Awesome Algonquin Solo Canoe Trip - Part 1 - Rain to McCraney - Yummy Food - Portaging - Paddling

I can't think we will go. I can't think I will go. I can't think I will go. I'm so happy I can't wait to get there. Well hello Mr. Turtle on the road to Rain Lake. Hey buddy. Good morning. It is 7 30 a.m on Friday June 11th and I am here at the access to Rain Lake. I'm getting ready to get my canoe in the water and go out on my first backcountry camping trip 2021. I am so excited. I'm going to go unload. I'm the only one here. I came really early today so that I wouldn't have to worry about dealing with the crowds and I'm going to get this done and get on the water and then I'll film a bit more later. Well good morning. I am all packed up and ready to go. I just got to park my car and get my water socks and my water shoes on and I'm on my way. I'm at the Rain Lake access in Algonquin Park. There are lots and lots of out. They're bussing around me. Not really biting me yet but I am covered in permafrost and deep and I do have my bug shelter. I'm going to get on the water as soon as I can and get out of here before the hordes of people show up to go along with the hordes of bugs. I left a little note for my fellow campers and up I go. It's 7 45 and I am on the water. Lots of bugs out. I'm just kind of hovering. I'm sure that my big long portage or portage is going to be very buggy but that's okay. Good morning loonies. Happy camping day. Good morning. I am on the water. I'm on Rain Lake. I'm so happy. I'll tell you a quick little summary of what's happening and what I'm doing. We are now finally allowed to go camping in Ontario. I haven't been camping in seven months. Today is the first day they open here. I had a reservation at the Halliburton Highland Water Trails and they canceled it two weeks ago assuming that it was still going to be closed and when I contacted them they said they're not going to open now until Monday. On Monday when they made the announcement that we were going to be allowed to camp on Friday I went on to the Ontario Parks website and looked at a bunch of places and the campsites just started disappearing. It was insane. I decided to book Jubilee Lake which is a really cute little small lake. There's Rain Lake. There's one more I can't This looks cute. Let's do this. There were two portages going in so nice first trip. I've been doing a few portages day tripping but it's just with my small backpack. I haven't been like portaging much equipment and stuff but anyways I have been practicing. All was fine and good and then Wednesday night I went to take a look at the map and see how the reservations were going and every single lake was fully booked. Rain, the one in between and Jubilee Lake and I thought that's going to be a lot of people. I'm going to get to the put-in. It's going to be packed. There's going to be so many people. Everyone is full and then I look and here's McCraney sitting there and it's green and I had been debating whether or not to go there. So basically to get McCraney from Rain it's a short paddle and then it's an 1800 meter portage into McCraney and that's probably why it wasn't fully booked because who wants to do that right? But I've done the portage from McCraney to Rain. It's not that bad and I thought you know what I would rather just paddle a little bit by myself early in the morning and then jump on this portage. You know it'll probably take me about an hour and a half because I double carry and then I'll be on McCraney. McCraney has 10 campsites. There's still some open and it's probably like five, six, seven times the size of Jubilee. So that way at least I'll have some more privacy and it'll be a little bit more remote because I like you know being out here alone. I know I'm not going to get that but you know I thought that would be the closest. So that's what I did. That's what I'm doing and hopefully it all works out. Well that's forecast. It is raining now. It's really light rain. I can barely even feel it. I do have my raincoat out but it is about 17 degrees this morning and I'm feeling quite comfortable in just what I have on now. All right it is 8 15. It took me 30 minutes so I would say it's approximately three kilometers but I was filming and stuff a little bit so maybe two and a half. I am at the portage from Rainey to McCraney. 