by herself. I told her that there was actually another bathroom close to her site, but she would just have to search a little for it. We also told her that it had way more privacy than ours did. She seemed pretty happy to hear this and she went back to find her own thunder box. 

After we were all settled in and set up, Heather pulled out the map to see if we could figure out how many kilometers we had to travel tomorrow.  There were no kilometers listed on any of the maps we had found so far and this one was no different. We knew the entire trail was about 17 kilometers, but we didn't know the breakdown of the kilometers from campsite to campsite. Looking at the map we figured we did about 2 km today. So Heather counted all the dots on the map. She said "We traveled 22 dots today and we will travel 51 dots tomorrow".  I chuckled at our newly found form of measurement. From what she gathered, every 8 dots seemed to be a kilometer. So tomorrow we would be travelling just over 6 kilometers to site 529.

For supper we had stew that we had been re-hydrating in plastic containers we had been carrying on the side of our packs all day. We would need more water for tomorrow so we got out  Heather's brand new Platypus that she got for her birthday and we cleaned some water. I think I will invest in one of these myself one day. 

The evening was fantastic. It wasn't too cold and it wasn't too hot. The site has a good amount of shade but still enough sun. It looks even prettier in the evening than it does in the daytime. 

We gathered wood for a fire and we hung our food in the tree. There are no bear bins on any of the sites on this trail. 

We started a fire after dusk (around 9 pm). We didn't make a very large fire because we didn't want to stay up all night to tend to it. It was just enough of a fire to say we had one. 

It was a gorgeous evening. The moon was out and Venus was big and bright and setting in the sky. We sat and enjoyed the peacefulness of the evening. Eventually we headed into the tent and played a game of Quirkle or two until we were too tired. It had been a good day and we were looking forward to seeing what tomorrow would bring. 

It was a very bad year for forest fires in Ontario this year. We have come to expect them in the western provinces every summer, but this year Ontario was hit so bad that they called in back up fire fighters from other provinces, the USA, and Mexico.  Much of the province was on fire all at the same time. As a result, there were fire bans, and in our case the backpacking trail we were supposed to hike in Algonquin Park (Achray Campground) was closed to the public. This meant a last minute change in plans for our trip. So we scrambled to find any last minute places to go backpacking that weren't already reserved and were not in the burn areas. As you can see from the map below, this was no easy task. (Screen Capture of the fires from the Ontario website was taken a week or two after the trip. The grey areas are fires that are no longer burning. Yellow is new fires and orange is active fires. At the time of the trip, most of the grey areas were yellow or orange). 

After a couple days of searching the internet, my sister, Heather, and I decided upon the Abes and Essens Trail in Bon Echo Provincial Park. Southern Ontario, where Bon Echo is located, did not get hit with the fires. At least not to the degree that northern Ontario has. There were still fire restrictions but at least the forest wouldn't be burning all around us. It was one of the few places left to go backpacking without having to drive crazy amounts of hours to get there. So, we phoned and cancelled at Algonquin and reserved our sites on the Abes and Essens Trail. We planned to stay the first night in the campground at Bon Echo Provincial Park and then head out on the trail the next day. 
   We left home at 12:30 pm with all of our gear packed into the car. We knew the general direction to go for the most part and Heather had written down the directions using a pen and paper. But once we got off the main highway and headed south we decided to use the GPS on our phones, or as Heather likes to call it "Lady Google". 
    Fair warning to all, DO NOT TRUST LADY GOOGLE! Every time we turned around Lady Google was trying to lead us off the main highways and down all the back roads. If we had relied solely on her instead of using her as just a bit of a reference, we would have added an extra hour or two to our trip. And for some reason she does not want you to travel down highway 41. So Heather was the navigator and I just drove and let her and Lady Google battle it out. 
    For the most part it was sunny but at one point there was a rain storm with a down pour so heavy that we had to pull off to the side of the road and wait for a bit until it passed. We were the first to pull off the road but we weren't the only ones to do this. About 3 or 4 other cars ahead and behind us did the same. 
   Soon enough we were driving in the sunshine again and we eventually made it to Bon Echo at about 5:30 pm. 

   When we got to the office we were happy to hear that the fire ban had just been lifted! I guess that down pour of rain we had did the trick!
   While we were at the office checking in, we noticed a sign for an Art event being held July 27, 28, and 29 from 10 am to 4 pm. We decided that before we start backpacking the next day, we would go and check that out. We knew that we only had to go about 2 km the first day so we had plenty of time to see the art work before we went.

There are two campground areas in the park. There is the Mazinaw campground and the Hardwood Hills section. We got site 499 in the Hardwood Hills section. It was one of the only sites left when we had reserved it. The road leading to Hardwood Hills is nice and wide but it is also  fairly long and it feels like you are driving forever to get there.  The park has a very "woodsy" feel to it. By that I mean that the underbrush is thicker than at many of the parks I have been to. This makes for great privacy in your campsite. 

