Algonquin Park Fall Camping, September 2007



This year, it was my son and I, trying for brook trout before the season closes on the last weekend in September. Total boys weekend. Turns out the fishing was not so great but the weather cooperated and the alternative activities (mostly fire related) were quite popular. The rest of the universe also decided to descend on the park for the fall colours. Busloads of tourists and full campgrounds surprised me when we pulled into the park. I was expecting empty lots, no people except some hardcore fishermen but the weather was so nice, the tourists come out like blackflies in May. We lucked out on a camp site, and once we set up camp, we took a walk to the lake and checked things out. We decided that we had enough time before dark to go for a short fishing excursion and despite best efforts and massive skills thrown at the problem, no luck. We did catch a small non-trout but I don't even recall what it was. Skunked we packed up the canoe and headed back to camp to settle in for the evening. Knowing full well, that one bag of wood would not last, we ensured a quality evening of burning by grabbing a second bag on our way back into camp.


Dinner was a success, Sausages with vegetable rice and then dessert ... mallows and even some pop - tarts that jumped into my shopping cart by accident. The burning experiments were a success. We demonstrated smoke writing, ember writing, advanced fire management, random fire poking and the evenings activities were fully in the hands of the 11 year old fire marshall I put in charge.


The next day, our morning was spent lazing around with multiple breakfasts before going on a hike. I made coffee, and we had instant oatmeal which is normally banned as a breakfast food since it's actually 99.9 percent pure sugar. The hike fixed that and we took our time. The cool weather made it nice. It was quite a nice hike too, lots of pretty views and scenery.

We also encountered a whole bunch of "king of the hill boulders" of which I was king maybe once.