1,810 meters. Here we go. Here we go. We're off. So it's 8 25. I uh brought the pack up to the top of the hill here so I can just come and grab it and uh a little steep hill but not as steep as I remembered it. All right pack I'll be back. Well I'm not doing this portage alone. There are lots of bugs here with me hanging out. I don't think they're biting yet. Just buzzing around but I do have my nice fluffy mesh hat on just in case I need to pull it down but uh so far so good. We'll see. Hopefully keeps up. Well it's been six minutes. My shoulders are already sore and I'm like why did I do this but that's okay. I am now uh encompassed in bugs. They are all inside the canoe here with me. If I stay still you can hear them. Just hordes. Hordes and hordes and hordes. Yeah good times. Well it's been 10 minutes and uh man I don't know if this is a good idea. My shoulders and my neck are just killing. Like I want to put the canoe down right now. Um I looked on my Avenza map uh for Algonquin and uh I can see myself on the portage um and uh it looks like I'm two-thirds of the way through it which is really weird because it's supposed to be 1,200 meters and uh that should take me at least 30 minutes. Maybe longer. I think it took me 30 minutes last time so I'll be surprised to see uh be interested to see how long it takes me to get to the other end and uh if I can actually make it. 21 minutes after I left the portage at Rain Lake I am believe it or not at McCraney and uh that's pretty freaking awesome. All right it is 8 53 and uh just put the canoe down kind of sideways here a little bit sheltering uh put my PFD in there and uh I have my bear vault with me on this trip uh so the food is in here so just made sure the lid was secure and uh that's all locked up so I'm going back to get my pack and the bugs are insane. Just like at Rain Lake when I got into the access there are two loons sitting here on McCraney waiting to say hello. It is buggy. I got a couple bites on my hands already. I'm just on my way back to Rain Lake access to get my backpack. My raincoat is also there. It is raining quite a bit now. I'm about halfway through the portage going with the canoe. It started raining quite a bit um but I'm really protected here and uh I'm not even really feeling it much. I've just got a little bit of water on my my thighs on my pants and the rest of me is fine. It's a long portage but it's uh fairly flat and simple except for going up the hill to get up to the start. It's really level and uh it's a really great portage. Oh yeah I'm very buggy but I think that's that. So I am still doing the intermittent fasting Wednesday mark two weeks and uh I'm seeing really great results. I've lost five pounds and I've lost 9.75 inches off of my various body parts like my thighs and my butt, my chest, my tummy and my biceps. So uh really happy with it. I didn't want to break it today. I knew I was going to be doing this big portage um and I was worried that I wasn't going to have enough energy um but I feel perfectly fine and at this point I know I can do it without having anything. I'm super excited to see these on my path today. I saw them when I was carrying the canoe and I almost stopped to grab my phone and I'm like just film it on your way back. Five of them here. Six of them here. That's beautiful. Apparently stopping isn't a good idea. I am just like covered in bugs. Oh my pace has slowed down quite a bit. I was booting through here when I didn't have the pack on but with the pack I'm like just dumbling along here. Might take me a little longer than 20 minutes but I don't care. Woohoo! 9.40. I am here. See and I did it last time. I kept going. This is cart trail. Oh I can't stop here. Bugs, bugs, bugs. All right we are here on my lake for the weekend. Let's go see what kind of trouble I can get into. Well it's 9.45 and I am at McCraney Lake and I'm about to make my way through and go check out some campsites. Absolutely stunning out here on McCraney Lake. I'm so happy to be here. Hi guys. Good morning. Very quiet. I haven't heard any this morning. The ones I passed earlier like when I first got here they made a little huh huh. That was it. These guys are quiet. All right I'm gonna leave you alone. See you later. Have a nice day. Oh I got a little sneak peak. No. I've got it on zoom just so you guys know I'm not this close. What a big difference. All right. Not a big deal. We'll do this real quick. while I was making the video. I did a couple of stills so I could screenshot them and Bugs thought it was a great idea too because they were like yum. Beautiful. So beautiful. I'm really excited to see this lake calm. I don't know if it's going to be calm. I'm just entering the opening of McCraney Lake where it starts to get a little bit wider and um looks pretty calm. Super excited. It is raining so or again whatever um but it's not bad. I can barely feel it actually. It's really light and the drops are pretty much drying on my pants like seconds after they land so it's not too bad at all. So I'm just making my way to a bunch of campsites here. This is the third one down on the map on the left side when you're coming into McCraney. I think the next one might be kind of cool because