Niagara Wilderness

Yesterday (Thursday, May 12th) there was unfortunately an outage of the blogger service, so although people were still able to read the blogs, I was not able to post anything. So for the enjoyment of all the viewers, I am going to make a double post today!

Thursday, May 12th 2011 -The Mighty Falls to the Vast Parkland -

We started the day off with our last breakfast at Dad's house in Oakville, then headed off to the Niagara Falls about an hour south of Oakville. For the first time in three days, it was actually a benefit to be outside of Toronto rather than inside of it, probably saved an hour of driving through rush hour traffic. Now, it isn't a very inspiring drive to the falls, mostly Steel Mills, Highways and tourist trap advertisement. Don't be fooled though, the view is definitely worth it in the end. Unfortunately, on the best of days, there is a large amount of mist coming off the falls, maybe if it was a perfect day you could get a picture of the whole falls, but I had to be satisfied by taking pictures of it in parts. The following is the best 'part' picture.

The society of barrel travellers was forming behind the picture

Now, there was also the American falls, you certainly can't leave them out. Fortunately for us, this is one of the few things in Canadian/American relations where Canadians came out on top. You can compare the two pictures for yourself. You have the American side, which is a fairly respectable waterfall, you know, probably got a nice river feeding into it, got a few hundred cubic litres of water flowing over it every minute or two...

Yeah I'm a waterfall, big whoop wanna fight about it?

Also, there is this picture of Geoff and I in front of a big Niagara promotion sign. I would have put this later in the blog but this is just where it ended up when I was uploading the picture.

This is one of the few pictures I have that include both Geoff AND I. That way there won't be any conspiracy theorists that think we're simultaneous roadtrips

...And then there are the majestic Canadian Niagara waterfalls. I have to say, I think we got the better end of that geographic deal. As I said earlier, the mist doesn't allow you to see the whole thing, but this picture is a much better view that some people get to see in person so I figure it turned out pretty well.

Assisting Water Flow, LIKE A BOSS!

There is quite a bit of history around the area as well, like how people used to go over in barrels. However, it was also the site of an American Invasion of 1812 (I think). During the depression, the Ontario Government even toyed with the idea of damming Niagara falls to generate electricity. I guess we can all be happy that that idea didn't fly.

After the stop at Niagara Falls, we travelled the 400km up to Algonquin Provincial Park. Even though it was a Thursday everything seemed to close up at 4pm. We got to the entrance at 4:45pm and it told us to go to the campground, we get to the campground and find it is also closed and they just want you to set up camp. Therefore, we found an empty campground and then set up the tent.

I have to say it was a beautiful park, one of the hidden gems of Canada that is for sure. It isn't the easiest to get to as there isn't direct main highway access, you have to take a number of smaller provincial highways to get there, but it is well worth it. We set up camp on one of the non-bookable campgrounds, and it still had a few like this:

Our tent literally sat on a river bank overlooking this

That was the one that wasn't bookable. I have to say that 80% of the campsites had views like this. The only shame was that the water was ball shrinkingly cold. Geoff went in first and I didn't believe him, but I got up to about my ankles and it wasn't going to end well. In warmer weather it would be absolutely perfect. If diving into the water from a rocky river bank isn't you thing, every campground had a beach nearby. So if you like hiking and you enjoy the outdoor life and you're ever in Ontario, then this is the place to go.

Unfortunately, all good things don't come without hitches. It turns out that although everything is closed, it doesn't stop the park rangers from giving you a hard time. We were just about to go explore the surrounding areas when Forest Ranger Tom showed up. Now don't get me wrong, Ranger Tom was amazingly helpful, just be warned, if you go to Algonquin and no one is around, make sure you stick around your campground until a ranger shows up. Otherwise if your campground is abandoned when a ranger shows up, they can fine you for failing to display a permit (Needed to gain access to park trails and such, camping is extra). Fortunately for us, we just caught him when he arrived, so he took us up to the camp office and pushed all the paperwork so we got all legitimized before the evening rolled around. Ranger Tom was very helpful and recommended all sorts of trails to go on. On top of that it made for a very good joke because we have a GPS by TomTom that we refer to as 'Young Tom' so meeting Ranger Tom made for a good in joke.

