A four day weekend camping on site 11, Round Schooner Lake, North Frontenac Parklands at coordinates 45.126008, -76.983993 for those that wish to head this way. Karen and I were at this campsite a few years ago, and both consider this to be the best campsite we have pitched a tent at, so we were very happy I could book it for four days (It is the most popular site of all of the North Frontenac sites, and very tough to get a booking) Last time we were here was in September, and the water was a little chilly for swimming, not so this time around. Getting to Round Schooner is probably best done with a truck, or a car that either has good clearance…or you don’t really care about (some pretty rough sections with a lot of wash boarding). From the village of Plevna there is 20 Km of very narrow backcountry roads with about half of it reasonably well maintained dirt. The last 10 Km on Schooner road, require a permit from North Frontenac Parklands (If you have a camp permit, you will also receive a road permit – which stays in your vehicle)

Site 11 was an easy 5 Km paddle through Long Schooner Lake and into Round schooner, we passed by site 12, we had camped there two years ago. The winds were strong this weekend, and as is the law laid down by Superior Judge Murphy, it seemed to always be a head wind. One huge advantage of strong winds while camping is that it eliminates most bugs (Other than deer flies which seem to have been created in a wind tunnel) two huge disadvantages are it makes paddling that much harder, and Fly fishing very hard, was only able to fish for about 20 minutes very early on the second day.

In a previous post on North Frontenac parklands I went into more detail about the camping available, both Karen and I love the camping here, and site 11 is probably the nicest site in the entire region.

The camp site boasts two small rustic beaches, making it very easy to land almost any sized boat, the only downside is that it is a few hundred metres partially uphill to hump all your camping gear. We were down at the beach swimming a few times.

One of the reasons this site is so popular, is its size. You could easily camp with five families at this site, with multiple locations for tents scattered throughout the site. The only limiting factor would be there is only one thunderbox, and not the most private of facilities, so shy campers may have to construct a bit of a barrier.

We had planned to hike up to Crag lake, however we both left our decent hiking shoes at home, and having hiked this last time we were here, we knew our feet would be butchered if we attempted it in sandals and flip flops. There is a sort of trail for the first 500 metres the rest you have to rely on either a compass or your GPS. The hike is well worth the effort, as Crag lake is spectacular, I have included a picture of it from the last time we were here.

Since we neglected to bring decent hiking shoes, we opted instead to explore the Mackie creek at the North end of the Lake, it was a slow moving creek with very shallow and rocky areas. We were halted about 2 Km in by a huge log jam in the creek, had we felt a little more adventurous, we might have humped the canoe over and continued…but I could hear the call of the rare cold beer warbler..calling us back to our campsite.

Marcus loves it when we paddle small creeks and channels, there are strange smells everywhere for him.

This weeks sponsor (Hopefully by now you realize that unfortunately I am not sponsored, just my kit reviews) We bought the MSR Windburner, after about a year of trying to boil water in high winds. Building makeshift wind blocks (work like shit when the wind direction changes as often as it does in Ontario) I bit the bullet and picked this thing up. The stove does only one thing, it boils water, but it boils it in gale force winds and boils very fast with minimum fuel consumption…Great piece of kit.

Our camping trip came to an end too soon, as usual (Retirement will make that issue disappear..) but only two days back in the office, then off to the finger lakes in New York State for 12 days of trailer camping and winery tours.