    We were amazed to see how big our campsite was. It was huge! We could have had an army of tents on this site! And we had a bathroom just in front of our site. Of course there are pros and cons to this. On the one hand its nice to have a bathroom close by, but on the other hand the bathroom is just an outhouse and when the wind shifted, you could smell it. Luckily the site was so huge and our tent was at the far end of it so we didn't smell it over where our tent was. 

   Once the tent was set up and we had our packs sorted and ready to go for the next day, we ate supper. It is our usual tradition to buy a small pre-cooked chicken to eat for supper on the first night since from then on after we would only be eating dehydrated food. So we had chicken and macaroni salad.
   After supper we took a walk to explore what we could of the campground before it got dark. This park has a number of walk-in sites. We didn't get to see them up close because we didn't want to go traipsing through other people's sites, but we did get a sneak peak as we walked through the designated parking area for those sites.  From what little we could see, they didn't seem all that impressive. 

We located the comfort station . It could use a bit of updating on the inside but it was OK. At least it had a pop machine outside the door.  Heather wanted to come back here later in the evening to take a shower and so that we could get a cold drink form the pop machine. 

​   So we walked back to our campsite and relaxed for a bit and had coffee and hot chocolate. A little later we drove the car back up to the comfort station. The bathroom was very muggy so someone had propped the outer door open. As I waited for Heather to take her shower, I saw a little mouse pop it's head in the door way and take a look at me real quick before it scurried away into the woods. 

 Heather said that the showers were hot....too hot! To the point where she that if she had any children with her she would not let them shower there in case they got scalded. . She said that it got even hotter when anyone flushed the toilets. 

On the way to the car we stopped for a drink at the pop machine. There was one button that we called the "mystery drink". The label on top looked like it could be Brisk Iced Tea. But underneath you could see another label for some sort of Dole fruit juice. Heather took a chance and put her money in and bought the mystery drink. 

And it was a Dole Apple Juice! I never would have guessed. I thought for sure it would be the Brisk Iced Tea. 

   Back at the campsite we played Quirkle for a couple of hours. The night was a bit chilly. We could see our breath. So the mosquitoes were not out, but we were joined by a few other insects like a teeny tiny shad fly.  

And a Robber fly (also known as an Assassin fly).  Of course at the time I hadn't read up on this fly and I thought nothing of it hanging out on my hand. Once I got home and looked it up I found out that  " Robber flies deliver a painful bite, so be careful with them. They don’t “go after” humans, but if you mishandle them, they might bite. Their bite, adapted for their predatory lifestyle, injects digestive enzymes and a painful venom. If one lands on you, don’t slap it — instead, brush it lightly away". Had I known I would probably have been a little more panicky about it being on me. But it never bit me or Heather so all was well. 

It was lights out around 11:30 pm. That's a pretty early night for me, but we were wanting to get a good nights sleep because we were anxious to get started the next morning on the Abes and Essens Trail. 

When I woke up in the morning, Carsten and Penny were already up and had breakfast waiting for me. As we sat and ate, a little red squirrel went running by with his own breakfast in his mouth. He had been gathering  mushrooms for breakfast. 

​We had seen a trail on the map that was called the Big Bend Trail. It was supposed to be a fairly short trail so we decided to pack a lunch and hike the trail and then head over to one of the beaches to eat. 

We figured we would drop our garbage off at the waste management site along the way. We had to laugh and shake our heads when we got to the waste management site because there were "bear proof" garbage bins, but they were so full that people had taken to just leaving their garbage outside the bins. That kind of defeats the purpose of having bear proof bins!

​Big Bend Trail was not what I consider to be a hiking trail. It is more of a walkway to a landmark. The map says that this is a 15 minute trail but it took us all of two minutes to walk the "trail".  However, the destination made you forget that you were tricked out of a hike. 

In front of us was where the river made a huge bend in its travels so that it almost looked more like a moat than a river. This oxbow encircles an area of trees and shrubs that looked small from the height we were standing at. 

The area is all fenced in for good reason. 

As far as you can see, along all the edges are cliffs of beach sand. Big Bend erodes one foot every year. By having a platform for people to view this, it keeps the erosion from accelerating. 

All down the sides of the beach sand cliffs you can see trees that have fallen over and slid down the hill due to this erosion. I imagine that anyone who was at the bottom and wanted to climb up would have a pretty tough time of it. 

As we stood there taking in the view we noticed something swimming in the water. At first we thought it was a muskrat. But then all of a sudden it jumped out of the water, landed about two feet from on shore and started scampering straight up the sandy cliffs. 

As it got closer, to our surprise, we realized that it was a squirrel!  I'm not sure if I was more amazed to find out that squirrels could swim or to see this little guy climb these hills with sand rolling out from beneath it's feet the whole way.  It was not an easy task at all and it took him a fair amount of time to do it. He never stopped even for a second. I don't know if this is because he knew that if he stopped he was going to slide back down and would never make it to the top, or if something had chased him from one side of the river to the other and was fearing for his life. At any rate, he was the focus of attention for us and all the other people at the Big Bend as we cheered the little guy on. Finally he made it to the top and scampered away. 

