Spent three days a couple weeks ago canoeing The Massassauga Provincial Park (yes, 'The' Massassauga just like 'The' Ohio State - don't ask me why).
It's a fairly small provincial park on the east side of Georgian Bay set up primarily for canoe trips and is roughly 2 hours from Toronto. It is also the home range of Eastern Canada's only poisonous snake. In some ways you could actually describe it as two parks. The waters on Georgian Bay are open to motor boats and have several designated overnighting bays. The interior of the park is canoes and kayaks only.
The weather was perfect. Low to mid 20's Celcius (70's for those using the antiquated system down south) during the days and not much cooler at night. Except for the last day, the sky was mostly blue with just enough clouds to have something to look at.
This was far from an intense trip. My buddy is a geography teacher but seems to have difficulty with scale of maps. Most trips I've been on with him have been ridiculous distances. The last one was well nearly 100 km (60 miles) in 3 and a half days with strong winds and two newbie paddlers. This time I sat down and helped him plan the route.
Day 1 was only about 45 minutes of paddling and a quick portage to Canoe Lake (I think every park has a lake with the same name). The only hardship was the portage which being less used had some pretty committed mosquitoes. Thankfully it was only about 500 m (no more imperial conversions - deal with it).
The lake was reasonably small and quiet (with the exception of hearing motors from the main channel on the other side of the trees as they rushed to beat the darkness). As a nice contrast to my last trip, the bugs at the site were next to nonexistent and plenty of dragonflies and frogs to pick up the few that were around. Otherwise it was a nice large site with a good fire pit.
The second day was far more taxing; back over the portage then paddling for an hour and a half even including a couple of navigation errors by the geographer before arriving at our site near the bottom of Spyder lake. At this point he was starting to hint that we should paddle longer but I convinced him to drop off our gear and set up the site first.
The second site had a nice northerly view (See pics below) and a nice large lake to overlook. It also backed onto a small ridge with all sorts of nice rock features. Based on the number of fish I saw while taking a swim, there would likely be no problem catching your dinner. After setting up camp, I decided to sit in my hammock and read (which of course translates as taking a nap) leaving my buddy to sit by the water and relax. I had a great view from the hammock of a typical Ontario lake and even a (very Canadian) maple tree in front of me.
A hearty meal of pasta and sausage followed along with bugs as dusk hit. For some reason the bugs got bored fairly quickly and the rest of the night was no problem.
The next day was grey and thunder storms were expected so we got an early start. Having to face an hour an a half of paddling we were out of the site by noon and easily made it to the put in and were packed up by two with only a few drops of rain. We did spend a few minutes watching a couple boats of obviously rookie paddlers trying to figure things out but one of them seemed to have a clue so we left them to their own devices.
The drive back was notable for one key thing. My buddy who was constantly saying that we should have covered more distance decided that it was nice to take a relaxing trip.
A final note is the park is pretty busy in the summer (but well managed - the only time we saw crowds was at the main portage into the park) so you would want to book early for weekends. We went mid week and though most sites were booked the week before, we were still able to plan a sensible route.
For anyone who plans to go, this is a great site for planning and site descriptions. https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=U...72012&t=h&z=14
Because the reservations are site specific, you can also book them online at Parks Ontario (yes, online booking for back country - about time).
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