Worst Camping

When we had arrived at Lake Superior Provincial Park, the visitor centre at Agawa Bay had clear signs that let us know we were in bear country and to not leave food out.

DW and I have been camping since we were kids and we have been camping together since we first started dating. I've been afraid of bears since I was a teenager, living in the Gatineau Hills, when you could hear them moving through the woods surrounding your house.

We know about keeping any food locked up, in our car, or hanging from trees, out of reach. When I accidentally got toothpaste on my hoodie, at Agawa Bay, I washed it off right away but still left the hoodie in the car, rather than risk it still smelling of mint.

DW doesn't even bring her lip balm into our tent. So, we're savvy when it comes to bears.

When we moved sites at Agawa Bay (we had a two-day reservation at one site; a five-day reservation at a second site), our new neighbours warned us that the previous residents weren't careful at all. A bear had visited the site on the past two nights, breaking open a cooler and getting at other food that was left out.

Our neighbours warned us that the bear might come looking for more, again, and we assured her that we were careful, that our food would be locked up whenever we went to bed or left the site unattended. And we saw no bears our entire time at Agawa Bay.

We were warned about bears, again, at Pancake Bay, but we assured the park staff that we're careful. And again, we saw no bears.

Checking in at Bruce Peninsula National Park, at Cyprus Lake, we were given the same spiel about bears. "Don't worry," we assured the park officer, "we know what we're doing. We've just come from bear territory and we always made sure that our food was safely locked in our car overnight and when we weren't around."

"You don't understand," she said, her face without a smile and her tone subdued. "The bears in this park are seriously inbred. They're crazy, and they're everywhere. They won't hurt you: they just want your food."

There was no cooking permitted after 9 pm.

There was no alcohol permitted after 10.

You had to lock your stove in your car. You couldn't leave dishes to dry overnight. Same with your dishcloth and towel.

You had to make sure you locked your car. The bears knew how to open the doors. If you left your windows open a crack or your sunroof ajar, the bears would break the glass to get in.

We were told that we could dump our dish water into our fire pit, but because we had no plans to light a fire, we took our dish water to the vault toilets and dumped it down there, just as we had done everywhere else we had camped on this trip.

We thought the rules were a bit of an overkill but of course, we obeyed them all. I always lock the car, anyway, and make sure no window is ajar, because I don't want humans stealing anything and I don't want small rodents getting in.

We're savvy campers.

On our first evening, we were told that there would be a northern-lights event at Singing Sands Beach, not far from our campground, so we showed up just after sunset. There were lots of people at the beach but they were packing up as we were arriving.

There were no signs about the event at the beach's visitor centre and no sign of a warden who would be leading the event at the start time that was given to us when we checked in. We wondered if the park officer had given us the wrong date and time, or the wrong location.

We were tired from a long day, so we made our way back to camp to call it a night.

As we lay our heads on our pillows and were starting to drift off, we heard a woman with an Asian accent scream, "Bear! Bear!"

Several others started screaming and yelling, apparently trying to frighten the bear away. DW became nervous, as the voices weren't far from our site. She was worried that the bear might become scared and would race toward us. She was tempted to make a dash for our car and lock herself in.

I convinced her to stay put, that we had nothing that would temp a bear, and I was pretty confident that a scared bear wouldn't plow into a brightly coloured tent. And if I wasn't worried, she shouldn't worry.

After about 10 or 15 minutes later, things seemed to quiet down. We hoped that anyone who had food out would have put it away after their scare. There were trucks that seemed to patrol the roads around us and I guessed that they were the rangers, making sure that the bears were gone.

It was a restless night and neither DW nor I got much sleep.

We had a busy day, paddling around Tobermory, in search of shipwrecks, followed by a hike around Little Dunks Bay. I'll save those stories for tomorrow, so stay tuned.

We were tired when we returned to camp. We had dined in Tobermory so we didn't even take out any food or dirty any dishes. We watched the sun set, again, at Singing Sands, and when we got back to our site we just got ready for bed and climbed straight into our sleeping bags. I don't even remember falling asleep.

But I do remember waking up, a short time later, to the same woman, screaming about a bear. More shouting around the park as the bear, or bears, roamed from site to site. I grumbled but was so tired that I soon fell back to sleep.

Some people never learn.

At 4:30, DW and I were awakened to loud banging as metal hit metal. It was a heavy sound that repeated over and over again, and I figured that someone hadn't secured a latch on one of the bins at the garbage facilities, and bears were trying to get in, lifting the hatch and having it fall back down against the bin.

This sound carried on for some time, until a warden showed up and started screaming at the bear--or bears--and sounding an air horn. The officer at the welcome station, when we checked in, told us that the wardens sound these horns to frighten the bears away, and this sound went on for about as long as the bears had been making the original noise.

Worst sleep ever.

This campsite had undone much of the previous camping we had done, when I was starting to enjoy camping again. I definitely won't camp here again.

In the morning, we had a hasty breakfast of blueberry pancakes (our breakfast of choice over our vacation), washed up, and tore down our campsite. We were back on the road, heading south.

We slowed along Highway 6, a few minutes into our drive, for a bear that ran across the road.

As I said, I'll share our Tobermory paddle, tomorrow, and will finish sharing our adventures by the end of the week. Stay tuned.