there's a there's a creek right around the corner from it and there's like water in behind it. It looks kind of neat like a nice place that I could explore tomorrow but I mean I could do that from any of the other sites too. It's a stutter creek. So there's a campsite here. I'm going to take a peek and then I'm going to go over to the other side of the island and look at that and the other one on this side and it's down Not good for the bugs. Oh my goodness. Look at it. It's overgrown. Wow. It's a tamagami campsite. The fire pit is up in the rocks here and behind there. Okay on to the next one. Well I've gone quite a bit of ways past where the campsite was supposed to be. This is the one like closest to Stutter Creek and I haven't seen a sign or anything that even remotely resembles a campsite. Okay I'm gonna go check out this island site. The only thing that worries me about that is again I don't know if anyone else has booked on this lake tonight or tomorrow for one. So for two someone could be like oh a lot of people like island sites because they think they're like safer like for bears and stuff and bears can swim really really well but I kind of feel that way too. Like I get that kind of an idea that you know it's a little bit harder for them to get to you. So I would think that that would be a popular campsite for like you know a family with little kids or something so they can go swimming. So that's what I'm worried about. I'm not worried about and the other thing is someone can come up to the island go I want the island site and they can take the one on the other side. So like we're actually on the same piece of land like there's so many campsites out here and I don't think there's going to be a ton of people so I just want to kind of spread out from everybody else. All right I'm at the island site um the far side from where I came from. The tree that has the campsite sign on it has fallen over. I'm assuming that's happened recently um and then uh I haven't been able to see that other campsite sign but I'm assuming it's right there where that beach is. So um this is tucked right in. I don't know. I'm gonna get out and take a look at this one. It's uh pretty grassy. It's interesting. It's got rocks and it's got grass so I don't know. This is pretty cute. Um you know there's a campsite in behind there but there's all these trees blocking it which is kind of nice and there's this nice little area in here. Um I can put my chair there. Um I believe the sun afternoon sun comes from over here. Um there's all these rocks too. I don't want to sit on rocks all the time but you know if there's a flat spot for the chair that'd be great. I believe that other campsite is right over here. Uh I don't see a sign um but it could be like this one. Maybe it's down but I think it's right there and there's a little beach but it doesn't look that amazing so maybe no one will come and take it. Um all these nice little like rock outcrops and stuff. Apparently my boat is talking to me. Um anyways let's go up and see what's what's over here. You okay there buddy? Something in the boat just moved all by itself you know. Um okay. This piece of directory is beautiful. Easy to get out out of the canoe. That was nice. Right over tree too. Very overgrown but uh it's been here. It's a huge fire pet. Um I'm not sure if this is all of it. Oh and it's a brand new one yeah. There's a little trail going I don't know where. Not this way. It was a lot closer than I thought it was. I was like halfway past the island all through in there. I think this is another lookout. Maybe maybe not. Okay I was like there's no privy. I don't know if I'm gonna stay here. Then I'm like oh brand new one yay. Oh there's lady slippers. I love those. I'm really starting to get hungry. Getting close to 12 so I have to make a decision. Well I think I found my home for the weekend. Um I've been walking around checking it out and uh I heard a loon call which is kind of like a sign to me. I think I'm gonna I think I'm gonna take it. So I'm gonna grab my bag and set up and uh have some lunch. As hungry as I am doing all that I've done today without food. Um I still decided to set up the bug shelter first. Uh I started getting my I brought my pack up. I brought the food bag up and then the bugs started coming around and buzzing at me and I thought I'm gonna sit here start making lunch and either it's gonna start raining on me or the bugs are just gonna start like swarming me. I'm gonna be miserable. So it took me like not even 20 minutes to do all the things. So uh today I have some wraps. I brought a couple of wraps. I brought some extra ones just in case. Um I'm gonna start out with one because I'm not a little piggy. Um and I have some tuna and this is actually from Canada. Um