During the night I could hear a few raindrops hitting the tent but it didn't rain very hard. When I got out of the tent in the morning the grass was still wet and the trees had some left over raindrops clinging to the branches. But the skies were clearing and the sun was starting to peek through the clouds. 

Once again I took Balto for a walk along the shoreline before breakfast. Once again we headed towards campsites J1 and J2. 

Today I saw only one Canada Goose instead of four.  I didn't see the Cormorant at all. 

I did, however, see another Mergenser duck fishing for it's breakfast. 

In some places the water's edge was very grassy. 

The fall colours were wonderful to look at in the peacefulness of the morning. It was a windy day but the sun was out and it was relatively warm; especially for October. 

When we got to campsite J1,  I saw a grouse hiding in the bushes. It stood very still hoping that we didn't see it. Balto did not notice it at all. I pretended that I didn't see it so that it wouldn't be scared and fly away. 

So I headed with Balto in another direction so that the grouse could be left in peace. 

There was a spot near the shoreline that had  an old turtle nest still visible. The eggs had long since hatched and the baby turtles were gone. All that remained were some empty turtle egg shells. 

When we got back to our site I built a fire and boiled some water for oatmeal. While I was doing that, two loons were calling to each other way off in the distance. I could barely make them out from where I was standing. But there was no mistaking the calls. These two were very vocal today. They weren't making the long drawn out calls that you hear at night. They were making the shrill chuckling noises, and they were going pretty much non stop for a full 5 minutes. Nothing but back to back calls with no pausing in between. It was quite a show they were putting on. Eventually the quieted down a bit and I watched them travel all over the lake while I ate breakfast. But they continued to call off and on through out the morning. 

The camping neighbours with the dog on site #21 started packing up and left around 10:30 a.m. I knew that I would have to pack up today too, but I didn't want to leave so I dragged it out as long as I could. 
   I walked back down to the waters edge to see if I could see what had made the loud splash in the water the night before. But there was no evidence of anything unusual even in the daylight. So that will always remain a mystery. 
   I took some time to enjoy the flowers like the "Butter And Eggs" flowers blooming a pretty duo-toned yellow colour.

And I watched the flocks of wrens playing in the grasses. 

And I watched a frog sunning itself on the rocks. 

I thought to myself "Wouldn't it be nice to stay one more night with no other neighboring campers near by?"
But I knew that I had to work the next day and I had to head back. So Balto sat and watched me under the pines while I started to break camp.  

The pine  trees he was sitting under were going through their "needle casting" phase. This is when pine trees shed some of their old needles to make room for the new growth. The old needles were turning yellow just like the autumn colours of the deciduous trees. 

As I took down the screen tent I noticed a Soldier Fly caught inside. Soldier Flies are one of a number of types of flies that look like bees in order to protect themselves from predators. They are all harmless though and they don't bite or sting. 

Balto was not the only one to watch me take down the tents. I had a Raven come and visit me and watch me as well. Every once in awhile he would fly down to the ground to see if I had left anything behind in the way of food that he could take with him. But he was disappointed when he found nothing and would fly back up to to the top of the pine tree again and watch some more. 

Eventually I was all packed up. It was pretty good timing too because a couple of groups of new campers were heading in as I was heading out. I think they wanted my spot so they were probably happy that I was leaving it. I headed back to the gatehouse to see about buying a T-shirt for my trip. All the T-shirts were much too expensive so I didn't buy one. It was for the best since there was no one at the desk to take my money anyways. I decided to take a quick look around at the beach since I was already here.  The beach wasn't huge but it was nice and sandy and clean. 

There were plenty of canoes lined up and I assumed that they could be rented, although I had never asked. Maybe next time. 

Looking out past the canoes I could see the cabin out on the point. I had almost considered renting the cabin for this trip just to see what it was like and because I thought it might be colder than it was. But it had already been rented ahead of time so I did not have that option. 

I took a last look around at the colourful trees and wished that I didn't have to go. 

But the city life awaits and I had to get back to it. I am already considering my options for where I plan to go camping next year though. It's never too soon to start day dreaming about your next camping trip. 

It was a bit of a foggy morning and somewhat grey, but that didn't bring my spirits down at all. It was only a thin veil of fog and it lifted pretty quickly. 

