The Great Outdoors

I just got back to Toronto on Saturday after spending a really great week up in Killarney. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Killarney it's a town on the North shore of Georgian Bay (Lake Huron if you're going to make me get really specific) which happens to be situated very close to a Provincial Park which shares it's name. We were in both Killarneies. I apologize for that strange pluralization of Killarney.

I went up with my Dad for the week. We headed to the Killarney Mountain Lodge in town for the first evening (last Saturday) so that we could head into the interior of the park feeling fresh on Sunday morning. We put in at George Lake. I've got a picture here of our boats fully loaded. As you can see, we managed to keep the gear pretty light, and didn't end up with huge amounts of equipment strapped to the decks of the boats.



This next shot was taken shortly after we got underway, and I think it's a good example of the kind of landscape that the park has to offer.



We had a pretty strong wind at our backs as we travelled East across George Lake, and we made pretty good time. I had the GPS monitoring our progress, and it informed me that I was travelling at 8 km/h while I had the wind to help. Not bad for a kayak, given that I wasn't really paddling that hard. You can see a bit of the wind's effects in the roughness of the water here:




If you look to the centre of that shot, to the right of the bow of my boat, you'll see a narrowing. That's actually showing the portage into Freeland Lake. It had quite the nice waterfall running along it.



That was a short portage, we just had to carry the boats around the waterfall. We continued through Freeland, and into a longer portage into Killarney Lake. It was a longer paddle through Killarney, and we had the wind in our face for awhile as we turned back to the West. After that it was another short portage into our final destination, O.S.A. Lake, named after the Ontario Society of Artists that helped found the park. We got a campsite on an island in the lake, and spent the next two nights there. Here's a shot of the site once we'd made camp:




I'm facing West here, and what you can't really see in this photo is how exposed the camp was to the North and South. Unfortunately that's where the wind came from on Day 1 and Day 2 of camping respectively. Things were quite calm on Monday morning though, and I got some great shots of the lake.




Shortly after sunrise there.




You can really see the clarity of the water in the shot above. O.S.A. is a dead lake, and as sad as that is, it makes for stunningly clear water.


Having made camp on Sunday night we were free to explore on Monday. We wandered around our little island, and then headed out to the mainland for a hike. The lake is surrounded by granite ridges, so we just picked one and started to climb up.



As you can see, things got a bit vertical there. The climb offered a great view of the lake.

I'm looking south in this shot at the island that we were camping on. We were on the Eastern tip of the island, to the left in the photo. We got to this height in the afternoon, and you can already start to see the wind picking up in the ripples across the lake below. It was a South wind, but it was cold, and things got pretty chilly by the evening. Fortunately, someone who was at the site before us had cut a huge number of green branches and left them in a pile. We were pretty confused by that, and thought that they were just gathering kindling, however that pile of evergreen boughs proved useful in the evening as the wind really started to get cold and fierce. We moved the pile of boughs in behind were we were sitting and they made an excellent windscreen.

The plan was to wake up on Tuesday and move back into Killarney Lake, and camp there for an evening. It would give us a chance for some different hiking, and remove one portage from our final trip out of the park. However, we woke up on Tuesday to a steady rain. We tried to wait it out, but by noon we were forced to get a move on, and had to break camp in the rain. We were managing to keep out of the rain, and keep our equipment dry, but once we started to break down the camp it was inevitable that critical items like our tents would get soaked. We got packed up as quickly as possible and got out of there, but not without a good drenching first. Since it was still raining quite steadily by the time we got to the next camp site, and our gear was already pretty wet we decided to call that last evening a failure and continue on out of the park. That made for a pretty long haul, and we were quite tired by the time we got back to the Lodge, but fortunately they had a room for us, even though we were a day early getting back.

We stayed at the Lodge until Saturday morning, and then headed back home. I'll save the details of that part of the trip for another post, as this one is starting to run a bit long. The camping aspect of the trip was excellent, despite being cut short. I'll write about the rest of the trip soon.

Iceland Confirmed!

Good news everybody!

All of the critical pieces of my trip to Iceland have come together. I was able to book my flight by going into Flightcentre in person. I'll be flying out on Tuesday, August 18th at about 9:00 p.m. That will put me in the airport at Keflavik around 7:00 a.m. local time on the 19th. For those who are interested Iceland operates in the GMT timezone, and don't bother with daylight savings. In a country that has no sunset at certain times of the year, and no sunrise at other times it would be a bit silly to attempt daylight savings.