I got this at Walmart. This is wild skipjack tuna mayonnaise and chives. So I'm gonna have that. I brought a couple of packages of the tuna too because I wasn't sure like they look kind of small but the wraps are kind of small too. Um and again I haven't eaten since seven o'clock last night so pretty hungry. And then I have a whole bunch of mayonnaise packets that I picked up at Wendy's over the winter and like you know whenever I go through Huntsville I grab um some mayonnaise packets from there. And I have some cucumber to put on the wrap and I also have some Havarti cheese. It was just left over from uh some sandwich stuff that I made last week. So Havarti uh mayonnaise cucumber and uh tuna. So should be pretty good. And then I pulled this out of the bear vault too because I figured I deserve a treat. I did a lot of work this morning so. Alright let's get going. I'm hungry. Okay there's my wrap. Oh there's a white spot. Why is there a white spot where it is? Why can't you see that? It's so weird. There there's my wrap. Looks yummy and I'm gonna go eat. My loons are out there in front of the site. They've been crawling like crazy. It's been like loon loon loon all the time. It's been great. The whole time I was setting up the bug shelter they were going back and forth. It was awesome. It's a great welcome. I'm sitting here eating my lunch and I look up and the loons are like swimming towards my campsite. It's pretty cool. I'm not sure why. It looks like he's wagging his tail. That looks really weird. It's his foot. Is that his foot sticking up? What is that? I don't know what that is. There's like something sticking up behind it. I don't know if it's just a bent feather. See it's his foot. Is that you? Are you okay buddy? I don't know how to fix loons. Are you okay? You look hurt. See it's like it's his foot sticking out all weird. That's really weird. I've never seen that. He's waving. He's waving at me. Thanks for visiting. I guess he's okay. I don't know. All right I'm gonna go back to eating my lunch. Thanks for coming by. Well it's 1 30 and uh I just finished setting up my tent. Taking my time and it's still only 1 30. I got the tent set up. I just did my thermo rest, my pillow, my sleeping bag. I always like to be ready for bed. You never know what's gonna happen just in case you get tired suddenly or you don't feel good. I got the bug shelter set up over here. I'm gonna put that grill in there and use it as a table when I make dinner later. Yes I know my tent is on a little bit of a slant. The important part is where I lay down to sleep. The back part is not. So I actually laid down in the tent to check it because I didn't want to feel like I was falling down the hill and it's actually really good there. It's just the front um that's about it. I'm not gonna set up my hammock I don't think today um or maybe not till later. Uh it's still been kind of dripping a little bit on and off here. Um so I'm just gonna wait and make sure that uh the rain is definitely gone. I don't want my hammock to get wet and then I can't lay in it. Beautiful day here at Craney Lake. I am in my glory. I am not gonna lie I am so freaking happy right now to be out here. I can't even I'm sure you guys know because a lot of you are feeling it too so. Anyway I'm gonna go find something else to do. The sun is trying so hard to come out. I can feel its heat. Not that it's chilly out but it feels nice. Time to get some water. Well fork you for leaving that in the lake. It is four o'clock and uh time is just flying by. I am having pizza for dinner and I'm super excited because I love having pizza when I'm camping. Even if it's not on the fire it's better on the fire but even if it's not on the fire that's okay. I just want this bag. I have brought my water bottle with me and uh that way this stuff can start rehydrating. Okay so I'm going to do that and then I'm going to go back down there and keep reading my book. I'm reading stories about canoeing women uh although this one's from 1904 and uh it's pretty cool. Pretty interesting stuff. I used to go canoeing in big dresses and corsets like because they weren't allowed to wear other things. Just insane. This is the water that I um used the Pyrenees for. Um I set an alarm. You drink out of the lark. I just press the button so it takes about it's three minutes each cycle and I do it twice just to be sure. So technically six minutes and I can have drinking water but then what I do is I put water in my Nalgene and I put my Pyrenees drops in it and that takes an hour and in the meantime I just drink out of the lark. So now I have both of them ready. All right that looks like a decent amount of water. Okay I'm just gonna put them right there in the bear vault. Close it up. I have to say that I'm really