The Big Bend trail does wind its way around the edge for a bit and then heads into the forest towards the campground. We chose to walk the trail a little to see where it led. 

This trail turned out to be just another winter trail. But it did eventually lead us past the cabins that you can rent in the park. So we got to check those out. 

There were plenty of damselflies flitting around on the trail.

After awhile we headed off to one of the 3 beaches for lunch. We went to Beach 2 since it was the closest. But it was crowded and there were no picnic tables or picnic shelters. Since it was supposed to rain soon we were really hoping for a picnic shelter. 

So we tried going to Beach 3 which is named Roe Beach. It was difficult to get to because it was on long winding, narrow, rough,  roads and wasn't easy to find. Once we got there we found it to be small and cute with a nice view but  there was no picnic shelter there as well. This beach was worse than the last one though because there was doggie doo all over the place on this beach. And I mean everywhere! Not just a little spot here and there.  I am pretty sure it is not the dog beach, but clearly people were bringing their dogs here and not thinking about how their dogs would have an impact on other people's enjoyment of the beach. I bet the dog beach was probably cleaner than this one was. So we left that beach too. 

Instead of going to Beach 1 we decided to instead head back to camp for lunch. We ended up toasting english muffins over the camp stove since the fire ban was still on. That made for a bit of fun because english muffins do not like to stay put on hot dog sticks. And they get a bit crumbly when they are heated. 

After lunch Penny and I went Geocaching. There is only one real cache in the area and it is situated just outside the park entrance. According to the posts of the other geocachers who were there in the past, the geocache was no longer there and had been "geotrashed".  So Penny and I came up with the idea to revive the dead geocache. We got a plastic container, a little notebook, a couple of pens, and some little treasures. We packed them up and headed off to replace the missing cache. 

The spot wasn't too difficult to find. I did have a problem syncing my phone to the location on the app, However, Penny had her phone too so between us I think we stashed the cache in the right place. Then we headed back to camp with a feeling of a job well done. 
The rest of the day and evening was spent relaxing and playing board games.
Another Dobson Fly showed up in the dining tent again. But this one was smaller and wasn't upset. So we were able to play our board games until bedtime which for us was around 11 pm that night.

 
It rained during the night . The tent held up well and did not leak. But then, it wasn't all that much rain. At least not enough to lift the fire ban. 

I heard something around my tent during the night. Whatever it was, it was only small and left some tiny little footprints in the dirt. It was probably that little jumping mouse again. 

And that is where this camping trip ends. We packed up and drove home before lunch. We had a good time at Arrowhead and will definitely come back again; perhaps in the winter to skate down one of the trails. 

Arrowhead Park is a wonderful little park that is open year round. We were here before when we were kids and I have always remembered it fondly. It's a big park with lots of trees for privacy and it's very quiet. Even the kids on the next campsite over were barely heard through the thick trees. 
   Unfortunately at this point there was a total fire ban in effect so no camp fires for us. Our meals were cooked on a Coleman stove the whole time we were here. Considering in the city we live in we could smell  and see the smoke in the air from the many forest fires all around us, we could understand the cautiousness and being careful about not starting any new forest fires. 

We were on site 330. It was quite large and private with lots of shade. The first night we were here we went to bed relatively early. As a die hard night-hawk that meant I was awake pretty early in the morning. Six a.m. is way too early for me so I tried to go back to sleep. Finally at 7:45 I gave up and decided to get up.  

Everyone else was still asleep, so instead of making a lot of noise and waking them up I walked down to the Stubbs Falls Trail which was quite close to our campsite. In a matter of minutes I was at the trail. 

​The trail is wide, nicely groomed, and easy to walk down. It was so quiet and peaceful that it was easy to feel like you were the only one in the park. It was a bit chilly since the sun was not high in the sky yet and there was a lot of shade. But as the day wore on it got warmer. 

Soon I was climbing down the long winding stair case towards the rushing water. I remembered how, as children, my siblings and I had sat in the shallow parts of the moving water and how fun it was to feel the push of the water  over us as we tried to keep our balance. 

But this sobering sign kind of took the fun out of that idea. We had never been in any area of the water that was dangerous. We had only been in the water that ran off from the main stream. But I guess the sign is a good reminder to those who considered getting into the more powerful part of the rapids. Especially since a lady had died here only weeks before we arrived. 

The view from the bridge was beautiful in the morning sun. 

And equally beautiful on the other side of the bridge. 

I was surprised to see so many people down at the falls this early in the morning. There were about 6 other people there. One by one they all left until it was just me. I was glad for this because I had wanted to spend some time with just me and God and contemplate the beauty of his creation. 

Some of the things that I contemplated were that God is an amazing artist and that his art is alive. He uses living mediums and his art work is always in a constant state of change and movement....this reminded me of the portraits in the Harry Potter movies, geek that I am. We have some amazing artists in this world that can make paintings and sculptures look like they are real, but really they are lifeless. They are only just symbols and copies of the real artwork. It's like someone taking a photo of the Mona Lisa, rather than having the original Mona Lisa in their house. It's just a reminder or a memory of the real thing. These thoughts made me appreciate Gods creations all that much more.

