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Pastimes : Canoes, Hiking, the Great Outdoors -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: grampa who wrote (263)	2/4/2004 7:50:03 AM
From: Crocodile	Respond to of 325

Well, yep, boat traffic might be bad now -- if not motorized boats, then even a lot of canoes and kayaks. That's what I did notice at quite a few lakes that I stopped to look at when passing through the area. I get the impression that it's not that easy to find solitude on the lakes down there anymore -- and, in fact, I've done a bit of looking around and haven't found too many secluded spots in NY -- seemed to be more in Maine and NH though. I belong to a canoe newsgroup forum and a lot of the international members come here to go on paddling-camping trips. Funny too -- last time I paddled the Barron River in Algonquin Park, I met groups of German and Chinese paddlers at the portages. Kind of had to laugh as the Chinese paddlers all had a lot of bear bells on them and their packs. I could hear them from about a half a mile off! Definitely would have scared off any bears or other wildlife that might be in the area. (o: Sounds like you must have pretty fine memories of the trip in the 1950s if you still remember the names of the lakes. I had a look at my NY map and I see those lakes. There's a highway that goes along by them I guess -- but they're in the Adirondack Park, so may still retain some of the character that you remember from your trip. Our main canoe routes up in Algonquin Park, etc... do tend to see quite heavy paddling traffic during summer, but if you go in spring or autumn, especially on weekdays, you can often have places almost to yourself. Also, if you pick places where there's a bit of a portage to get to the first lake, or where there are longer portages between lakes, that does tend to discourage plenty of people. My own strategy is to look for Crown Lands with a lot of wetlands and marshes and beaver dams where there will be liftovers. Those kinds of places scare off the less intrepid paddlers and I often have them entirely to myself. Those are also the places where I'm most likely to run into things like big nest colonies of Great Blue Heron, or Osprey nesting on huge tree snags in flooded forests, Muskrat lodges made of cattail and sedge roots packed with mud, dozens of wonderful Dragon and Damselflies, etc.. I like to just float around in those places and watch life happening.

To: grampa who wrote (263)	2/4/2004 8:23:56 AM
From: Crocodile	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 325

BTW, if you enjoy reading canoe and/or hiking trip accounts and looking at accompanying photos, you might check out this website -- Algonquin Adventures. algonquinadventures.com I occasionally read a few of the accounts to find interesting places to explore, or figure out where there's certain wildlife to be found, etc.. There are sometimes some hilarious stories. Couple of years ago, I was considering a trip along a certain route, but I wasn't sure if the water levels would be sufficient. Luckily I read a couple of accounts on here first. One woman wrote of spending about 2 days pushing the family's canoe along through creeks that had turned to leech-filled mud, and that the bears were so annoying that everyone packed it back out of there the next day. lol... Actually, water levels are getting to be a bit of a problem up here in many years. The summers are getting hotter and drier, and winters with little snow compared to the past, so some of the creeks and even some rivers have been drying up by July. Last summer was the first in quite awhile that most of my usual paddling destinations stayed steady through much of the season. We've had quite a bit of snow already this winter, so I expect this might be another good paddling season unless we get some kind of a freak drought come summertime.