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Friday, January 30, 2015

Trip Log: Algonquin Park: Pog Lake, July 8-10, 2011

This was officially our first time camping in Algonquin Park.  Up until now, we would attend Bolerama, a gathering of people with campers like ours.  It had been held at Emily Park for many years, but last year, which marked some anniversary in the history of Boler Campers, the event was being held way up north.  Bolerama is fun, and we always enjoyed ourselves, but most of the other people there were retired couples, except for us and our friends, Shawn and Andrea.  Since the plan was to convoy to New Liskard (where the Boler's had been made) and set up camp in Walmart parking lots, we elected not to go.

Since we'd missed our trip with them last year, and this year's Bolerama was being held down by Niagra Falls, we decided to have our own Boler weekend.  Shawn and Andrea had been camping in Algonquin many times and recommended Pog Lake.

Picking a weekend and booking our sites took a bit of time, but finally we were on our way.  As I'm writing this trip log, it's been a few years since the actual trip, but I remember we all met up in Minden and drove up together.  I was crazy excited.  I'd grown up so close to Algonquin and had never gone there as a kid.  We'd only recently started going up for day trips.

We arrived at the Pog Lake gate and the guys went in to get the permits and we made our way to our campsites.  We didn't have the best sites, but they were pretty decent.  Ours had a view of the water, and Shawn and Andrea had a site with better privacy.  The first night, most of the sites around us were empty, which was annoying since they were really nice and big where ours were kind of small.  Our campers were small, but with four little kids running around between us, a bit of room for them to run around would have been nice.

The first thing we did was walk to one of the beaches.  The kids waded in a bit, then it started to look like it might storm so we headed back.  The storm ended up producing one flash of lightening, a few minutes of light rain, then it was gone.

We made hot dogs for dinner.  Shawn and Andrea had forgotten a lot of their stuff.  I'm pretty sure this was the year they'd left their trailer at our house, went to the cottage for the week, then came and hooked up the camper. Planning for back to back trips like that was a bit of a challenge I guess and things like a stove got forgotten.  We had a campfire and s'mores.  Chris and Shawn played some hackey sack, then catch, then played guitar until it got too dark.

Bubbie and I got up at 7 to go for a walk while everyone else slept.  It was really foggy on the lake.  We ended up walking half the campground before anyone else got up (this is pretty typical though) The kids tried fishing with little success.

After breakfast, we went to the visitor centre and had lunch, then did the Big Pines Interpretive Trail.  It was really buggy.  The pines were impressive, but with the youngest of the group being at that age where she wouldn't hold hands or allow herself to be carried, we ended up getting eaten alive moving at her slow pace.

When we got back to camp, we went swimming.  There were lots of people out in canoes.  Some were sitting facing each other and one guy was standing up to paddle.  It was really weird and we kept watching waiting for him to fall.  He didn't though.  Must have been a very stable canoe.

After dinner, we went to the Two River's Picnic area to fish.  They had no luck so we headed back to the Pog Lake beach and the kids each caught a rock bass.  We had another camp fire and the guys made jiffy pop.  Despite warnings not to make it over an open fire, it turned out really well.

People showed up to fill up the empty sites around us sometime during the day.  Someone nearby was singing opera.  This was also my first experience with waiting in line in the comfort station for girls to put on makeup…at 9pm.  It's dark out!  Unfortunately, this seems to happen to me every time we go to Pog Lake.

Chris got up early the next morning so he could fish a bit without the kids.  At this age, they still needed him to bait their hook every five minutes so he took the opportunity to fish a bit himself.  We ate breakfast, then packed up.  Before leaving the park, we headed to the Logging Museum Trail.  There were hardly any bugs and no rocks to trip up little feet so it wasn't as frustrating as the day before.

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