The second day was as beautiful as the first. Lovely blue skies, dotted with pretty white clouds. Spectacular.
The park ranger came around in the morning to check everyone's permits. We chatted with him a bit and he suggested a route for us to paddle. There was an island to the east called Camelot. It was publicly accessible and had one trail you could hike.
Most of the islands in the area are actually privately owned with residences built on them. Some of the islands are tiny barely fitting the single dwellings perched precariously on them. It's kind of neat to see.
Camelot Island is about 6.5 kilometres from Beau Rivage. You have to paddle due west in between Lindsay and Bostwick Islands. Past there you head out of the shelter area into rougher waters.
Your next checkpoint is Thwartway Island. Since I didn't want to waste any extra energy paddling around lost I asked any boaters or islanders I saw for directions. Everyone was quite friendly and very helpful. The regulars know the area well.
Thwartway is pretty much the halfway point of the trip. You pass a few small islands from there to Camelot. You can also use the U.S. coastline to the south as a reference to get to there too. It took us about 3-1/2 hours one way from our island to Camelot.
Camelot is under 400 metres wide. It has 6 campsites and a number of berths for docking your larger boats. The kayak docking area is on the south side of the island. There's a hiking trails that goes around the island that is around a kilometre long. We walked it. It didn't take too long. But, none of the islands has an extensive trail system. The idea of this trip for us wasn't to hike of course, but paddle.
I have to say, the pictures I took on this trip aren't as good as I would normally take. All the ones I took on the water were with my uncle's old Olympus point-and-shoot. It's waterproof to 10 feet, so that's why I used it.
I also brought my old Canon 20D for onshore shots. I didn't bring any of my good lenses like my wide angle 10-22 mm though. Instead I used the kit lens that came with the camera. I didn't want to take the chance of anything bad happening with my good equipment. So I took less shots than normal. And they don't look quite as nice unfortunately.
We did take some fun shots on a tiny, rock island on out way back. We pretended to be stranded on it hiding our kayaks on the backside.
In total I believe we paddled between 15-16 kilometres because we made a side trip around McDonald Island on the way back. We were thinking about landing and hiking there too, but we couldn't find the kayaking docking point. So instead of wasting our now limited energy paddling around we returned to Beau Rivage.
We were pretty tired by the time we returned. To avoid the nightmare mosquito scenario of the night before we got started on our cooking while there was still plenty of daylight. That worked out perfectly. We hardly were bothered at all.
I also started a fire with the firewood we bought the day before. You can buy it on the island for $6.80 a bag. I gathered a lot of kindling and piled it on top of a discarded paper egg carton we had no use for any longer. Then I piled the logs on top in a teepee fashion and lit underneath. It started like a charm. Too bad it was late afternoon still. It wasn't very dark out, so sitting by the campfire wasn't as interesting. But, it was better than sitting in a swarm of insects that's for sure.
As predicted by The Weather Channel it rained in the late evening. We managed to pack up everything and run into the tent just before it got heavy.
It rained for most of the night. The tent fly kept us dry though. So that was good. Similar to the night before I couldn't fall asleep. I kept turning one way and then the other trying to get comfortable. Even though it was a 4-man tent was a little for the three of us because we had all our gear inside too. It seemed that I could only fall asleep when the birds started chirping in the early morning just before daybreak.
The next morning we packed up early and headed to the mainland. We had breakfast in Gananoque. The first restaurant was a bit of a dive. It had a sign offering $5 breakfast so we went in. But the old lady who was serving pretty much ignored us while serving everyone else so we walked out.
The next place we went to, Moroni's, was empty when we walked in. But, I think it's because it was early in the day still. It began to fill up afterwards.
It's billed as a Mediterranean restaurant. We just ordered breakfast though. Gabe and Emily had French toast with different meat sides. I had the big breakfast with eggs, toast, hash browns, sausage, bacon and ham. The food was decent and the service was good. What else could you ask for.
Emily drove the whole way back. Gabe took a nap. I took a nap. We stopped at The Big Apple in Colborne (halfway between Gananoque and Toronto) for apple crumble and ice cream. It was really tasty. Since it was my first visit I took a bunch of photos while they waited in the stifling heat for me.
Overall it was a great trip even with the mosquito attack. We learned our lesson about trying to do things after dark. Maybe next time I'll bring a thicker, softer Therm-a-rest sleeping pad too.
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