Wayne D's Blog

I watched it last night, it was ok. I guess if you have nothing to do in a minivan on a five hour trip you might watch it more than once.  Sigh I just realized that I managed to orphan most of my old pages so the search engines can't find them, have to fix it later, I have a concert to attend.

Update on the webpage situation, I managed to break three of my Rogers supplied geocities.com website  accounts so that I can even connect to them anymore.  So I had to move my website to my backup ISP.  Sigh. 

On Tuesday I got back from a six day canoe trip to Killarney provincial park. Our group of eight people with four canoes paddled and portaged from the Willisville access point through Charlton Lake, Howry Creek to Murry Lake our first day. When we arrived in Murray Lake late that first day we found that both campsites were taken even though we had a reservation. Unfortunately you reserve a lake and not a specific spot so we didn't know which of the two groups were interlopers. With only 30 minutes of light left we found a rock outcrop with enough flat spots for our four tents and made camp. The next morning we started out early and continued through Howry Lake, Gem Lake and Fish Lake to our second night campsite in Great Mountain Lake. Along the way we paddled through the incredible scenery of the Canadian Shield alongside the La Cloche Mountains. The La Cloche Mountains have been eroded over eons to such a degree that they aren't really mountains anymore but they are still impressive.

The water was warm and the weather was good, after we made camp we swan in the lake and relaxed after our two days of traveling, portaging and paddling. We were awakened the next morning by the sound of chain saws and hammering, people were working on a cottage site on an island in the middle of Great Mountain Lake very close to our campsite. Sigh, why doesn't our government buy these people out and keep the park for everyone. We spent a rest day in Great Mountain Lake taking a side trip to Gail Lake. Gail Lake has a really nice campsite on a large rock outcrop the comes up out of the lake.

On our trip back we decided to risk the portages from Fish Lake to Goose Lake even though we had been warned when we checked in that the portages had not been maintained. The first portage from Fish Lake to Round Otter Lake had about five or six trees across the trail at various points. It would have taken at most an hour with a chain saw to clean them up, I wonder what we pay camp fees for? Though strong winds a few weeks before had blown over many trees throughout the park it was obvious from the state of the foliage on these trees that they had been down for quite some time. During this leg of the trip we saw three moose, a cow and a calf and a solitary moose at another point of the journey. We also saw a pile of bear poop festooned with berries right in the middle of the trail. Things went pretty smoothly until we left Goose Lake to enter Rocky Lake over what was supposed to be a 50m portage and found that a beaver dam had pretty much dewatered the eastern quarter of Rocky Lake. All that remained was a narrow mucky channel. After we tried pulling the canoe over the grass, poling it with a paddle that would sink two feet into the muck and pull the paddle out when I tried to extricate it from the mud we hit upon the idea of tieing two ropes on the front of the canoe and having one person on each bank. Before coming up with this method I sank up to my knees in the muck at least four or five times as I tried to pull the canoe along with one rope. After we came up with this method we almost flew through the rest of the tow. After a few beaver dam liftovers it was back in the canoes through the rest of Rock Lake and Grow Lake to our campsite at the east end of Van Lake. A nice campsite on a pretty lake but we were unable to find the KYBO that is supposed to be placed at each campsite. What do we pay our camp fees for?

The next day it was through Van, then Van Winkle Lake paddling into a strong headwind. We then traveled through Harwood and Leech Lake to our longest portage of the trip, 950m. Through the trail was relatively flat the large number of trees that had been allowed to obstruct the trail made for a difficult slog through the rocks and trees. Judcious use of a chainsaw by the rangers would have been appreciated. After the portage we were back in Murray Lake and stopped at one of the campsites we were supposed to have our first night out to eat lunch and recover from the efforts of the portage. We then retraced our route out of the park stopping to camp at the site of an abandoned cabin in a unamed lake on Howry Creek.

The next morning it was up at 6 a.m. to paddle back to Widgawa Lodge, where we had parked the vans, load up the gear and head back home.