I stayed at the falls for about an hour with my thoughts and watching the water run and the fish trying to swim in the current. Then I went back to the camp but Carsten and Penny still weren't up yet. So I decided to follow some roads that were running along the back of our campsite. We had wondered what the roads were for since they didn't seem to be for any current traffic flow and they were not on the main map. As I walked along them I think I figured out what they were for. I am pretty sure they are part of the winter trails. In the winter the park is still open and they offer trails for skiing, snow shoeing and, to my surprise, even as ice skating trails. That's right... you can ice skate down their trails! I think this may have been one of their ice skating trails. I walked these trails for some distance. Sometimes they ran right through peoples campsites but mostly it ran in behind them. I walked  the trail until the bugs got too bad and then I turned around and went back to camp.

When I got back, Carsten and Penny were getting up. We had breakfast and then Carsten and Penny wanted to go and see Stubbs Falls. So I tagged along with them back to the falls. This time we went off the bridge and down to the rocks and rushing water below. 

As I have mentioned, we have had a really dry summer so the water level was much lower than we had remembered it as kids. 

You could see some places where the water had worn down the rock but was now completely dry. 

On the other side of the bridge there were plenty of places to explore. There were some interesting rock formations. 

And there were some trees that looked like they were ready to get up and walk away on their own accord. We decided to walk the entire trail. We had been told by a passer-by that there was another bridge at the other end of the trail and we wanted to see it. 

It wasn't as scenic as the other bridge but it still had a nice view of the river and of the foot bridge down by one of the beaches. 

On the way back we saw a squirrel and we spotted a Yellow-bellied Sap Sucker.

After the hike we hit the showers. We wanted to know if there was a place to charge our phones at the comfort station, but there wasn't. The water was the perfect temperature and it stayed on long enough without having to press the button multiple times like at some other campgrounds. However, I had a difficult time trying to figure out how to turn the water off again. Turns out that it does eventually shut itself off. 

On the information board was an event that was taking place at 8 p.m. It was about the wolves of Algonquin. I kind of wanted to go to that but the mosquitoes were pretty bad as of late and I had visions of having to sit around uncomfortably in a swarm of mosquitoes. So we ended up not going. 

Next on our list of things to do was to go and check out the park store. It had all sorts of great little things in there at decent prices. I picked up a T-shirt and a new pic coil holder since the last time I lit a pic I managed to melt a hole in the lid of the container that I had it placed on. 

The other thing that we got at the store was a free calendar. It wasn't so much the calendar that I was excited about, but it was more about what was inside of it.

Inside was a big pull out map showing all the provincial parks in Ontario that have services and /or facilities. This was perfect for me and this blog! Now it will be so much easier to plan my trips with this!  If you have a chance to get your hands on one of these I highly suggest doing so.

After leaving the store we went back to camp, had supper, cleaned up and settled into the dining tent for an evening of board games. Eventually it got dark and we were playing by lamplight. 
​   I heard some rustling behind me in the bushes and I thought it was a raccoon. We shone the flashlight through the screen of the tent and laughed when we realized it was only a toad. 

Awhile later Penny had to go to the bathroom so she left the dining tent and almost ran right into a huge spider that was hanging from a tree outside the door. It was making a web that was running from the dining tent to the tree. I guess it thought that it was a good place for a web because the light from the tent seemed to be drawing in an above average amount of bugs this night. 

While Penny was gone we heard another rustling from outside the dining tent. This time it came from the other side of the tent. We shone the flashlight outside again and sure enough we saw something hop. And then there was another hop, only this time it was much higher. It was unusually high for a toad as a matter of fact. What happened next almost made me fall over backwards. The toad started hopping about 3 to 4 feet in the air, and the further it went the faster it went! Soon it was going at rocket speed and at the last second it managed to speed around the corner of my little purple tent without even slowing down or skipping a beat! It ran like a jack rabbit but was way to small to be one. We could hardly believe our eyes and we sat there stunned for a moment.  And then all of a sudden it occurred to me what it was. Earlier in the day we had read the park tabloid and I remembered reading a list of all the commonly seen animals and birds in the park. On that list was the "woodland jumping mouse" and the "meadow jumping mouse". I am pretty sure we had just seen the woodland jumping mouse. 

By the time Penny got back from the bathroom the spider had disappeared from sight. This made us more nervous than having it hanging in front of our faces as we went in and out the door. We imagined it was spinning a giant web from the dining tent to the sleeping tents and no one wanted to wake up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and walk right into it. We discussed a plan to look for it later and move it elsewhere. But for the time being we went back to playing our games. 
   All was well for a time until all of a sudden a giant insect started flying  around inside the tent. It was about 5 to 6 inches long. It was so big and it was flying in such a frantic way that at first I thought it was one of those huge Luna moths. But then I realized that it wasn't green; it was a greyish colour. 
We all jumped up and said "What is that!!" and we moved to one side of the tent for fear that this thing would land on us or get stuck in our hair or something. As we shone the light on it to get a closer look we saw that it resembled a flying ant. But it was the biggest flying ant we had ever seen in our lives. 