I've got a room reserved at the Guesthouse Ísafold in Reykjavík. That sentence alone has made me realize that if I'm going to continue blogging about this trip I'm going to need to learn the shortcut keys for accented characters. You can check out the guesthouse at http://www.isafoldguesthouse.is/ for a few pictures. Obviously I'll have a few of my own when I get there.

This morning I also got confirmation that my deposit has been paid for the final piece of this puzzle - my diving trip! I'll be diving the 20th, 21st, and 22nd. An extra day in between when I arrive and when I dive would have been ideal, but sometimes you take what you can get. Either way, it should be really fantastic.

That leaves me until August to figure out what I want to do with my remaining time in Reykjavík. I'm looking at some glacier hiking, whale watching, and puffin watching. Haven't booked anything yet, and I may just leave some of it up in the air to give myself a bit of flexibility. I've picked up the Lonely Planet guide to Iceland because I found their Japan guide to be an invaluable resource back in '07. These days there's a wealth of travel information online, but sometimes it's nice to have a bound book with you. I found that I used a lot of online resources for planning the trip to Japan, but that I really relied on the Lonely Planet guide when I got there. It's nice to not have to find an internet cafe to look up a map of your area, or re-confirm the location of a spot you wanted to visit. Also, I love the Lonely Planet show, and I try to show some support. For those who are interested Lonely Planet is known as Pilot Guides in some areas.

Anyway, enough product placement for now. I'll keep you all posted on my research of the Reykjavík area as it progresses. Don't expect anything for about a week and half, because as of Saturday I will be in the middle of the Killarney wilderness, and completely cut-off from my beloved Internets. I'll have pictures and stories to post when I get back. Until then, be well, and start planning your own trips!

Travel Plans Update

I haven't made any official plans yet, but I thought you'd all be interested to know that it looks like a trip to Iceland is in my future! I'd originally abandoned my plans to see Iceland when Jay said he wouldn't be able to make it, but I've decided to do a small solo trip there this summer. We'll see if some of my friends feel like a longer, more adventurous trip next year.

For now, here's the plan. It looks like I can get a flight on Icelandair direct from Toronto to Reykjavik the evening of August 18th, arriving at 6:25 A.M. local time on the 19th. I would be leaving Iceland at 5:00 P.M. local time on the 27th. Flightcentre was quoting me $736 for the round-trip flight on their website, but was having trouble processing my payment. I believe the problem is stemming from the fact that their website wanted to charge me $687, which doesn't jive with the originally quoted price. I'll just go into their store and see if I can book that in person. Traveller's Tip #896, book in advance so you can be flexible with your departure dates! From what I could tell on the Flightcentre website Icelandair doesn't run from Toronto to Reykjavik on Mondays... at least not that I was able to find. If I'd already locked myself into a Monday to Monday vacation I'd be taking an Air Canada flight to Heathrow in London England and then catching a flight to Reykjavik... same routine on the way back. That would have cost my a charming $3500 round-trip. Yeah, it pays to shop around and be flexible.

Accommodation has been my biggest stumbling block so far. August is a popular time to be traveling in Iceland, and hotels in Reykjavik aren't cheap. Wikitravel, as always, has been a wonderful resource. Also, I'm booking into a 3-day tour (more on that later) and the people I've been in contact with there had some suggestions. Rumour has it that it's become much cheaper to travel in Iceland since their currency the Krona is in bad shape. What you need to watch out for is the fact that a lot of hotels, presumably catering largely to European clientele, list their prices in Euro. Note, as of the time of writing this article the Euro is a VERY strong currency! So hotel prices probably haven't dropped off that much, and they can be STEEP! Something that I'm looking at right now is the Guesthouse, which is essentially a house that's been converted into a small, cozy hotel. There's plenty of them around, and they tend to be considerably cheaper than your standard hotels. I'm trying to get booked into one of those right now, I'll keep you all posted on that.

Another interesting accommodation option that I was considering if all else fails is simply camping. There's a huge campground located right in Reykjavik, and according to their website it can hold 650 campers and there's no need for a reservation. If I can't find a room in my price range I may just show up there with a tent! The great thing about that being that it's 1000 ISK per night, which as of last night was about $9.20 CAD. Not bad for traveling on a budget. I'm thinking that the Guesthouse may prove more comfortable though.