Things to remember for next time

1. Wear socks all the time, the scabs on my ankles haven't fallen off yet
2. Wear water shoes with stiff bottoms, the bottom of my feet are still sore. The cheap water shoes are fine for the beach but for a portage old running shoes are better

The picture at the top of the posting is from www.leslierohonczy.com.
I didn't take a camera because I didn't want to worry about losing it, if you want to see Killarney Park pictures try http://friendsofkillarneypark.ca/photogallery/
I'm still waiting for a spellchecker Yahoo 360 development team.

I have so much to write about, my canoe trip to Killarny, the sale of the cottage but just don't have the energy to put pixels to virtual paper. I just finished watching Clerks II and am compelled to at least type out a few lines.

I've always liked Kevin Smith's movies. The only one I haven't seen is Jersey Girl and I didn't watched it yet because I thought it was too conventional.  I implore you to check out Clerks II. Only Kevin Smith could work a donkey show into a plot about almost lost love and make it work.  Go see it in a theatre, buy or rent it when it comes out on DVD but watch this movie with an open mind and you will not be disappointed.  A warning the MPAA in the United States rated this movie R for "pervasive sexual and crude content including aberrant sexuality".  IMDB's Clerks II page says that Joel Siegel walked out of this movie after 40 minutes because he couldn't take it. This is not a first date movie unless your date has tatoos and piercings. One other movie tidbit, in the minivan on the way to and from  Killarney the guys watched Alien vs. Predator at least four times.  Based on that fact I've decided to take a look at it.

P.S. Clerks II is very, very funny.

On the way home from work a few weeks ago I saw two scary cell phone people.  I saw one man talking on his cell phone while at the same time reading some papers while we both drove slowly around the fire truck that had been called at an accident that had probably been caused by someone else talking on a cell phone.  A little later I saw a guy in a cement truck making a left turn while carrying on a conversation on his cell phone.


I decide to make a trip back to the King Henry's arm one recent night as I continue my quest for a pub I can call my own.  As I walked from the parking lot to inside I noticed that it seemed a bit foggy.  A few minutes later a fire truck pulled into the parking lot and drove slowly around, finally stopping at the far end of the lot where the former Canadian Tire store was located.  Not too much later a police car pulled into the lot, the officer got out and asked us that cliched question "Where's the fire?"  Next to arrive was the police helicopter, spotlight ablaze, I assumed they to were trying to find where the smoke was coming from.


I soon lost interest in hanging around the parking lot and returned to my beer.  I never did find out what happened,  within half an hour they had all left.

There used to be this pub close to our house. It was frayed around the edges and looked better at night than in the daytime.  Bands performed there on the weekends and for a while they tried having performers on Sunday afternoon.  My kids loved it there because they had a Lord of the Rings pinball machine there that gave three plays for $2 or seven plays for $3.  It was fairly easy to get free games and the regulars would often get good enough that they would get bored before running out of plays and leave the machine with credits on it.  After smoking was banned in bars without seperately ventilated smoking rooms they put in a $1.99 kids menu to attract families.  I was cheaper to take the kids to Limericks than MacDonalds.  Unfortunately one day a sign went up in the window "Closed for Renovations".  A few weeks later the notice from the landlord appeared announcing that the locks had been changed for non-payment of rent.  The space sat empty over the summer, when fall arrived it reopened as a All Star Wings and Ribs.  About the only thing that stayed the same is the wood bar.  The stage is gone and each table has a flat screen showing sports.  The staff is friendly, the food is good but it's not the same.  The pinball machine is history and there is no more live music. 


Another place we used to visit was Shoeless Joes.  It has inexpicably changed it name to Scrappy Joes.  The kids liked it and my brother and I almost saw a fight break out there one night.  I used to occasionally visit a pub called the King Henry's Arms that was located in the same plaza as our local Canadian Tire store.  Then Canadian Tire moved to a new, bigger location 4 kms further away and I stopped visiting the plaza.  Come to think of it since Canadian Tire moved I haven't been to Canadian Tire either.  A few weeks ago I had to go to the plaza to deposit a cheque in the bank that is located there and I dropped by for old times sake. I had a pint and an order of curry and fries, the bill came to $8.88.


Now I am in a quandry as to which bar to lend my allegience.  Stay tuned for the resolution.