Overnight At Oastler Lake

Oastler Lake was my first stop on a 4 park trip. I reserved my sites a few months in advance for this one week long trip. With so much going on in my life this year, I was looking forward to getting in this trip before the camping season was over. The plan is to go to Oastler Lake for one night, then Point Farms for one night, then Pinery for 3 nights and visit my father's cousin who lives near there, and finally Bronte Creek for one night on the way back home.  I was supposed to bring a friend with me but she got pulled away and couldn't make it. I wasn't bringing my dog with me this time. So, this was a solo trip and I was excited about it. 

I arrived to the park at about 4:45 pm. I had checked the weather before I left and had expected it to be raining when I got here. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the rain had passed and it was now just grey and over cast. The drive here was simple and straight forward and the GPS worked great. 

When I got to the office I found that it was closed. It's one of the drawbacks of camping later in the season. There was a sign in the window that said "proceed directly to your campsite".  The problem with that is I didn't know what campsite was mine. I had booked months in advance and I had 4 different parks I was going to so I hadn't memorized them all. I was in a rush to get out the door so I never wrote them down. And I wondered, "What about those who didn't reserve a site in advance?"  I shrugged. Free camping for them I guess.  

I pulled my car up to a parking spot near the wood and ice shed. (That' another problem with no one at the office.... you can't buy wood or ice). Luckily I had enough of both for the night so I was set. 
I then called home and got my site number. Luckily I had written it on the calendar on the fridge. 

The next problem was to figure out where my site was locate.  The park employees had the foresight to set up a mailbox for just such an occasion.  Right in front of the wood shed was a white plastic mailbox that said "Maps" on it. 

Sure enough, there were a number of park maps located inside.  I took one and was now set to find my way. 

I had chosen site 145 because on the reservation site, it looked like it was close to the water as well as the amenities. 

As I drove down the road, I saw one of the best signs you can ever hope to see in a provincial park.  The "No excessive noise at anytime" sign.  There were not a whole lot of people here since it was not only later in the season but it was also a Monday. 

It didn't take long to find site 145.  As I got out of the car, you could see that everything was still damp from the rain and you can smell the mix of cedar and rain in the air. It smelled heavenly! 

I was very happy with my online reservation pick. It was a beautiful little site.  There as plenty of space for a couple of tents. 

It's only drawback was that there was not enough privacy between my site and the one to my right. From the road it looks completely private but once you got closer to the picnic tables there were no trees between me and the lady and her dog next door. So I tried to just not look in that direction most of the time. They really need to plant a few trees between the 2 sites. 

Oh but the view out across the lake was stunning!  The water was like glass and the clouds were reflecting on the surface.  This site is actually on top of a hill, so you could see out across the lake. 

I noticed a steep trail from my site to the lake below. So before I even began to put up tents or unload the car, I went down the path to explore. 

At the bottom of the trail was a picnic table beside the shore. 

Sitting at the picnic table you get a beautiful view of the lake, and a sloping rock embankment.  There is a majestic oak tree, with branches over laden with acorns that hang over the water.

Every couple minutes some acorns fall and you her them tumbling through the branches until you hear a "plop" as they hit the water.  At first, from the top of the hill,  I had thought it was an animal or fish swimming.  But then I realized that the sound was too consistent, and sitting here now I could see them falling into the water. 

The water was crystal clear. If it were a hot summer day instead of the beginning of fall I might have been inclined to go for a swim here. 

Looking over to my right I could see the park's boat launch across the lake.  As I stood there, the beautiful sound of silence was broken by another sound. Regrettably, there is a very loud train that goes by every once in awhile. (As time went on, I discovered that he train goes by every few hours).  That's when I noticed that I can also hear the nearby highway.  Once you get used to these noises though, they were hardly noticeable. Definitely not anything to ruin my stay, that's for sure. 

After a few minutes I figured I had better get back up the hill and start putting up the tents before it got too late in the day.  I began with my sleeping tent first and I got that up in about 3 minutes. 

