Fall at Compass Lake in Kawartha Highlands Signature Site
We stopped for lunch at site 401 on Long Lake. Note: all kinds of trash on this site, which we packed out on the way back - lame. Lunch was rye bread, limburger (Oak Grove), gruyere, old cheddar, honeycrisp apples, halva and summer sausage (Cressman's)... oh, and gin
Resting after our second (last) portage
Resting after our second (last) portage
Our site (571) on Compass Lake. It was pretty high up, at the south end of the lake near some waterfalls. In behind, we could see on the map, were a lot of little lakes to explore.
View from the site towards the waterfalls.
More view. The log in the center of the picture had a lot of nails in it.
Cherry/Vanilla, I believe was the flavour.
Had no shortage of firewood; the buck saw is indespensible.
Beef (using prime rib steak) Stroganoff
Neat clouds Sunday morning.
View towards the north end of the lake.
View towards the north end of the lake.
Lots of birch and oak in this area.
The sun broke out - we were expecting clouds all day but it turned out to be sunny.
Breakfast was dry bacon from Osogood Meats at the Kitchener Market, fried eggs and oatmeal with dried apples in it.
Compass lake empties into Cherry Lake via Crane Creek. This is the head of the creek, as it cascades down a nice steep hill. You portage down the hill beside the creek for 166m.
At this point we've realized that we forgot our lunch on the picnic table at the site; hopefully nothing eats it on us while we're out!
There were a ton of beaver lodges on Crane Creek
I believe this was the shortest portage of the trip.
While the shortest, this portage was the most wet and slippery.
This is the 345m portage from Cherry Lake to Turtle Lake. It was pretty nice and flat.
Pretty sure this is a view of Cherry Lake from the portage
Not only was it sunny, but there was no wind!
Reindeer moss and pine needles
The longest portage was 1km through a beautiful mature forest with a lot of oak , birch and maple in it.
You'll notice that the canoe is missing. Most of our time spent on this portage was wandering around during our many breaks from carrying the canoe.
Finally finished. Jeff almost broke his leg on this one when he dropped the canoe on it :)
This is the final portage from Stoplog Lake back to Compass. Just as we had to go downhill from Compass to Crane Creek, we've got to go uphill on this 300m portage. Note, there's a video of us carrying the canoe up the hill.
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Around sunset we decided to go check out the little lake in behind the site.
The lake had this huge dead tree trunk standing right in the middle. Hard to get a sense of scale here but it was really a large tree.
Bear poop (likely). Maybe wolf but probably not since there's not a lot of hair in it.
Some of the oak trees still had some great colour
The oaks were nice for hanging the food
I think here we were cooking the pork n beans