Before I had even had breakfast I decided to check out the area more. There are no hiking trails at Kiosk but there is plenty of shoreline to explore. So I took Balto for a long walk down the shoreline. 

It was warm for October, but not warm enough for me to want to go swimming. It didn't stop Balto from trying though. However, he didn't stay in very long. Guess the water was colder than he thought. 

As we rounded the first bend I saw a flock of 4 Canada Geese swimming out in the water.  

​They eyed us up but didn't make a run for it. 

A little further up I saw a big bird out in the water stretching and flapping it's wings. It was the Cormorant. that I had seen the day before. 

It was very peaceful first thing in the morning. A hedge of Sumac trees lined the edge of the shore with a row of long decorative grasses in front of it. They were beginning to change to their fall colours. 

Even the grasses were changing to a pretty peach colour. 

Soon we reached campsite J1 and climbed up the bank to the top of the campsite. Campsite J1 and J2 are jump off sites for canoers that are about to embark on overnight canoe trips. They are not usually sites that you can rent, but occasionally when the campground is quite full you can rent one as an over flow site. They are both very nice sites with large grassy open areas. 

There was a thin wall of trees between J1 and J2. One of the trees had some climbing ivy all over it that had turned a deep red for the fall. It almost looked like the pine tree was dressed in a red Christmas garland. 

J2 had a nice view of the lake and was quiet and secluded. Both of these sites were every bit as nice as the one I was already on. 

Instead of walking back the way we came, we took the path back around towards our campsite. 

The path led through the trees and back to the grassy parking lot with the wall of Sumacs around it. 

Finally we came full circle; back to our campsite. By this time I was hungry and I set about getting ready for breakfast. 

I had intended to have Oatmeal for breakfast but I was too hungry to go about starting a fire and waiting for the water to boil. Besides, I hadn't chopped any wood and that would take even more time. So I figured that I would just have cold cereal instead. I had bought a little container of milk specifically for that. But when I went to get the cereal I realized that I had forgotten the box at home. So instead I resorted to what I was originally going to have with my lunch; a container of Del Monte mixed fruit. They were just the thing and tasted great!

In light of not having chopped wood to make breakfast with, I set about making that my first task after breakfast. I chopped and sorted all my wood into piles of fire starter pieces, kindling, and larger pieces. Now whenever I wanted to start a fire I just had to grab what I needed from the piles and not worry about having to chop it first. 

As I chopped wood I noticed a couple of canoers picking their way though the maze of logs in the lake that were left over from the old mill. I was curious to see if it would give them any trouble, but it didn't seem to slow them down. 

The logs were not the only evidence of a community left behind. There were cement parts of old toppled buildings still sticking out of the ground with plants growing over and on them. 

There were also remains of lumber from what might have been a dock down by the water. 

The sun started to come out and it was turning into a beautiful day. As I chopped wood the neighbours on site # 25 were packing up and heading out. It was a shame that they were going to miss the beautiful day here. That meant there was just me and the people on site # 21 left on this side of the campground. 
   When I was done chopping wood I went inside of my tent and read a book for awhile. Balto came in and napped beside me. 
   All was quiet for awhile until I started hearing some strange noises coming from the waters edge. At first I thought nothing of it and figured it was maybe the geese or ducks back again. But the odd noises persisted and I stopped reading and focused my attention on the sounds to try to figure out what it was I was hearing. It sounded kind of like a gargle and kind of like chewing. As a matter of fact it sounded very much like the noises my pet ferrets make when they are eating meat. 
   My curiosity got the better of me by now. I looked over at Balto who was sound asleep. Since he is practically deaf he was not even aware that there were any noises at all. I snuck out of the tent so as not to disturb Balto and to be able to quietly observe whatever may be making the noises. 
   And there they were.... three otters feasting away on the muscles they were finding at the shallow bottom of the lake. 

I had never seen otters in the wild before and I was pretty excited to be able to watch not one or two, but three of them! 

I was hidden behind some bushes so the otters did not notice me for quite some time. Eventually Balto woke up and came looking for me though. Once the otters realized that they were not alone they swam out further from the shore. They climbed upon the same pile of rocks that the Cormorant had been on and they stayed there sunning themselves and napping before finally moving on about an hour later. 

As the day wore on it became pretty over cast. It didn't rain but the clouds kept the sun at bay. 

