Old Crow
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... A “Wander The West(ern Hemisphere)” post... 
We were in Ontario, Canada’s Algonquin Provincial Park for 5 days recently and I thought I’d jot a few notes....
This trip came about because we had been along the northern boundary of the park last summer as we returned from a trip north to Val d’Or, Quebec and then west over to Temagami, Ontario. We had blundered upon an outfitter shop just outside the park and learned of the nearby primitive campground in the park. We camped there but had to depart early the next morning. But we had seen enough to want to put a return visit on our to-do list.
Algonquin is Canada’s oldest provincial park and is a National Historical Site. Wikipedia tells us it’s a transition point between the deciduous forests of the south and the coniferous forests of the north. Its 3000 square miles contain more than 2400 lakes and 700 miles of streams and rivers. It lies about three driving hours north-north-east of Toronto and three west of Ottawa. For comparison, Algonquin’s area is about 15% smaller than Yellowstone National Park’s 3500 square miles.
From a visitor’s perspective, Algonquin consists of two parks --- the backcountry and the developed area. Backcountry is visited by canoe/kayak or on foot. The developed area lies along 34-mile-long Route 60, a two-lane paved road in the southwest corner of the park. It has nine campgrounds, two museums, an art center, 15 interpretive trails, several bicycle, ski, and backpacking trails and a dog-sledding trail.
In addition to the developed area campgrounds, there are a half-dozen ‘peripheral’ campgrounds, which are small, primitive ones at the end of gravel roads and typically on a lake. However, these peripheral campgrounds are quite far from the developed area-- from 90 minutes to four hours away by car. They’re so far away because there are no roads across the park to them; you must go outside the park and circle around the periphery of the park to get there.
Though there are nearly 2000 (!!!!) backcountry campsites in Algonquin, they’re mostly canoe-in sites (and backpacking sites). Dispersed camping by vehicle is not permitted. There may be some opportunities for dispersed camping on crown lands outside the park boundaries but finding them can be difficult.
We spent most of our five-day visit in the developed area. We had decided we’d drive all the paved and gravel roads in that corner of the park, see everything we can, walk about six miles of interpretive trails a day, camp in a different campground each night, and go wolf-howling a few times.
The middle weeks of September are a great time to visit because it’s the slow time between summer-vacation time and the fall-colors rush. And there are no mosquitos this time of year. (Note: The black flies and mosquitos can be awful in late spring through the end of June (for black flies) and the end of July (for mosquitos.) We met many of the latter in Quebec and Temagami in early July last year.)
We executed our wandering-around plan and were quite impressed by how well the story of Ontario is told. The museums are very good, the art center has very interesting work, and the interpretive trails we visited each had well-thought-out guide pamphlets and something interesting to say. We were perhaps a week ahead of the main part of the fall color-change but saw a few really spectacular early-changers. We also enjoyed looking through the outfitter shops and watching the canoeists and kayakers coming and going.
Algonquin is also known for its public wolf-howling program, typically running Thursday-night howls in August somewhere along the Route 60 corridor. On Tuesday and Wednesday nights, naturalist staff does a series of locator-howls. If that’s successful, the naturalists make a Thursday-morning announcement for the howl that night. We of course were too late for those programs.
After a few chats with park naturalists, we felt we had a handle on how to go about our own wolf-howl adventure. We had done a public howl with the International Wolf Center in Ely, Minnesota a few years ago and only needed some local orientation. You can, of course, just stop off at a likely spot and howl away. Naturalists suggested some more-likely-than-other spots to try and gave us insight into the natural history of the Eastern wolf. We really liked talking with the naturalists and made multiple trips back to the visitor's center to seek them out.
We also did two evening walk-in howls where we hiked in for about an hour, waited for dark, tried our howls, and then walked out. It’s amazing how different a trail is after dark. It’s so friendly as you go in with the last light of the day. And then as you finish howling in the dark, it suddenly seems like a long way back to the truck, the flashlight doesn’t seem to cover much area, and you’ve just told the wolf-pack where you are!
Unfortunately, we didn’t get any responses from the wolves. We did have a brief conversation with a barred owl one night but we apparently said the wrong thing and that was that.
The last day we drove out of the park and around to the Algonquin Park permit office in one of the small towns on the periphery. We had thought we’d have to get our permit, drive the 12 miles in to the trailhead / launch ramp (called an ‘access point’), do our wolf-howl walk, then drive back out to a designated campground after dark. Instead, we were issued an overnight permit for the Access Point itself. It turns out there are a few primitive campsites for backcountry users arriving late to the Access Point. That worked out perfectly for us and gave us a dark-sky vantage point for a few satellites and shooting stars, all against a vivid backdrop of the Milky Way.
Our little trip was a good intro to Algonquin Park but of course now I want more. Since returning home I’ve been reading up on the wolves, studying maps, watching YouTube videos, reading through online forums dedicated to the park, subscribing to the park’s Twitter feed and starting my list of things to see next time.
Wolf Howl (just a clip from YouTube so you can hear wolves respond)
Canoe-trip footage (I linked to this to show camera footage from multiple lakes and the guy’s Swift canoe. Swifts were the most common brand of canoe we saw in the park. That one is their Keewaydin 14 model.)
If anyone has questions, ask away or shoot me a personal message.