Okay, and now onto what's drawing me to Iceland. Just drop by www.dive.is sometime and have a look at the photos on that site. Now pick your jaw up off the floor and we can continue. The scuba diving looks phenomenal! I'm getting booked in for a 3-day trip that consists of 3 individual day-trips out from Reykjavik. I'm really, really excited about this. In Thingvellir National Park there's a dive site called Silfra which is what really grabbed my attention. It's located at the point where the North American and European continents are pulling apart, and you can dive right down into the fissure that's being formed. It looks incredible! If this all comes together along the timeline that I'm shooting for I will have just finished my PADI Advanced Open Water and Deep Diver certifications. I'm hoping at some point in the summer that I'll be able to do the Dry Suit course as well. The water at Silfra is a constant temperature all year round... unfortunately that temperature is between 2 and 4 degrees Celsius. So the dry suit is going to be a must. The team from dive.is can teach me how to dive in a dry suit, but I'd much rather know what I'm doing in advance of those dives so that I can focus on just enjoying the scenery.

That's the game plan so far. As you can see, nothing is booked yet, but it's all starting to come together. Obviously I didn't want to book anything until I was sure that everything was going to match up, but it's looking like I can get a reasonably priced flight, and I've got a Plan B for the accommodation, so now it's time to start getting everything booked!

Product Review: I Can't Believe It's Not Food!

Long before I've actually finished writing this my watch will have passed midnight, so Happy Star Wars day everyone! May the 4th be with you!

Okay, now that I've got that out of the way, on to the "meat" of the post. You'll get the pun in a moment, and I am preemptively sorry. I'm going camping in just a couple of weeks; it's up to Killarney with my Dad to get some fresh air. I thought this would be a good opportunity to do something that I've been meaning to for awhile now, which is to blog about the equipment I travel with. I haven't owned a great deal of travel equipment in my day, but hopefully my experiences can prove helpful to someone out there, and any discussion that this generates could prove influential to my future purchases.

I decided to kick this off with something lively - a bit of an experiment that we conducted this weekend. I was home visiting the folks, so I brought home some freeze dried camping food to try out. The idea is that these pouches of freeze dried food weight VERY little, but when you add hot water they turn into full meals for two. A pretty convenient concept, but one that neither my father or I have ever put to the test. So, as they say, the proof is in the tasting. I picked up a couple of the highly recommended meals from Mountain Equipment Co-Op (check them out at www.mec.ca) and brought them home for a test drive. By the way, Camper's Tip #463, always test out your gear, even if it's just dehydrated food before you leave home, you really don't want to find out that it sucks in the middle of the Canadian Wilderness.

The two meals that we took for a test-drive were the Hawaiian Rice with Chicken from Backpacker's Pantry and Beef Stroganoff from Mountain House. Graydyn decided to join in on the taste test, though please keep in mind that he's something of a Gourmand, and as such has declared food that I thought was perfectly lovely to be quite unfit for human consumption. He took the first crack at the chicken dish and proceeded to describe it in terms that I am too polite to repeat in a public forum. So yeah, that one didn't go over so hot. As usual I didn't find it nearly as bad as Graydyn, though I did see his point of view. There's more garlic and ginger in there than chicken, which makes the taste quite powerful, and quite uniform. If you don't like the first bite, you're not going to enjoy the second one any more. That said, I didn't find the flavour as offensive as Gray, but Dad wasn't too keen on it either, so I get out-voted 2 to 1. I also came out very soupy, as if the amount of water that they tell you to add is a bit too high. Another thing to note is that it has red peppers in it, and I genuinely believe that all colours of Bell pepper should be avoided in freeze dried or frozen foods, they take on a really appalling texture.

Next on the hit list was the Beef Stroganoff, which actually was something of a hit! We all agreed that it tasted like Beef Stroganoff, which may not seem like a glowing review, given that it's supposed to taste like that, but keep in mind that this is freeze dried food - hitting the mark is quite an accomplishment! The water-to-food ratio was more accurate on this dish, so the texture was what you would expect. I was pretty happy with the end result, and so was Dad, so I think we'll be grabbing another one of those to take with us on our trip. We'll probably get another from Mountain House as well, since that one worked out so well.

In general then, I've got a few tips from my limited experience with camping meals. First, try before you camp! Find something you like, because if you really found the food unpalatable in the woods you wouldn't be able to just run out for a pizza. Second, it seems like you're better off getting simple dishes, and avoiding anything with too long of an ingredient list. Third, and this is important, make sure you're hungry when you take one for a test drive so that you get a feeling for how well it will fill you up. Most of these pouches advertise that there's enough food for two people there, but I've read reviews from several people who said that they would consider that only enough food for one. Make sure that if you're planning on splitting the pouch that you won't end up hungry.

All of that said, I think they're a brilliant concept, especially for backcountry camping. They are light weight, easy to prepare, and can be eaten right out of the pouch they come in. Certainly worth checking out if you're planning a lengthy and remote camping trip. Hope that helps, and tune in soon for more gear discussions.