This is Ranger Tom's Sweet ride

After that we had a brief exploration of the surrounding campsite and settled in for the night. We decided to take an early night so we could get up extra early to get hiking the next day.

Friday, May 13th 2011 -Failed Pancakes and Super Waterfalls-

We started the day by attempting the realize Geoff's dream of making Pancakes at the campground. Unfortunately the frying pan we got wasn't very high quality, the metal spatula we had sheared the non-stick coating right off into the pancakes, so that idea was aborted before it got started really.

Fueled up with PB&J we packed up our campsite and started hiking. We started with Towers and Trails, a hike that featured a lookout, a rail bed and a water fall. What I really liked about Algonquin was that each trail had a little booklet that had a bit of history about the walk you were taking. In this case the walk featured the nearby railway that was apparently very busy until about the middle of the century, when highway made the whole thing obsolete. There was also a lookout where they used to keep a forest fire lookout tower until about the 1960's. Although at this point all that was left was the foundation, as a high note it had an amazing lookout spot that would have featured a hotel if it still existed, but still a nice view in general. That view will not be appearing in this blog because I didn't get a chance to upload it.

What I did get was a shot of an old Dam that had to be rebuilt three times in order to control the flow of a river. It also created a bit of waterfalls/rapids downstream a little bit.

The river was certainly in a rush to get somewhere

On another note, on the way to the lookout we found a small toad. He was far away from the river but he was probably venturing to another pond somewhere. We managed to get a few closeups of him. I named him Mr. Frog (despite the fact that he was a toad) and bothered him until he ran away.
                                     

Mr. Frog, that's his name, his name again is Mr. Frog.

We finished that walk right before it started raining, so we had to skip the other planned hike. We stopped by in a nearby Hardwood lookout and found out some neat information about trees, but other than that it was a straight shot out of the park. Fortunately the pass we got for Algonquin worked for any provincial park for that day, and there happened to be two more on our way to North Bay.

Ragged Falls was pretty much entirely focused around one big waterfall that was much more dramatic than the one in Algonquin, but not quite as amazing as Niagara. However we were able to get up really close to this one, probably too close but it didn't matter. We had the time of our lives exploring that park. In about an hour we had gotten to the top of the waterfall and climbed all the way back down to the bottom of it. All without getting washed away by the roaring (And I do mean roaring) waters.

In this case, we did go chasing waterfalls

Finally, there was Arrowhead park. Aside from being full of blackflies (Seriously, they were so numerous, I had several divebomb my eye in a matter of minutes) it also had a waterfall you could go scamper down on. Although it didn't have any history, we got so close to this one we could touch the raging waters. We didn't stay very long because it was the end of a drawn out, hot day and the blackflies were planning to carry us away if we weren't on guard.

More waterfalls than your daytrip has room for!

After Arrowhead there was a brief two hour drive up to North Bay, Ontario. Despite it's name it really wasn't all that cold. We checked in and were informed that in order to get the 'real' North Bay experience we had to go eat at the Moose. Basically it's a sort of Sports Bar/Montana's idea, but it was uniquely North Bay. I had a local microbrew that was pretty good, but what was worth noting about this place were it's two amazing creations. First were the Pizza Rolls, now I'm pretty sure I've seen these in grocery stores but I've never tried it. They were fantastic, they were basically mozza sticks but they had the rest of the pizza in it, crust (rather than breading), pepperoni and sauce, I don't think I've had anything like it and I don't know if I ever will. Geoff also felt it was worth mentioning that they had a Peppercorn burger that basically was the perfect blend of spiciness and meatiness, it also had an onion ring garnish which was a clever idea.

The next day will prove to be a driving Marathon as we try to get from North Bay, Ontario to Thunder Bay, Ontario in one go.