We had no idea what it was but it was agitated and flying all over the place. Finally it landed on the ground down near one of the chairs and proceeded to to start biting the metal leg of the chair. Now that it had landed I grabbed a mug and the newspaper and I scooped it up and threw it outside the dining tent and zipped up the zipper so that it wouldn't come back in. I didn't even retrieve the paper and the mug. I decided that I would get those the next morning. 

Since we were already off our seats we decided to deal with the spider. We took the flashlight and started to hunt around the outside of the dining tent for it. It wasn't there. We could see the web though and we looked t see where the strands led to. Finally we found the spider above our heads in one of the lower tree branches. We didn't want to leave it there though because we had visions of it falling on our heads as we walked by. So Carsten grabbed a stick that was long enough to reach the spider and he scooped it out of the tree. I was on one side holding the light so that we knew exactly where it was at all times and Penny had another light and was following close behind. 
     "Where are we taking this?" Carsten asked. "How about across the road" I said. In order to get to the road we first had to cross the campsite, go down the drive way and then cross over to the other side of the road. It wasn't going to be a short trip. So off the three of us went, stick in hand with a large spider at the end. I am sure we would have looked hilarious to anyone who would have been a by-stander.
  The plan was going well until we got about half way to our destination. That's when the spider decided that his end of the stick is not where he wanted to be and he started to crawl up towards Carsten's end of the stick. "Oh oh! Walk faster! Walk faster!"  I shouted. We all started shuffling faster and together in a tight knit ball because if I dropped the light we would not know where the spider would be and then it could end up anywhere (translation... on us!).  Penny says " Why don't you just grab the other end of the stick?" Carsten says "No, because then our hands will get caught up in the web and if it's still attached to the web it will only drag it more towards us".  So we continued to shuffle as quickly as we could, laughing all the way,  towards the other side of the road. We were almost there, but the spider was almost at the end of the stick by now too. So, in one, last, final hoorah, Carsten threw the stick into the woods and with that our spider problem was over. It was a close call but we won the race. 

At this point it was my turn to need to go to the bathroom. Since we were already at the road and we had our flashlights we figured we may as well make a trip to the bathroom. Once I was done, I waited with Carsten while Penny went to the bathroom again. Carsten and I decided to google the large, flying, ant-like bug that had been in the dining tent. Turns out it was a "Dobsonfly" The males of this species have huge, long mandibles about an inch in length, but despite this they do not bite. The females, however, don't have the long scary mandibles but when agitated they do bite! The one we had was definitely female and judging how it was attacking the metal chair leg, I would venture to say that it was definitely agitated. Google went on to say "The adults are  nocturnal, and are seldom seen as they hide under leaves in the canopy during the daytime. However, they do sometimes form aggregations under bridges or other structures along streams. Since the adults live only about a week, they are not known to eat anything. They may be attracted by mercaptan, an indicator additive in natural gas and propane."  Well at least we now know what it was.
  Just as we were finished reading this we heard a shriek come from the bathroom.  It was Penny. Then she started laughing. We were wondering what was going on and finally she explained that she had looked down and a mouse had been sitting on her foot. She isn't afraid of mice, she had just been startled to see anything at all sitting on her foot. 

We returned to the dining tent with the intent of finishing up our game. However, when we returned we were dismayed to find that the Dobsonfly was back in the dining tent. Well that was it for us. We packed up our games and we decided to head for bed. We didn't even attempt to get rid of the Dobsonfly. We figured it would be wiser to attempt extraction during the daylight hours. And on that note we went to our tents and went to bed. (Once we got home and I did more research, I found out that this is not a Dobsonfly, but is a close relative called a "Summer Fishfly"). 

Another beautiful morning! We are headed to Arrowhead Park . But along the way we are making a slight detour to Bonnechere Park for lunch. We were all packed up and ready to go by 11 a.m. 

Since we had a provincial park permit from Lake St. Peter it was still valid until 10 p.m. at any provincial park to get in as a "day use" pass. So when we got to Bonnechere we headed into the office to present our pass. We were completely surprised to find out at that time that Bonnechere Park was not just a Day Use park as we had originally thought. It is actually an overnight campground. So we clearly had read the website wrong and could have been staying here for the past couple nights. But that was OK, at least we were going to be able to have lunch here. 

Right from the get go we were impressed with this park. The roads were wide and well maintained. the parking lot down by the beach was centrally located and had plenty of shady spots as well as a section in the middle for vehicles with trailers.

As you head over towards the park store you find a huge structure. It looks like a tree with a canoe for a roof.

To our delight we realized that this structure was a book tree! All around the trunk of the tree were little cabinets with glass doors at various heights. Inside each cabinet were all different kinds of books. There were kids books in the lower cabinets and books for older people in the higher cabinets. You could take a book and borrow it for a time, or you could take the book with you and replace it with one of your own that you no longer want. We loved this idea! 