On my last camping trip, to Rene Brunelle, I had my dining tent blown down and broken by the wind.  So, I had gone to Canadian Tire and purchased a different one for  this trip.  I purposely bought one that was lighter weight and was hoping it would be easier to put up. It wasn't. 

Not only did it take me about an hour to get the dining tent put up but one of the poles started cracking down the length of it this very first time I set it up. The instructions are wrong in my opinion. It says to put all the poles in at once and then put it up. But after fighting with it I found it was easier to put the red ones up first and then the others. It is definitely designed to be put up by 2 people, not one person. 

It wasn't broken so bad that I couldn't use it, I would just have to be careful with it. I will just have to get some duct tape to hopefully fix it later on.  

I set up the dining tent in a way that it would act somewhat like a privacy barrier between my site and the lady next door. But as you can imagine, tent screening is not the greatest privacy barrier. But it was better than nothing. That's ok. I planned not to be on the site much anyway. I had a lot of exploring to do. 

I stood back and surveyed my domain. I was pretty happy. I would definitely camp here again. And when I do, I will try to get this site again. It is a great site. 

Directly across the road from my site is a little red brick bathroom. 

It's a little run down looking and the faucet drips. Well, actually it runs more than drips, and you can't get it to stop. But it has a flush toilet so you can't complain about that. 

It also has automatic motion sensor lights. As well, the door has a window in it which lets in extra light. 

There was a poster on the wall reminding people not to feed the wildlife.  It talks about the damage the animals can do to people's vehicles, but it didn't mention that it is actually damaging to the animals themselves.   By feeding them you are teaching the animals to come to the campsites for food which means that they will stop foraging for what they would eat naturally. Then, when all the campers are gone for the season, they are no longer able to fend for themselves and could, in fact, starve to death later on down the road. Besides, you may be feeding them something that is not good for them. For example, so many people want to feed bread to birds. But bread is not good for birds. And peanuts are actually too fatty for squirrels and chipmunks (or people feed them salted peanuts which is also bad). 

A water tap was also close by to my site. So everything is a stone's throw away. 

Now that my site was set up, I was ready to explore. I grabbed the map and decided to head towards the point and the walk-in sites. Oastler Lake is a small park. Everything is within walking distance. 

​There are a lot of cute sites that overlook the lake down this road. 

The squirrels and the chipmunks were very plentiful here. You walk 5 feet and one will bound out in front of you only about a foot away. They were all busy getting ready for the winter. There is ots of food for them here. Acorns littered the forest floor everywhere. 

There was a little bathroom nestled in among the trees just before the walk-in sites. This bathroom sems to be shared by the walk-ins as well as some of the regular sites. 

This bathroom was much nicer than the one near my site. Cleaner, larger, newer, and no dripping faucet. 

The walk-in sites are nice and large, but there is literally no privacy.  If you stand at one end of this section, you can pretty much see almost every walk-in site while you are standing in that one spot.

They are situated in a cedar forest so, everything is wide open. Cedar forests are often like that.  It was still very peaceful walking here though. 

I walked through the sites, as far as you can go, and over to the end of the point where the rock slopes down to the water's edge. 

The rock itself was fascinating. It was full of naturally made dark lines and squiggles. 

The stone was like walking through a natural art gallery. 

I found myself looking up, and it struck me with such clarity: even the leaves, that were dying off and leaving their webbed remains above my head, were a piece of art work. I sucked in my breath and said "oh wow" out loud to no one but myself and God. It made me feel a quiet reverence for the overlooked artistry of fall beyond the changing colours of the leaves. 

A White-throated sparrow watched me from a nearby branch as I left the area. 

Next I walked down to the beach.  Apparently the water is somewhat shallow here. 

The long sandy beach was mostly empty except for an older couple who were sitting at a picnic table waiting for the sun to set.  I stopped to talk to the for a bit and found out that they were from Germany. 

There was a long blue mat to allow for wheelchair accessibility to the beach. 

The sun was not quite ready to set yet. It was still shining gold above the tree line and reflecting off the water where the buoy lines floated motionless on the surface of the lake. 