I built another fire at lunch time and had hot dogs for lunch. I also ate some Babybel cheese that I had brought along with me. I peeled open the cheese and threw one of the red waxy coatings into the fire. That's when I noticed that the red wax burnt really well and went up with a "whoosh!".  I thought to myself, "these would be a great addition to the home made fire starters that I had made out of toilet paper rolls and dryer lint". So every time I lit a fire while I was at Kiosk I threw in one of the red wax shells to help it along. 

After lunch I took a nap. It was intended to be a short nap but I ended up sleeping for about 2 hours. When I woke up it was about 5:30 pm nut it was too early for dinner. So I took Balto for a walk up the road to see what the other campsites were like. There is an old abandoned railway line that runs through the park.

​ It looks like it would be a great hiking trail but unfortunately it is private property. So we just stuck to the road. 

As I walked by and looked over the other campsites I decided that site # 24 was also another good campsite that I would have to keep in mind for future reference. I didn't see much in the way of wildlife except for a bunch of sparrows that seemed to be very plentiful here. There were, however, a few pretty plants like some wild rose hips. 

And some Turkey Tail fungi that spiraled up to look almost like a brown rose in the grass. 

We walked to the main roadway and then turned around and headed back. There were tons of bugs following me and although they were not biting, they were still pretty annoying. 

We went past the bathrooms that were located on the top of a grassy hill. This bathroom was one of the absolute best I have ever seen in a provincial park (not counting comfort stations). Right away just to look at it you can already notice some things that were different about it. For one, it had a solar panel on the roof. I am assuming to light up the outside lights at night however it had been so cloudy lately that I don't think the solar panels were getting enough power for that. Secondly it was built on top of a hill with a balcony leading up to it. 

It was a vault toilet (non-flushing) but it was not like the other vault toilets that you usually see. Instead it was a composting vault toilet. 


  The building was up on the hill but the hole was as deep as the hill was tall. So you didn't want to drop anything valuable into the hole because it was a long way down and you would probably never get it back out again. (Not that you would want to really anyways). 


​  Everyday the rangers came and added a scoop or two of sawdust into it. 

But the best thing about this bathroom was it didn't smell bad!
Actually, it smelt pretty good because all you can smell is the scent of cedar. 

The walls were all made of cedar. The door was made of cedar. The floor was made out of a washable outdoor vinyl. Everything was spotless. The toilet, floor, garbage can, were all fantastically clean. There weren't even any spiders or bugs in there! The roof was made of a clear plastic so there was plenty of light and it didn't feel like a dark cave inside. 

After our walk I went into the screen tent to read for awhile until the sun went down. Then I began to build a fire for supper. 

I also lit a colour changing candle in celebration of my sister's wedding that I had just attended a few days earlier. The candle reminded me of her both because she gave it to me and because her wedding was a multi-coloured wedding and this candle changed to all different colors as it burned down. It was quite pretty sitting on the picnic table in the dusk. Plus it gave me a bit of added light to make supper by without having to turn on the lantern. 

As I was just about to sit down to supper I heard a huge splash coming from the shore of the lake very close by. It sounded like a rock or log had been thrown into the water.  I grabbed my lantern and turned it on thinking that maybe Balto had fallen in or something. But as I got closer to the waters edge, Balto came up behind me and he was dry so I knew that it wasn't him. When I got to the water I didn't see anything unusual in the water. I didn't even see ripples in the water. I stood there listening for a few moments with the light shining on the lake, but I didn't hear anything else splashing around. It was too dark to see much and I wanted to eat my supper so I gave up looking and figured I would take a closer look in the morning.  So I went back to the fire and sat there until the fire dwindled down to nothing. 

It was a cloudy night but there were enough breaks in the clouds that you could still see the stars and occasionally a glimpse of the moon. It was not as cold this night as it had been the night before. So I went to sleep in comfort with the sound of the loons calling across the lake. 

Right on the heels of my sister's wedding I decided to squeeze in one last camping trip for the season. Camping in October can be hit or miss with the weather. Just so happens that this year the temperature was pretty warm for October and although it was cloudy most of the time I was able to enjoy my stay at Algonquin Park's Kiosk campground. 