-Old Crow
We were in Ontario, Canada’s Algonquin Provincial Park for 5 days recently and I thought I’d jot a few notes....
This trip came about because we had been along the northern boundary of the park last summer as we returned from a trip north to Val d’Or, Quebec and then west over to Temagami, Ontario. We had blundered upon an outfitter shop just outside the park and learned of the nearby primitive campground in the park. We camped there but had to depart early the next morning. But we had seen enough to want to put a return visit on our to-do list.
Algonquin is Canada’s oldest provincial park and is a National Historical Site. Wikipedia tells us it’s a transition point between the deciduous forests of the south and the coniferous forests of the north. Its 3000 square miles contain more than 2400 lakes and 700 miles of streams and rivers. It lies about three driving hours north-north-east of Toronto and three west of Ottawa. For comparison, Algonquin’s area is about 15% smaller than Yellowstone National Park’s 3500 square miles.
From a visitor’s perspective, Algonquin consists of two parks --- the backcountry and the developed area. Backcountry is visited by canoe/kayak or on foot. The developed area lies along 34-mile-long Route 60, a two-lane paved road in the southwest corner of the park. It has nine campgrounds, two museums, an art center, 15 interpretive trails, several bicycle, ski, and backpacking trails and a dog-sledding trail.
In addition to the developed area campgrounds, there are a half-dozen ‘peripheral’ campgrounds, which are small, primitive ones at the end of gravel roads and typically on a lake. However, these peripheral campgrounds are quite far from the developed area-- from 90 minutes to four hours away by car. They’re so far away because there are no roads across the park to them; you must go outside the park and circle around the periphery of the park to get there.
Though there are nearly 2000 (!!!!) backcountry campsites in Algonquin, they’re mostly canoe-in sites (and backpacking sites). Dispersed camping by vehicle is not permitted. There may be some opportunities for dispersed camping on crown lands outside the park boundaries but finding them can be difficult.
We spent most of our five-day visit in the developed area. We had decided we’d drive all the paved and gravel roads in that corner of the park, see everything we can, walk about six miles of interpretive trails a day, camp in a different campground each night, and go wolf-howling a few times.
The middle weeks of September are a great time to visit because it’s the slow time between summer-vacation time and the fall-colors rush. And there are no mosquitos this time of year. (Note: The black flies and mosquitos can be awful in late spring through the end of June (for black flies) and the end of July (for mosquitos.) We met many of the latter in Quebec and Temagami in early July last year.)
We executed our wandering-around plan and were quite impressed by how well the story of Ontario is told. The museums are very good, the art center has very interesting work, and the interpretive trails we visited each had well-thought-out guide pamphlets and something interesting to say. We were perhaps a week ahead of the main part of the fall color-change but saw a few really spectacular early-changers. We also enjoyed looking through the outfitter shops and watching the canoeists and kayakers coming and going.
Algonquin is also known for its public wolf-howling program, typically running Thursday-night howls in August somewhere along the Route 60 corridor. On Tuesday and Wednesday nights, naturalist staff does a series of locator-howls. If that’s successful, the naturalists make a Thursday-morning announcement for the howl that night. We of course were too late for those programs.
After a few chats with park naturalists, we felt we had a handle on how to go about our own wolf-howl adventure. We had done a public howl with the International Wolf Center in Ely, Minnesota a few years ago and only needed some local orientation. You can, of course, just stop off at a likely spot and howl away. Naturalists suggested some more-likely-than-other spots to try and gave us insight into the natural history of the Eastern wolf. We really liked talking with the naturalists and made multiple trips back to the visitor's center to seek them out.
We also did two evening walk-in howls where we hiked in for about an hour, waited for dark, tried our howls, and then walked out. It’s amazing how different a trail is after dark. It’s so friendly as you go in with the last light of the day. And then as you finish howling in the dark, it suddenly seems like a long way back to the truck, the flashlight doesn’t seem to cover much area, and you’ve just told the wolf-pack where you are!
Unfortunately, we didn’t get any responses from the wolves. We did have a brief conversation with a barred owl one night but we apparently said the wrong thing and that was that.
The last day we drove out of the park and around to the Algonquin Park permit office in one of the small towns on the periphery. We had thought we’d have to get our permit, drive the 12 miles in to the trailhead / launch ramp (called an ‘access point’), do our wolf-howl walk, then drive back out to a designated campground after dark. Instead, we were issued an overnight permit for the Access Point itself. It turns out there are a few primitive campsites for backcountry users arriving late to the Access Point. That worked out perfectly for us and gave us a dark-sky vantage point for a few satellites and shooting stars, all against a vivid backdrop of the Milky Way.
Our little trip was a good intro to Algonquin Park but of course now I want more. Since returning home I’ve been reading up on the wolves, studying maps, watching YouTube videos, reading through online forums dedicated to the park, subscribing to the park’s Twitter feed and starting my list of things to see next time.
Wolf Howl (just a clip from YouTube so you can hear wolves respond)
Canoe-trip footage (I linked to this to show camera footage from multiple lakes and the guy’s Swift canoe. Swifts were the most common brand of canoe we saw in the park. That one is their Keewaydin 14 model.)
If anyone has questions, ask away or shoot me a personal message.
-Old Crow
