We slept in until 9 am and awoke to the sounds of nearby families getting ready for a day on the lake. Camping activities here are very different from those on the west coast; we'd been used to everyone going hiking all day, but here the top pastimes are canoeing and fishing.
Because this is a long weekend (Labour Day), and the last weekend of the school summer holidays, all the campgrounds in Algonquin are booked out. Even though we booked this part of our trip a month ago we weren't able to get the same campsite for three nights in a row, so we had to pack up and leave by 11 am. We took the opportunity to go for a drive through the park and find somewhere to go hiking.
We stopped a few km's down the road at the Big Pines trailhead. This is a two-hour hike that winds through some stands of old-growth White Pine trees that had survived logging in the area 150 years ago.
There are 75 White Pines remaining in this forest, some of which are 75 metres tall. They're all about 250 years old, and once they fall they're not likely to be replaced. A population of White Pine in this area is rare due to their prolonged growth period, and the likelihood that they'd be crowded out by the much faster growing Sugar Maple. It's only due to the perfect timing of several uncommon events (a massive ground fire, and subsequent spreading of seed from nearby White Pine) that these trees were ever able to become established. It's thought that the particular huge trees that remain here only do so because they were too small at the time of the logging operation. The logging of surrounding Sugar Maple probably gave these trees an even better chance at life, as they would suddenly have been at the top of the canopy!
After our hike, we stopped in at the Lake of Two Rivers store and shared a spicy black bean burger for lunch. This is one of the only casual dining stops in the 7,600 sq km park, so it was packed. We were surprised at how good the food was for a food outlet in a provincial park, given the captive market they have.
We checked in again to our new site, where we'll stay for the next two nights. Since sitting down to write some blog posts, three different groups of people have come past to talk to us about our tent! We'd forgotten about this aspect of camping with such a novel sleeping arrangement. I think that while they were rare on the west coast, here in the east, they're virtually non-existent.
The campground we're in is called Lake of Two Rivers, named after the large lake that it shares a shoreline with. We're sitting in amongst a forest of enormous pine trees, in a campsite that would easily fit 40 of our cars. The size of the campsites is good because it gives some separation between the campers, as the tall trees don't have low branches to privacy. It's well shaded and overall very nice. It's so good out of the city again!