Up inside the canoe portion of the book tree we saw a little nest. I guess the birds think this tree is a great idea too! 

On the other side of the book tree was a very long building called the Davenport Center. It is the park store and the Visitor Center all rolled into one. 

Outside the door was a large sign announcing that days kids event and where it is located. 

When you first enter the building there is a little museum like area. There is an old wood stove display on one side with information about early settlers.  

On the other side of the room is a section with information on "Friends Of Bonnechere Park".

To the left there was an entrance to another large room. Inside were various displays about nature including bones of animals and information kiosks. 

​ And right in the middle of the floor was a big ole snapping turtle walking around the room! We happened to come in at just the right time. The turtle's name is Thunder and he is on loan from a reptile zoo for the summer. This was his first foray out of his tank. They had let him walk around to get some exercise because there was no one in the building except the staff at the moment. And then we walked in. We gave him plenty of room and tried not to scare him. We watched him for a bit and then headed over to the other side of the building where the store is. 

The store had plenty of interesting things and the prices were half decent. 

They had a neat looking wall hanging that looked like giant scrabble pieces. We bought a couple of drinks and some souvenirs and headed out towards the beach. 

As we left the building we noticed an odd looking chair sitting in the corner. We had never seen one before and we were curious about what it was for. 

Then we read the sign and realized that it was a wheel chair that could go into the water. Now we were really impressed with this park! 

They even had a blue carpet made specifically for the water wheelchairs to roll on so that they wouldn't get stuck in the sand.

And the blue carpet rolls all the way out into the water. 

It was like this park has thought of every little detail. There was a volley ball net. 

And a boardwalk with benches along the waterfront, as well as a little kids jungle gym area just beyond that.

They even had a place where you could get free doggie doo bags for those people who had dogs. 

There were plenty of people at the beach but it was still easy to get a picnic table. We sat and ate lunch and enjoyed the scenery. 

After lunch I walked over to the other side of the beach where the boat launch was. It was a pretty little area with a little dock that jutted into the river. 

From the dock you can see sunfish swimming around in the river. 

They had canoes that you could rent. These canoes were a little different in that they had backs on their seats. 

They also had kayaks and a paddle board for rent too,

Before leaving the park we went over to the comfort station which was just at the other end of the parking lot.

At the far end of the comfort station they had an outdoor laundry facility. We had never seen a park that had their laundry facilities outside before. There was a bench near by where you could sit and wait for your laundry and there was an electrical outlet where  you could charge your phone if you needed to. 

We stayed at Bonnechere for about 2 hours. We liked the park so much that we decided that we would definitely have to come back in the future to stay the night and see how the campsites were.

​We left at about 2:30 and since we were travelling through Algonquin Park to get to Arrowhead Park, we decided to make a stop at the Algonquin Art Center. 

I had been here before with my sister Heather and my mom so I was excited to show this place to my brother and to Penny. I just love the metal work. 

All of the art work here is amazing and I recommend anyone in the area to stop in and see it for themselves. You won't be disappointed. 

We didn't stay long because it was close to closing time when we arrived. But we were anxious to get to our next destination anyways.....Arrowhead Park. 

I got out of the tent around 9:30 a.m. but Carsten and Penny weren't up yet. So I decided to go down to the main beach to have a look around. 

 The beach was empty and quiet at that time of day despite the hot weather. But the beach was a fairly nice one with plenty of sand and picnic tables to sit at. 

It even had a volley ball net for anyone wo might want to play beach volley ball.
​​Unfortunately there were a couple of deer flies flying around and being generally pesky. 

I looked down on the ground and found a dragonfly with crumpled wings.I crouched down to pick it up. As I did another dragonfly swooped in and started chasing after the deer flies that were buzzing around my head. It's too bad I couldn't have my own personal fly catcher flying around me all summer long.

At first I thought the dragonfly with the crumpled wings might be a new one emerging and it's wings hadn't fully unraveled yet. However, after watching it for a while and after closer inspection I realized that the wings were torn. This meant that there was nothing more I could do for him. So I left him on a picnic table out of the direct hot sun and wished him luck.

I saw a red breasted nuthatch in the tree above the table and I hoped that the dragonfly would not be noticed by him. It didn't notice and it flew away. 

After awhile I started to head back to camp. On the way back I ran into my brother who had just left the comfort station. We decided to explore some of the other sites together. Number 14 and 64 were pretty nice sites. 

One site that was near the comfort station had a picnic table with a metal addition on one end. At first we weren't sure what it was for but then we figured out that it was for wheel chair accessibility. 

Back at our own campsite we had breakfast and then just sat and relaxed for awhile. We had a number of ants on the site and we expected them to be foraging for their breakfast, but when we saw a huge ant carrying something even larger we had to look twice. Turns out it was not an ant after all, It was a wasp carrying off it's breakfast of a large caterpillar of some sort. 

After lunch, Penny and I took a quick trip down the road to the Madawaska Art Shop.

There were many nice things there. There were multiple  rooms filled with clothing, art and gifts.

There were paintings on rocks and things made of wood. 