Another White-throated sparrow sat in a nearby cedar tree. With a keen gaze, it surveyed the beach, occasionally fluttering its wings.  I saw quite a few of these little guys on my walk. 

I noticed the sign of beach rules that said No Boats Allowed. 

The sign was interesting considering that the boat rental shed was at the far end of the beach. 

The sign on the boat shed gave directions on how to return your boats. 

They had plenty of canoes and kayaks in racks waiting to be rented out.  

A pricing sign was posted near the boats. You could tell that the prices have gone up in the lst couple years by the new number stickers stuck over top of the old pricing on the sign. 

At this end of the beach there is a large picnic shelter with an expansive roof and ample seating. Normally it would offer a shaded retreat from the summer sun's rays but this evening it stood empty. 

The sun began to dip below the horizon, casting a golden glow over the sand.  I started to walk slowly back up the beach towards my campsite so as not to miss the grand finale of this evening's sunset. 

And it did not disappoint.  The water, glassy and still as a mirror, captured this vibrant spectacle perfectly, transforming the lake into a canvas of fiery colors. 

As I walked back up the road I passed by the bridge that leads to the boat launch at the other side of the park.  Although it was going to get dark soon, I figured I had time to make a quick detour to go and see it. So, I changed course and headed that way. 

The road runs along side a creek filled with brown tannin stained water. 

Both the road and the creek joined up with the lake at the docks.  The docks were not big, but big enough to get a canoe or small boat into the water.  Standing on the end of the dock, I was able to see the bottom of my campsite from here. 

On the other side of the creek was the dog beach. It looked just as nice as the human beach did.  Sylvie would have loved it there if I had brought her on this trip. 

On my walk back to camp I discovered the comfort station. I hadn't realized that it was so close to my camp site. (Another perk of my site). It was only about 3 or 4 sites away in the opposite direction from which I had originally started my walk, which was why I hadn't seen it until now. 

​From here I noticed that it was way up on top of a hill with steps leading up. I wondered how wheelchairs were supposed to get up there. 

But then once I climber the steps I saw that on the other side of the building there was a paved pathway from the road to the comfort station that wheelchairs could easily be maneuvered through. 

Inside, the comfort station was spic and span.  It was clean and well maintained. 

There was a warning sign on one of the mirrors from the Health Unit though.  Those who have to watch their sodium levels, will need to use an alternate drinking water source. 

When I got back to my campsite it was almost dark.  I could hear splashing down at the bottom of my site again. But this splashing did not sound like the acorns falling into the water that I was becoming accustomed to. This was a bigger splashing. 

I quickly made my way down the steep path, being careful not to fall, to try to see what was making the noise. Through the dim light of dusk I could barely make out the shape of a beaver. I might not have been able to see him very well, but he saw me and with a slap of it's tail, it quickly swam away towards the docks. 

I carefully made my way back up the hill and proceeded to get a fire started.  It took me a minute since I was fumbling with the matches in the dark. But I got it going.  At least with the darkness around us, I didn't feel like I was intruding on the neighbours privacy anymore. The lady was joined by her husband now and I could hear them talking softly around their fire. But they were so quiet that I could still hear the crickets and the sound of the acorns plopping into the water. 

Supper was simple. Just some bagels and cream cheese along with some nice hot tomato soup. I just sat by the fire, eating my supper and looking at the stars. This evening isn't too cold so I sat until the fire burnt right down. 

I was happy to her the call of a loon out on the lake as I crawled into bed for the night. 

The next morning I woke up at 8 a.m. to a misty, fog over the lake. I could hear the mewling calls of the beaver out on the lake but I couldn't see them. 

​It wasn't raining yet, but it could start at any minute so I took down the tents fairly quickly.

I had a little chipmunk visitor watch me while I was doing this. 

Today I am on my way to Point Farms Provincial Park. But first I made a pit stop at the office to get some ice for the cooler.  I was happy to find that it was open this morning. 

No only was I able to get my ice but I was able to get my Oastler Lake sticker for my book too. 

By 10 a.m. I was on the road for a 3 and a half hour drive.  What adventures will Point Farms bring me? 
​I can't wait to get there!