Iain Leitch Photography

 Recently my wife and I went to Voyageur Provincial Park for the first time. We just did a short one night camping trip but quite enjoyed ourselves, and will happily camp there again.  We left work early on Friday and made it to the park by 2:30. It is just an hour drive from Ottawa for us, so we only needed to take half a day off.  Once we got to the site we were informed that there was a fire ban in effect as of that day, which was disappointing as we had planned to cook hotdogs over the fire for dinner but were able to adapt, because thankfully we had brought a little one burner stove to heat up water for coffee the next morning. This meant we were able to use a little frying pan to cook the hotdogs in, which really saved our dinner. As disappointing as a fire ban is, I completely understand why one was in effect because it was bone dry. The earth was super hard and compacted and some of the plants looked quite wilted and thirsty, not to mention that it was a humidex o...

Six Days Alone in Algonquin: Canoe Lake to White Trout and Back My first back country canoe trip of 2025 was to what is normally the busiest part of Algonquin. I left on May 4th from Canoe Lake and returned on May 9th to Canoe Lake. In between, I stayed on Rainbow, McIntosh, Misty, White Trout, and Sunbeam Lakes, each for one night.  The total distance for the trip was 99.07 km, as recorded on Strava. The way I recorded my days on Strava didn’t differentiate between paddling and portaging, but I did roughly 36.03 km of portaging. I double-carried each portage, so I did each portage length three times.   Waterfall between Timberwolf and Misty Lake   Day One – Canoe Lake to Rainbow Lake: 12.18 km, 4 hours 17 minutes I recently got a new car this winter -a Chevy Equinox EV. Since this was my first time traveling with a canoe on the EV, I was interested to see how much it would affect my range. I left Ottawa at 98% and got to Bancroft with around 30%. From there, I charged ...