I bought a bar of glow in the dark soap just for the fun of it. It really does glow in the dark! 

Penny and I both bought a little leather pouch. You pull the string shut and then push the snap button closed. We thought it would be great for things like when you are going out dancing and don't want to leave your wallet unguarded at the table. Now you can bring your personal items and money easily onto the dance floor with you. I also thought it would be great for carrying my pocket watch with me on backpacking trips. 

I also bought a small piece of fudge. It was very good! 

When we got back to camp, Carsten showed us a bug that he had discovered. It was quite tiny; about the size of an ant. It was covered in white spikes. It was a Mealybug Destroyer Larvae.

Carsten and I decided to hike the Lookout Trail. Penny stayed behind to relax and have some alone time. 

The trail is two loops. The Lookout Trail hooks up to a second loop which is the Cabin Trail. 

It was probably good that we only did the one loop. The mosquitoes were pretty bad and the first part of this trail was mostly uphill. I guess that only makes sense if you are going up to a lookout. 

But we were happy to find a bench waiting for us once we did get to the top of the lookout. 

It wasn't a traditional lookout in that there was no tower structure to climb in order to see the view. There was only the bench. But the view was still pretty nice from where we sat.

When we were done resting we headed down the other side of the loop and down the hill. It was much easier going down the hill than it was going up. But the bugs were no less nasty to us. 

Near the end of the trail the path opened up to a marshy area. No wonder the mosquitoes were so bad here. Well, that and it was still very much mosquito season. 

Not long past the marsh was a path through the ferns that led back out to the road and the end of the trail. 

Since there are so many forest fires all over Ontario (it's been a pretty bad year for fires this year) and since there hasn't been much rain lately, they had implemented a fire restriction in the park. You could only have a fire from 7p.m. to 11 p.m.  So we waited until 7 p.m. to have our supper and we cooked ourselves up some hot dogs. 

While we ate a little red squirrel came to check us out and see what we were doing. 

We were also visited by a blue jay. 

I was happy to be able to get a fairly clear picture of the blue jay since I had been trying to get a good picture of one for the past few years. 

We went into the dining tent and played board games for the rest of the evening. Out on the lake we heard a very loud loon. It was flapping its wings and making a scene. I think it was because a boat was getting a little bit too close to it. 
  

​At about 11 pm we went to bed.  It was a cooler night. I would have liked to have slept with just the screen door open tonight but decided against it. Tomorrow we are headed to Arrowhead Park. 

We left the Bonnechere caves around 4 and we arrived at Lake St. Peter just before 6 p.m. 
I didn't even know that this park existed until a couple days previous so I was curious to see what it would be like. The plan was to stay for a night or two and then decide if we wanted to stay longer. 
​

The office was a typical park office and we were happy to see that they had ice (and ice-cream). 

One of the unique features of this office was that the walk way and the posts around the building were built with large quartz stones embedded in them. They were kind of pretty, sparkling in the sunshine.

Lake St. Peter is a small campground. We drove around for a bit and liked what we saw. The campsites are fairly large and park is quiet and cute. Although there are only 65 campsites, they clearly do not number them in order because we chose campsite number 66.

Many of the sites had private paths down to the lake and ours was one of them. 

It didn't lead down to a sandy beach or anything, but it did lead down to a nice view. 

We drove back to the office and registered our site.  We had to pay $11 for an extra vehicle, which is becoming fairly standard in Ontario provincial parks these days. However, unlike the other parks where you have additional parking not far from your site, we were dismayed to find out that the only additional parking available was a big lot down by the office and you were required to park there. Only one car was allowed on the campsite. We decided that my brothers car would be the one to stay on the site. This meant that mine was the one to be parked in the lot. So anytime I wanted to go anywhere or get anything from my car I had to walk all the way to the office to do so because there was no room in my brothers car for an extra passenger. Luckily, like I mentioned, the park was not big so the walk was not too big of a deal for me. But I am sure that it could be problematic for elderly people or for people with physical challenges. 

But what they lacked in parking they made up for in environmental friendliness. Just before leaving the office the staff handed us 2 complimentary garbage bags and 2 complimentary blue bags for recycling. We were fairly impressed by this. 

Since there was one less car on the site, this did mean that there was more empty ground space. So I set my new purple tent up right where my car would have been parked. It was gravel underneath me but it wasn't as rocky and rough as I thought it might be. 

I was very pleased to see the sign that said "No excessive noise at any time". Since it was a weekday, there didn't seem to be too many rowdy party goers anyways.

The bugs were not too bad. Just the occasional mosquito and a few midge flies. I took a short walk around the grounds to do a bit of exploring. There are 2 beaches here. The one that was closest to us is small and shallow. 

Just past the beach towards the boat launch there is a tiny piece of land that just out. On top of it is a picnic table and a bench to sit on so that you can look out over the lake.  I thought it would be a nice place to sit and have lunch or to have a cup of coffee in the  evening. 

The girls bathroom and the boys bathroom are fairly far apart from one another. They are not flush toilets, but that is ok, After all, we are camping!  But what we didn't like was the obvious lack of a place to wash your hands when you came out of the bathroom.  We had to hunt down the nearest drinking water tap in order to wash our hands. 

