Thursday October 10, 2024

5:00 am

I awoke having slept extremely poorly the previous night, The neighbors were up till 11 or 12 at night and making quite a ruckus. I guess they were being quiet to save up for tonight. Their damn campfire smoke was blowing into my roof vent too, leaving me choked up in the trailer and with a sore throat. Anyhow, I went to the chicken trail. It is about 1c this morning, thus I have about 4 layers on so I'm reasonably warm. I had another wander around on the trail head because the markers are not great to pick out in the dark. I probably walked in circles for 20 minutes until I finally worked out where I was, and got going. This trail has a fair amount of ups and downs, but I see why it is so popular, with its smooth granite as far as the eye can see, with small breaks in coastal forest. I found myself to a height of land up on a cliff, and set up for a sunrise, once again no aurora. And no sunrise either, in that, the sun did rise, but just a pretty boring orange on the horizon, and also I had no foreground interest where I set up. I might do better next time, but due to the need to get a permit to come up here I'm not sure I'll be doing it again so early. As the sun brought blue hour to an end I packed up and headed down to the coastline. There's a small wooden bridge over a swampy area, and I remembered too late was extremely slippery, nearly losing my footing and sliding into the swamp under the 'safety railing' which I did manage to grab at the last second and right myself. Carefully heading forward, there's a about 5ft high wall right at the other end that requires a bit of clambering over to finally make it down to the coast. I set up the tripod short and set it a few feet away from the water and took some golden hour shots of the lake, and even put in the nd100 filter and did some long exposures. Nothing revolutionary this morning, but its all experience as they say. On the way back, I ran into an idiot hen, she was 'using her camoflage' and standing beside a small evergreen tree, nearly completely out in sight. She kept looking at me as if to say 'I'm invisible' I took a second to slowly get my smartphone out and zoom in for a shot before she realized she actually wasn't invisible, and flew off like a brick with wings into the distance. The return trail was a lot easier than the approach one, and I was out by around 9:30am. During the trail, I found one side of a safety helmet's hearing protection, and turned it in at the park office. I swear that lady just threw it in the garbage.. I hope she didn't, it was an expensive one, and it just needs to be snapped back onto the helmet it belongs to..

10:00am

I had intended to have a quick breakfast of granola, and then head off to.. well, I didn't plan that far. I set up the butane stove to boil for some coffee, but it was too cold to get enough pressure so I ended up bringing out the coleman stove anyhow. I actually started feeling a bit bad after eating, so the plan became to just rest. My hands and feet are cold, and I'm a bit tired.. so maybe running at 200% for the previous two days is catching up to me. I'll do some photo editing, check the weather, aurora forcast and have a nap and see how I feel. By the way, the city next door up and left while all this was happening.. I wonder who will be there tonight? That site is reserved all weekend.

I found that there's a strong chance of auroras tonight, so the new plan is to nap and rest most of the day, get some packing done for tomorrows departure and then get up the ridge trail just prior to sundown. once I'm satisfied I'll come back down and take a sleep-eze to ensure I'm well rested for the drive home tomorrow, and intend to leave around 10:00am which should get me back to the parent's place for 3-4pm. I'd like to say I'll just take it slow, but i'm sure I'll just drive straight as usual. I'm going over the top of Algonquin on the way back due to the park being plugged with Toronto people and the horde looking at leaves on thanksgiving long weekend.

3:00PM feeling much better now, there's still 3 hours till sundown so i'm going to finish up this post and prepare my pack to go. I think if I head up there around 5:30-6:00 pm it should be good, since it takes me ~30 minutes to get up there, but maybe less when the sun is out.

4:00PM

I went for a walk around the camp ground and had a long chat with an older fellow who hadn't been here for 40 years. Funny that he hadn't been here for almost as long as I was alive. He was shocked how much the area had changed. I talked at length, seems like I can still do that. I still don't make real connections with people, but I can fake it until I make it I guess. He recommended some places to check out in the northern states (state parks) supposedly some of them are even free to camp. Surprising, I wouldn't expect that extends to visitors from afar, but worth looking into.

5:30PM

Time to head out, I topped off my snacks and water and got on the road. There was one car, and one couple who had walked across the road to the granite ridges trail. I made it to the top and found a place to hunker down for sunset. There was a guy obviously doing a photography tutorial with some folks, but he didn't stay for sunset. He was going on about how the best camera was the one you had, how you want to shoot with the sun behind you, etc. That last one is kinda cliche, you should break the rules when you need to. Anyhow, I set up a time lapse once the people had left, and took some shots, but nothing worth mentioning. As the evening was almost beginning one last couple came through and I chatted with the young woman for a few minutes and answered her photography questions before they left for the evening as well. The sun had just passed below the horizon when I saw some oddities in the sky.. large red blobs.. I had to wonder if there was a cloud there I couldn't quite see, the sun might have been catching it.. I was well into twilight before I realised that was the aurora, and as the sun set, the red blob spread across the sky. Shooting this was challenging, as the moon was also up around 50%. Long enough exposure to capture the aurora, but not too long to have it washed out by the moon, and not too long to have it blur into everything. There was actually too much activity, the sky just ended up being pink, with very little detail. The whole world was lit up pink some of these photos are interesting, with green curtains running through the pink, others are just oddly pink. I'll really have to work out how they will turn out in the edit. I was satisfied with what I got on the ridge, and the moon was getting a bit too high to see much and so I headed back down. Strangely enough all this time I thought this was an out and back trail, and I actually found the rest of the trail on the way back down. These markers - I tell ya, they need to be blue and reflective.

