My brother and I would always go camping as a family when we were kids. Since we've grown up, we still try to go camping together when we can, which averages out to about once per summer. However, this had all been front country camping (car camping). We had never been back country camping together before, so it was time.
When we were planning, we wanted something in the middle of where we each live. Because I'm in Ottawa and he is near Kitchener, we figured that Kawartha Highlands Provincial Park would be a good bet. It's a bit more developed than Algonquin and was only about a three-hour drive for each of us.
I left home around 7 am and got to the EV charger in Madoc around 9:20. I charged for a bit up to 88% and then made it to the access point on Long Lake around 11:20. My brother showed up around 11:50 as he hit some traffic going around Toronto.
We loaded up the boat and were on the water by 12. Our campsite for the night was on Sparkler Lake, it's a nice site, and only has one campsite on the lake. I stayed at the site last year in October; you can read about that trip here.
The paddle started off great with the weather being overcast with no wind, it was peaceful and calm, until it started to rain. It rained on and off most of the length of Long Lake and into Loucks Lake until just before the first of two portages into Cox Lake. Even though all my stuff was in my dry bag, my brother's wasn't, which meant that his sleeping bag got a little damp from the rain. Our pants got soaked as well, as we weren't able to put on our rain pants while in the canoe paddling.
The first portage between Loucks Lake and the stream connecting Cox and Loucks Lake was easy, there's a floating dock at the portage landing, which is a nice touch for loading and unloading
The stream itself is easy to paddle, but due to the water levels being higher than when I last paddled it in October, the rocks that were visible back then were just barely under the water, this meant that we did hit a few rocks, as they were almost impossible to see. Halfway along this stream is a beaver dam that requires a pull-over. Luckily, due to the high water levels the height of the beaver dam was only about half a meter high, it was easy enough to get out and pull the canoe over with our feet staying mostly dry.
The final portage before Cox Lake was a short 110m that was mostly up and down. However, the hard part of this portage was getting back into the boat on Cox Lake. It was very similar to the stream we had just come through, where the rocks were just barely under water, too shallow to paddle out without scraping the bottom of the boat, but too deep to keep our feet dry. In the end I decided I cared more about my canoe than my dry feet, we walked the canoe out to deeper water before pushing off.
Cox Lake is a very nice lake with a smattering of campsites and a few cottages nicely spread out. The paddle across the lake wasn't very long and we were soon at the final portage of the day. This would be a 428m portage that would lead us to Sparkler Lake, our home for the night.
We got to our campsite at around 3:30pm, which meant it took us 3.5 hours to do about 11.5km.
The campsite is quite nice with a picnic table, fire pit and benches. There are roughly 2-3 tent spots, with some better than others, and a thunder box at the back of the camp.
I set my tent up on the prime tent spot as my brother was going to sleep in his hammock. He set up his hammock with a great view of the water but moved it to a more sheltered spot near the back of the camp due to the wind coming off the lake.
Once camp was all set up, we got the fire going and started on dinner. I had some chili and my brother had shrimp curry, both from Happy Yak.
We ended the night around 8:45 and went our separate ways. I stayed up reading for a bit and was just about to drift off to sleep when my brother appeared outside my tent asking if he could sleep in the tent due to how cold it was. After I figured out what was going on, he brought in his sleeping mat and sleeping bag and we got cozy. My tent is a 2-person tent, but that means that with 2 people in it, it gets quite cozy. it was a good sleep overall, but I woke up to rain around 1am.
We woke up the next morning around 8am. The rain fly was wet from the previous night's rain, consequently it got packed up separately in the spare dry bag that I always bring for occasions like this. The tarp we had set up over the picnic table the previous day was also wet from the night's rain, therefore it got stuffed into the same dry bag as the rain fly. Doing this keeps the rest of the contents of the main bag dry.
After a quick breakfast of oatmeal and some coffee, we packed up camp and were soon retracing our steps from the day before on the portage back down to Cox Lake. Once back on the lake we headed up to the north end, as we were trying to find an unofficial portage that would take us into Poplar Lake, which is stocked with Splake. Unfortunately, all we found were a few ticks and an old collapsed shed. The bush was too thick to bushwhack and neither of us really wanted to spend the afternoon picking ticks off each other, thus we decided to call off our search and continue back to the access point.
We essentially just retraced our path from the day before, so I won't bore you with the details of the two portages and the stream with the rocks and beaver dam again. While we were on Long Lake it started to rain on us again, which summed up our trip fairly well.
We made it back to the access point on Long Lake around 2:30pm and I was home around 6:30, after stopping in Madoc to charge. It rained on and off on the drive home so I was happy we weren't in a tent again for the night, even though Friday was going to be sunny and warm.
Overall it was a great trip with my brother who I don't get to see as much anymore.
For the stat nerds: in total we did 25.48km, 11.53km the first day and 13.95km the second day. We traveled for around 8 hours total, broken down as 3.5 the first day and 4.5 the second day. We did a total of just over 4km of portaging, as we doubled carried each portage. This trip occurred on May 13-14.
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| Cliffs on Long Lake. |
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| Cox Lake from the portage landing. |
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| Sparkler Lake |
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Fireplace and seating. |
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My tent with my new light in it during the evening.
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Rock garden at the portage out of Cox Lake. |
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Portaging.
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