Triplogs / Triplog#49 / Day 2 / Days 3&4 / Day 5
Booth L
Day 5
Friday morning was another beautiful start to another day in heaven with an added bonus; an extra special guest was to make an appearance, it was to be Barry Bridgeford. I had kept bugging Barry to come out and meet some of the people who are fans of his website. During the previous five months, I had emailed over 40 people, regulars if you will, from Barry's "Algonquin Adventures" forum, people that both Barry and myself had become familiar with online. Most of the invited I had met before in The Park, but some I had not met, with Barry having met almost no one. Pretty much all of the invited know each other well online, some like myself, having met in The Park previously, sometimes at other gatherings. The bulk of the invited were to show-up today, including 'The Man' himself. We were all pretty excited.
This chipmunk was rewarded for his curiosity: Oatmeal
Racoon Prepares to depart Booth Lake
We were all up after 7:00am, the weather was warm with high cirrus cloud, obscuring the sun's intensity. The water was calm, with a light breeze blowing. Phil had made breakfast for himself and "Stainless". I gotta tell ya, that handle is really cool, 'cause "Stainless" is a dentist by trade. Thus he is very good at what he does. I cannot remember exactly what the breakfast that Phil made was called, but I recall it was an American camping favourite, 'split-sausage' something, with potatoes and gravy, with eggs on the side, I thought it looked a little bit too much, however Stainless mentioned that it was quite good, and was a very filling breakfast. By 8:30am, Racoon had departed. Once again, this machine of an Algonquin canoeist comes all the way from Ottawa and stays one night then leaves the next morning. I still don't know how he does it. The closest I've come to doing something like that was, when I drove from Toronto to Cedar Lake and stayed two nights. Seems like a long way to go for two quick nights. However, I understand Racoon's passion for The Park, I just don't know where he gets all his energy from.
After Racoon left, Master Bo looked around, and said, "So no one has caught any trout yet, eh?" We all looked around at each other, empty hands and grins of embarrassment all around. Bo continued, "Let's go Markus, I'll just have to get one before everyone arrives". Master Bo strolled down to the canoe not wasting any time, with me following, heading towards the beach after Bo.
Farewell Racoon!
Racoon had departed at 8:28am, Stainless was eating his "Split-Sausage' meal at 8:40am. By 9:03am, "Master" Bo was back on our beach with a very nice sized Lake trout in hand! In a little over 20 minutes, Master Bo had paddled out with me to the middle of the lake, set his line, began paddling and just as I was putting my line into the water, claimed he had one. Not wasting any time, I reeled mine in, and was told to get ready with the net. I landed the large 'laker' as Bo brought the fish alongside the canoe. "Let's go", and with that we paddled back to shore. Barely 20 minutes..more paddling there and back then fishing, and boom there the fish was. Bo was most definitely a master when it came to trout fishing. The thing is Bo doesn't even like to eat lake trout, speckled trout is what he loves. Bo cleaned the fish then left it in the lake water to stay fresh, next to the beach. The task of the day done, Master Bo settled in around the campfire, now fully prepared and stocked(with fish & fresh mug of coffee) to enjoy the coming day.
Stainless enjoys an American gourmet camping breakfast
By noon, I went for a walk over to the neighbouring sites, to see if I could spot some of the folks who were coming to join us. The wind had woken up and was blowing quite strong, whipping up whitecaps on the lake. After hanging around for 30 minutes or so, I spotted two canoes battling the wind. The first canoe, I recognized of that belonging to my AA friend Mike B, with his wife Laurie in the bow. Directly behind them was another canoe, a soloist. I did not recognize that canoe or the person in it, and surmised that the fellow in it was Barry himself. I continued to watch the progress of the two canoes, as they crept along at a snail's pace, with Barry in the lee of Mike's canoe. The wind was quite strong and unrelenting, and any wind-break, no matter how small, would be helpful to any soloist. As they trio passed by the vacant campsite I was watching them from, I waved hello, Mike took a dangerous pause to wave back and then continued with the exhaustive paddle. The conditions that they were paddling in, were very similar to what we had experienced coming in on the Monday. I headed back to the campsite, to pass on the news; they were coming!
Master Bo with his nice sized Laker
Within 20 minutes or so, the trio arrived. Mike and Laurie walked onto the site. I had the unfortunate duty of informing them that there was no room our site for them, and showed them on foot, the neighbouring site. Mike & Laurie didn't seem to mind, and I felt relived, Dave Harman had made first 'dibs' on a spot on our site, and he was the among the last to show, Jeffrey & Preacher showed up and camped on Mike & Laurie's site. Barry camped between Bo & I , being the guest of honour, he had a nice spot. Meeting Barry for the first time was great, Barry was much taller than I imagined, and he was quite the funny guy too. Soon my nervousness melted away as we talked about Algonquin and the people who shared our common interests. Bo went for a wade into the lake and retrieved his cleaned trout, and eventually gave the trout to Mike. I dropped by after awhile to see how Mike & Laurie were settling in, and found them eating the trout, cooked over the fire.
Swede loved my hammock, but not my camera!
The AA gang on Booth Lake, weathering gale force winds Friday Night
As twilight approached, the wind that had been prevalent all day, increased, and by the time darkness settled in, the winds were gale force, with a light smattering of rain, more like horizontal rain drops, probably water lifted from the white-caps, as the wind sent our tarp into a frenzy of violent shaking. It wasn't bad really(The weather) but the winds were just ridiculous! All through this, the temperature was very warm, at least 16 °C...so although the wind was wild, the air temperature made the wild weather tolerable. Needless to say, I had a hard time trying to fall asleep that night, with the wind whipping the tarp around, it was like the sound of someone shaking out an empty garbage bag, it was just too noisy to fall asleep. Into the wee hours of the morning, the winds died off and the tarp noise did as well, finally I drifted in slumber.