One More Paddle

I couldn't see the moon setting over George Lake, when I woke up, but I knew it was there. I'd only have to move my head a bit, to see through the trees, but I didn't want to move.

Two days of paddling kayaks and hiking had taken its toll on me. My age was beginning to show itself.

DW also felt sore as she woke up. "I don't think I want to do The Crack trail," she said as she climbed out of her sleeping bag. "How about we take our kayaks back out onto Georgian Bay? We don't have to go far: we can just putter around the north shore."

There was that word again: putter.

Yesterday, we said we'd only 'putter' around Lake George, but we ended up circumnavigating it, portaging over to the next lake, and paddling its full length before hiking a short way to a waterfall. After our return trip, we wandered Killarney and hiked to its eastern lighthouse.

Monday had not been particularly restful, though what we had seen was beautiful. I agreed that my body was too sore for a challenging hike and climb, but I wasn't sure how far I wanted to paddle on Georgian Bay.

"We can paddle to that lighthouse," she said. On the previous Sunday, when we kayaked out to Martins Island, I saw a small lighthouse on one of the rocky islands to the west of Chikanishing Creek and wanted to paddle out to it on our return, but DW thought it was too far away and was tired from our day's travels.

But after having visited Killarney's East Lighthouse, she somehow thought that this was the same lighthouse.

"It's not the same one," I said. "This one is low to the water and is nowhere near Killarney."

"Did you want to see if we can paddle to the one in Killarney?"

"Let's just see how we do with this first lighthouse," I said, "I think Killarney is way too far."

If Killarney was a 12-kilometre drive from our campsite, I figured that by kayak, it was likely eight to 10 kilometres from the mouth of Chikanishing Creek. By my reckoning, the lighthouse that I wanted to paddle out to on Sunday was about a kilometre or so away.

According to my Garmin watch, it was 2K from where we put in our kayaks, on an island known as Flat Rocks. When we arrived and looked down the coast, toward Killarney, the village's lighthouse was nowhere to be seen.

I could make out the radio towers in Killarney, and judged them to be further away than West Fox Island, and so I said that this was as far as I wanted to venture. "After all," I said, "we still have to return to camp, tear down and pack up the car, and then drive for more than six hours to get home."

DW, who was carrying her mirrorless camera and gear, said that she hadn't had much luck in photographing wildlife, so maybe we would work our way back to Chikanishing Creek by paddling around some of the islands that lined the northern shore, and maybe she could capture images of birds.

Indeed, we could see lots of birds fluttering over trees on the shoreline, and we had spotted some Kingfishers at the mouth of the creek. We worked our way toward shore and had a leisurely paddle back.

It took us just an hour to tear down camp and pack up the car. By noon, we were heading home, with a stop in Sudbury for lunch. We were home just after eight in the evening and by the time we emptied the car, hung our kayaks in the garage, put all of our camp gear away, and threw our clothes in the wash, we had just enough energy to get ready for bed.

This was our longest trip of 2021 and our final camp trip of the year. I still don't like the campsite aspect of camping but I do realize that if DW and I want to take our kayaks to explore such beautiful regions, camping might have to be the cost of doing so.

That said, I'm looking for motels and cabins for 2022.