impressed with the bugs so far. Um they were insane on the portage especially when I was carrying the canoe. I think I got a clip of that. They were just everywhere. So loud. Um but now that I'm out here like even up there where it's sheltered well there isn't even any wind so this is why I'm confused. Um maybe it's just the open spaces. Maybe they're just bad in the forest right now. Um because like I said they haven't been bad at home at all. Um I cut my grass the other day in a tank top and shorts without my bug shirt or my bug pants on which is unheard of for June right in Muskoka. So um I don't know. Maybe they just aren't that many here. That's what I like to think anyway. All right I'm going back to my book. Hello it's time to make dinner. It's five o'clock actually. I wanted to eat at five o'clock but um I was reading my book and then I got sidetracked. Anyways I have the fire grate grill thing set up here. It's awesome. Um I just put my placemat on it and I've got my stove inside my pot that I'm not using. Put a little teeny tiny bit of olive oil just in the bottom of my pan and uh I've gotten all the things prepared to make my pizza. Had a piece of cardboard with the pita so that uh it didn't get like all messed up but it fits really nicely on the bottom of the um the bear vault so uh that worked good. Okay so I've got some salsa and I am going to use this as my red sauce. I really like to do my pizzas with salsa. Um if I don't do pesto pizza which I which is probably my favorite but this is like my second favorite so um so I have got some salsa on there and uh almost used the whole container. I got everything ready to go so that this wouldn't take super long. Uh I've already shredded a bunch of cheese and I did it on the cheesecloth and I thought it would be easy to dump it out but clearly I was wrong. Um I have this little teeny tiny cheese grater from the dollar store that I use. It's really great um huh great. Just drop some cheese. Don't drop any food. Um I chopped up my ham already because it's it started out as Hawaiian pizza. I was like oh I'll make a Hawaiian pizza. I made one of those out there and I just dehydrated some pineapple um recently which was on a video that I just published not that long ago and um I thought well I'll do ham and pineapple which will be delicious. I love I love Hawaiian pizza and um then I was looking through my stuff that I dehydrated and I'm like oh you know what these mushrooms would be really good on it too and then I'm like oh yeah these tomatoes would be good on it too. So now I have mushrooms, tomatoes and pineapple and ham but still calling it a Hawaiian. Maybe we'll call it a fancy Hawaiian. Hawaiian Hawaiian in a tuxedo. Other things you gotta watch this. I put a little bit too much water in here um basically what I'll end up doing with whatever juice is left um because I can't have a fire uh I'll probably put it in another ziploc bag put it in this ziploc bag and seal it and then put it in another bag and then keep it in the bear vault till I go home. So um I've done it before with like liquids like this and it's not really a problem. The pineapples seem really nice um they look like they're rehydrated well. I don't think I'm going to use the tomato um I don't really like the way they I don't think they're fully rehydrated or I'm not sure. I like to use them I was going to use them in my tomato sauce this year um when I make spaghetti so maybe I'll just leave that for that. Um okay I'm just going to put a little thin coating of cheese on it but you can see how beautiful it looks before I do that. It's pretty sweet. It's going to be delicious. I'm so hungry. Okay here we go. Slide this baby in here and hopefully it doesn't fall. I guess we'll do one with one hand and one with another. Okay pizza's in the pan. Here we go. We'll be ready in no time. Oh it's very very dark in the middle. I have to do my outside browning thing again. Sometimes you gotta do things. Um the middle part got really brown. I don't think it's burnt. It's just really brown um but it's nice and crispy and it looks delicious. Um I just turned it off. I put some foil on top and I just let it sit and I just kept checking. It took about five minutes or so. Take the first piece I cut. Oh that is so good. Well I started going around the other side of the island and uh I saw somebody over there so uh probably like the only two campsites on this whole lake that have people on it and it's not even that big. It's not even that big so oh anyway cool. Thanks so much for watching. If you like what you saw please click the subscribe button. Also click the bell for notifications. If you'd like to get more information on the stuff I use on my trips please check out my website at camperkristina.com. Thanks. Bye.