I chose Kiosk for a couple reasons. The first was that at this time of year it was one of the few parks that were still open. The second was that it was fairly close to where I lived and after driving for over 2 hours from Elk Lake earlier in the day I didn't want to have to travel too far to go camping. The third reason was because although I live not too far away I had never been there. My family members had been there and all of them couldn't say enough about how wonderful the place was. So I had to check it out for myself. 
    I originally wasn't going to take my dog with me but since I heard that there were no hiking trails (he is too old to walk hiking trails these days) and since the last camping trip I took him on was a bit of a disaster I figured I owed him one so I took him along at the last minute. 
    After a bit of highway driving and then a lot of back roads driving we arrived at the Kiosk Campground which is located on Kioshkokwi Lake.

I pulled up to the gatehouse and went inside to register. The gate house looked like it doubled as both a rangers cabin and a registration office. The office section was only a very small part of the entire building. A friendly ranger greeted me and helped me to choose a site that was not near a whole bunch of people. 

Considering the campground was not very full at this time of year it was not too difficult to find one.  I chose the section of camp away from the main area. There were only 2 other campsites ( # 25 and #21) occupied on that side and my site would be close to the water.  

It was about 6 pm by the time I got to the Park and the sun sets at about 7 pm at this time of year so I only had about an hour of daylight to set up camp. So I jumped back in my car and hurried on over to site # 26. As I drove past site 25 (my closest neighbours) the older couple that were there waved to me and I waved back. "Oh good" I thought. "These people don't look like noisy teenagers."  I bet they were hoping for the same thing from me. At this time of year you rarely see the party people out camping. It's usually the people looking for quiet and solitude that nature has to offer that you see out in the crisp autumn air. 

With a peaceful campground comes a higher rating of wildlife sightings. I was very hopeful to see an abundance of wildlife while I was here. Algonquin is well known for a variety of wildlife sightings of things such as moose and wolves and bears. 
   I had just pulled up to my site and hadn't even gotten out of the car yet when I was already rewarded with my first wildlife sighting. My site directly overlooks the lake and out in the distance on a pile of rocks I could see a bird that at first I thought was a heron. I left the dog in the car and went closer to the lake to get a better look. 

As I got closer I realized that it wasn't a heron at all but only a large Cormorant. And it wasn't actually sitting on the rocks, but instead it was sitting on one of the many, many logs that were jutting up out of the water. Apparently Kiosk was once the site of a mill and even of a small community that no longer exists. All the logs that were littered everywhere in the lake were old memories of a time gone by. 

I couldn't have been standing there for much more than a minute when along came 2 merganser ducks. 

There were plenty of plants and bushes between where I was standing and the edge of the shore so the ducks didn't notice me and swam pretty close by as they fished for their dinner. I was already very happy with the site I had chosen and I hadn't even started to set up camp yet. 

I turned around to head back to the car and was met with a flock of sparrows covering the ground looking for food. The whirring sound of their wings was quite loud as they took off when I startled them. I had not been here even 5 minutes yet and already I had seen 3 different types of birds. 

The sites here were quite large with plenty of open space and grassy areas. It was extremely clean and very inviting. I let Balto out of the car and got to work setting up camp. 

It took about an hour to get most of the site set up. I still hadn't set up the screen tent yet but I figured that I had better get water first before it got too dark. The down fall with choosing the site that I did was that it was in the newer section of the park (I overheard a ranger saying that this section was only about 6 years old) and this section did not have any water taps. There are water taps on the other side of the park but none where I was so I had to draw water directly from the lake. 

​But since I had my mother's platypus water filter system with me this was not a problem. There was a beautiful, big, pine tree in the middle of the site that I could hang the platypus in and have water readily available. 

The sun was going down and the moon was coming up by the time I started putting up the screen tent. 

By the time everything was set up it was dark out and I hadn't eaten supper yet. I built a fire and had a can of Zoodles and some fruit for supper. I hadn't had time to check out the area around my site before it got dark but I figured I would do some exploring tomorrow. Behind my campsite and nestled in the pines across the road, I could see the light of the campfire of my other closest neighbours (site # 21). They had a dog with them too, but like my dog it rarely made any noise at all. My dog is almost completely deaf now so I am pretty sure Balto didn't even know the other dog was there. 

The night sky was clear and the temperature dropped to the point where I could see my breath. But the stars and the moon were so bright and so beautiful. In the distance I could hear a single loon calling out across the lake. It was a perfect night and I was looking forward to another great day tomorrow.