The drinking water taps have been re-done over the years. In one place you could see where an old stone drinking water tap used to be. And a few feet away was the new drinking water tap. At first we didn't even know what the stone structure was. We were making up little funny stories in our heads of things it might be, like an alter for worshiping the water or something.  We had to get up close to it to figure out what it was for. 

We had a quick bite to eat for supper. We didn't start a fire because we knew we were tired and that we wouldn't be up too late anyways. It was probably for the best because there were some raging wild fires going on in Northern Ontario and the rest of the province was on the verge of a fire ban. As a matter of fact, on the way over here, as we left our sister and her husbands cottage the roads were being closed shortly after we had passed through due to the fires.  We were fortunate to not have been diverted through a detour to get here. 

We sat around and talked until bedtime. But before we went into the tents we did a bit of star gazing. The sky was so clear and the stars were so bright. When I did finally go to bed I could see the planet Mars through the screen of my tent. It shone so bright with a reflection in the lake that it almost looked like a tiny moon.  It was very hot that night so I ended up sleeping on top of my sleeping bag instead of in it and I left the door of the tent open with just the screen closed.  I didn't mind. This is summer! Wonderful, wonderful summer! 

The last time we were at Bonnechere Caves I was about 8 or 9 years old. I don't remember much. Just that it was cool inside and I remember squeezing through a passage way. So I was excited to be going again with my brother, Carsten, and his girlfriend, Penny. 

We left Driftwood Park at about 12:30 and got to the Bonnechere Caves around 2:30, but we had about a half hour stop along the way because we stopped at a nice little restaurant in the town of Cobden.  It was an extremely hot day and my air conditioning wasn't working in the car and my phone started to over heat just sitting on the seat of the car. So we had decided to stop to cool off a bit. 
   The Bonnechere Caves are located in Eganville, Ontario on Fourth Chute Road. This is to the East of Algonquin Park.  

We got there about 10 minutes early so we had time to look around a bit and take pictures at the "Face-In-A-Hole" display of their logo. 

The tour began under a little shelter and featured a talk on fossils.

They had some larger fossils out on display and they brought out some smaller ones and passed them around during the presentation.

After the presentation we headed off, single file, down the trail towards the caves.

As we walked, we went past the river and saw the way the water had carved its way through the stone over the course of millions of years. 

And we saw where the river enters the cave system at multiple points. But none of these entrances were the ones we were entering. 

You could tell where we were going to enter by the large sign above it saying "Bonnechere Caves" 

Inside the caves it was nice and cool. We were grateful for the reprieve from the hot sun we had been driving in for the past couple hours. It is 13 degrees inside the caves all year round; even in the wintertime. 

Although the cave passageways seemed narrow, there was actually enough room for two or three people to stand shoulder to shoulder in most places inside. There is one section that does get fairly narrow and the head room is low. We had the option to go through that section if we wanted to. Those that didn't want to go through the small area stayed behind and waited for the rest of us to return.  the lady in front of me and Penny was just about to go inside that section but at the last second she got claustrophobic and changed her mind and we had to back up a bit to let her get out. 

Above our heads the roof of the cave was oddly shaped and stalactites were forming. It takes about 100 years for a stalactite to grow only one inch. So these stalactites have been forming for hundreds of years. 

During the spring and summer the water is pumped out of this part of the cave system and people are able to walk inside on the walk ways that are set up. For the winter the walkways are disassembled and the water is allowed to flow back into the caves again so that the frost doesn't get in and cause the cave to collapse and create sink holes. It takes 5 days for the caves to fill back up with water and when it does it doesn't go all the way to the roof in most places. 

Once you get into the biggest room in the cave, the tour guide tells you about how the original explorer had been in the cave while the water was still in it and had lost his flashlight. The guide then turns off all the lights in the cave so that you can experience for yourself just how dark it would have been for him with no lights. (She warns you that she is going to do this). You pretty much can't see your hand in front of your face. 

Near the end of the tour you can see where a part of the cave had collapsed many years before the tours ever began. She assured us that the cave was perfectly safe to be in while on the tour. 

Just as we went inside the cave single file, so we went out of the cave single file. 

It was neat to turn around and watch the others come out of the cave behind you. If you didn't know the cave was there it would be like watching them walk out of a wall. 

The tour guide had suggested that once we left the cave we might like to walk up to see the sink hole from the outside of the cave. She said it was only about a 15 minute walk. So we decided to check it out. 

Turns out the sink hole was only about 2 minutes away, and not the 15 minutes that she said it was. Also, the sink hole was not so easy to see through the trees. 

Our last stop was the gift shop. Inside were T-shirts, ice-cream and drinks. You could also look at displays of fossils, including the largest one they ever found at the caves. There were also photos on the wall of 3 different weddings that have taken place inside the caves over the years. 

With souvenirs in hand, we headed to our cars and started off for our next destination. We were going to go camping at Lake St. Peter Provincial Park.