into the North
What a day! We left the cottage at 10:30 and headed up the highway through Parry Sound and into the vast northern portion of the province. We stopped at the French river for a picnic and then arrived at the campsite at Killarney provincial park by mid-afternoon. Having practiced with the tent made its erection a simple matter, and we were quickly off to the "quiet" beach on George Lake (quiet being a relative term when Kenny is in the mix).
The water is beautifully clear and while cool is very swimmable. The rugged rocks of the Canadian shield make a fantastic boundary for a lake - perfect for diving right in. The beach at the campsite has a man-made look to it, but it doesn't really matter when you're splashing around with a three year old (or at all, come to think of it - the beaches in Hawaii are imported from Queensland).
We then dashed off to the village of Killarney (despite some reluctance by Mari at yet more driving) to see the Georgian Bay coastline during sunset. There's a picturesque lighthouse east of the town that I shot to death (with black and white film, sadly) and we located the fish and chips place that my cousin Eric from the property next to our cottage had told me to look for. We agreed to go there for lunch the next day.
Returning to the campsite, I busied myself with the sleeping bags and The Boy while Mari warmed up the chili and rice she'd thoughtfully cooked the day before. Our campsite had a rating of "poor" on the online reservation website for Killarney provincial park, but I'd have rated it "good to excellent". Plenty of flat space for the tent, reasonable privacy for a car-camping campsite, and the nearest potable water tap was so close that we needn't have brought the collapsable water jug/box thing.
We trekked to the "comfort station" to clean the dishes, brush our teeth and use the toilets in the dark, and I remarked for the hundredth time how there were simply no mosquitos. Given that in April-May you couldn't walk into our back yard without inhaling some of the parasites I don't know how the Summer managed to be so bug-free but I'm certainly not complaining. Waiting for Mari and Kenny to emerge from the toilets after I'd done with the dishes, I read that there was a wolf poking around in the campsite vacinity and noted the differences in strategies with dealing with a wolf encounter versus dealing with a black bear encounter. I'll take a cowardly and visually impaired black bear any time rather than an alert and visually capable creature that actively stalks children.
Packing every gram of bear-attracting foodstuff, toothpaste, sunscreen, soap and garbage into the car, we got into our sleeping bags and Kenny was out like a light. We had a flashlight and some small hiking bells and a whistle in case a bear came into our campsite (I'd been told by the park staff that a mama bear with two(!) cubs was in the area). Strangely, one of the hiking bells turned out to have no clapper - way to go MEC! We laughed at the sound of various cars beeping as their owners got in and out for one last thing. I'd worried about our doing that before I realized that we were all doing it.
The campsite at Killarney is a) beautiful and b) lavishly appointed especially compared to the provisioning of car-camping sites in the west. Additionally, there were no bugs and the weather was perfect - we didn't need the tarp which is a noisy pain in the ass to sleep under.
During the night I woke a few times. Once when someone's car alarm went off in the (far) distance, which was hilarious. Again when some raccoons chattered in the immediate presence of our tent. And again, to my delight, when some wolves began to howl to each other. My country days having ended when I was eight years old, I've no idea how to gauge the distance of wolf calls, but I'd guess that one was about three-to-five kilometers away and the other was about a kilometer or two away. I made sure that Mari was awake to hear it and we jabbered excitedly. It's the first time I've heard a wolf's cry since the mid-late 90's.