10:30pm

I got back to my campsite, and snuck through the now vacant adjacent campsite to the george lake overlook. There was one of my other neighbours there, and we chatted in the dark as I set up the tripod one last time, to capture a few photos up until around 10:50pm.

Friday, 11 october 2024

Around 3:00am I woke to a click sound, and found that my house battery automatically shut off.. the low voltage shut-off had been triggered. Not sure how this is going to work, since solar will need to have power in order to collect power. I'll probably have to charge it manually when I get home. I rolled over and went back to sleep, and woke around 6:00 am to do this entry. Since its still dark out, I'm just going to hang out in the relative warmth of my trailer and edit some of the photos I did last night while I wait for the sun to come up. Breakfast will be bacon and eggs, and then I have to get everything organized and packed for the road. Hope to be rolling around 10:00am so I don't arrive back after dark.

6:00am

I've been awake for a while, now. for whatever reason that sleep-eze I took didn't seem to take effect, maybe its just old and didn't work. Regardless, I've been organizing things in the trailer to make it easier to unload. Dirty laundry in plastic bags, clean laundry in the clothing bag, etc. Finally time to open the door and start breakfast. I had 3 eggs this morning instead of the usual 2, and 2 slices of peameal along with an apple, with the usual coffee and juice box. This should keep me filled well until the afternoon. I'm trying to avoid the urge to stop and get junk food while I fuel up. Cleaning up the site was not too bad, as I'd mostly kept my boxes organized how they were when I left. Buying these little 1'x6" totes and labelling them makes packing for this sort of trip a lot easier. Just stack them in the back of the car, and off you go. I think, perhaps they may not be big enough for what I intend to do next spring, but, then again the car might not be up for that either. I'll have to do a good inspection when I do my winter maintenance and see what needs doing before I decide. That and maybe I'll finally find the van of my dreams for the price of less than my immortal soul, and it won't be an issue. I expect if that happens I'd still tow the trailer and live out of the trailer for the first trip.. converting a van isn't something to be done lightly. Either that, or I use my vacation to outfit it, but I have long discarded any notion of a $5000 - $10000 van in close to perfect shape. I expect now to have to pay at least $40,000 for a van with known issues I'll need to handle. So that means going back into debt, unless I want to use my retirement funds - and I do not. Might as well get it financed while I can still work and use it once or twice a year at least until the Subaru gives out for daily driving. I'll have to see what the insurance companies can do for that, parked except for 2-3 weeks a year thing. I won't be able to register it as a motor home until it has specific amenities installed, after all. I can't register my trailer as a motor home either, as it has no kitchen or toilet. So it is a 'utility trailer'.

After breakfast, I got everything packed into the car, hand-bombed the trailer around so I can hitch up, tested the lights, got the radio set up so I can see the rear view camera, and hit the road. On the way out I stopped by the garbage area and got rid of my trash, and chatted with a park employee about the wedge and how it was built, as he was impressed by it's setup. I explained it until he was satisfied, and then pulled out of the front gate, depositing my permit in the collection box. The return trip would be via sudbury, north bay, and mattawa over the top of Algonquin, because going through the park this time of year is asking for issues. A few years ago my parents and I went on thanksgiving and we managed to get in but only because we got there before 8am. When we left around noon, there were cars lined up all they way from the west gate to the next village and beyond. They've now implimented a system where you must reserve a day permit to enter the park ahead of time. I do not know what they do with those people who do not, I guess they tell them to go home.. but no way are they doing that, they probably just go in anyhow. I departed the park around 10:30am and arrived in sudbury around lunch time. I thought i'll just go into the shell and use my CAA, not realising that the shell was basically right in the middle of town, and barely a store. So I navigated through 'lunch rush hour' in sudbury, construction, etc, and it wasn't till around 1:00 when I got to the small shell station, and filled up. It wasn't at all like the one I expected, it did not have a convenience store with hot food as I intended to get lunch, it was mostly automated.. so I just filled up and headed on my way, assuming I'd find something in North Bay or worse case just eat trail snacks. However, there was a Dairy Queen on the way out.. but unfortunately it was just a 'snack' store, they only hot food they had was hot dogs.. So I got myself a chilli dog with all the fixings for $6 which was actually pretty good. I found a place to pull over and ate it along the highway on the way out of town, since the usual picnic area on the outside of town had the gate closed - closed for the season. Since I had a full tank, I was able to skip along the top of lake nippising and bypass north bay, stopping at a rest stop mid mattawa and north bay for a quick washroom break and stretch before continuing on. I filled up one more time at a MacEwan about an hour away from Mattawa, and proceeded back to the parents with a half tank of fuel to spare. I arrived back by roughly 5:30PM parked the trailer, had dinner with the parents and then turned in for the night. Cola was very happy to see me, so she kept getting in my face all night making sleep difficult. And that ends this trip, I'll have to go back again some day. Depening on what happens next year, I plan to go to cape breton again over 2 weeks in the spring/early summer. But that will depend on my car more than anything. I have no doubt the trailer is up for it.

Merry Christmas, and here’s looking forward to a great New Year.

Cheers.