Penn Lake Park Campground, Marathon, Ontario, Canada
Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the Word of Truth. II Timothy 2:15
Out the door and on the road by 8:30am again this morning because we were planning on going out on Lake Superior again! The forecast called for no rain and no wind.
We were sure surprised to see fog and hoped it didn’t dash our plan for the day!
We stopped at an Indian burial ground on the way to the Park today. We didn’t go in because we thought it might be considered sacred, but I took a couple of pictures. I don’t know, but how sacred can it be if they don’t take care of it? We also found it interesting that most of the markers have no names or anything on them.
At the Pukaskwa Park check-in, the attendant said no wind and no waves and no fog. Yippee!!
While we were setting up though, we were a bit surprised and a tiny bit concerned to hear crashing waves. Those weren’t there on Monday when we were here. . . .
I took these while waiting on Blaine to return from parking the Jeep.
There was one set that hadn’t even begun to open yet.
Sure enough, as we paddled out of the cove, the swells started mounting. A few swells are okay, but these were a bit more than we were comfortable with, so we headed back into the cove areas.
There’s no wind, but the water’s obviously more choppy than the last time we were here.
Even back into the cove, the water’s not smooth.
We have to go in the general direction of the open water to get around to the next cove around to the right.
Some kind of mother “duck” and her babies!
As you can see, Hattie’s Cove was much more calm. : )
We parked on an island to stretch our legs.
Blaine decided to build his own cairn here on this island.
The finished product!
And with better lighting. : )
The coves were nice, but we had been so looking forward to rounding the bend where the volcanic rock was, that we were a bit disappointed.
We headed back to the dock, intending to end our kayaking prematurely, but noticed the wave sounds weren’t as loud, so decided to give the Lake another try. There were still some swells, but it was better and we opted to hug the right-hand coast rather than cross open water.
There’s our landing!
It was good decision! We found a spectacular lunch spot!
After lunch, it was me who went rock-climbing. Since we were only wearing water shoes, Blaine’s didn’t offer him enough cushion and some of the rocks were hurting his feet – kinda like walking on knife edges in your bare feet. (not quite that bad, but that’s the best analogy I could come up with 😊) So he hung out on the top watching me climb all around and take pictures and thoroughly enjoy myself!
Once I returned to where I’d started, we took off for the dock. This time, we put our life jackets on – just to be safe. And we discovered why we never wear them. They creep up under our chins and chafe our arms! We’ll have to look into getting more suitable “kayaking” ones.
Don’t those rocks look like steps?? : )
It was a lot of fun on those swells! And the rocks were absolutely gorgeous!
We packed up the boat and were in the process of changing shoes, when a chipmunk came running up! He obviously gets fed, even though you’re not supposed to feed the wildlife. 😊
Our last order of business for the National Park was the Manito Miikana hike. It was supposed to be about an hour, but it took a bit longer than that. Gorgeous views! And we were able to see a lot of the places we’ve visited here the past few visits.
That’s the bronze wolf the Park captured on camera.
For some reason, I always thought wolves were taller than that.
And so we begin on a boardwalk . . .
. . . and then sand . . .
. . . and then a beach . . .
Yeah . . . this is the trail.
. . . . and then the woods.
To get to this view!
I swear he doesn’t look at me when he takes “far away” pictures of me.
That’s “seagull island”.
Remember? From our paddle a few days ago?
And there’s our lunch spot from that day!
Looks pretty tiny from up here!
It’s the one in the back.
Over there, across the water, is our lunch spot for today.
See the flat rock where we docked?
Around that far bend, is the “volcanic rock” from the other day’s paddle.
Across the water, there are the local sand dunes.
If there’s a trail to there, we didn’t take it.
We came to another rock-climbing opportunity.
It was around this area that we started noticing blueberries!
We picked another bag full as we dreamed of Blaine’s homemade waffles buried under fresh wild blueberries . . .
Delayed our hike a bit, but worth every back-breaking minute!
The end of the line for us.
The trail met up with a longer connecting trail at this point, but we were ready to head back.
Just look at all that driftwood!
There was a family swimming here.
Brrrrrrrrrr . . . . .
People up here are made of hearty stock!
I was perfectly comfortable in my long pants and shirt.
Yet another special day! We are so very blessed!