Killarney, A Must to See
8:08 PM
Well, the only problem, Killarney Lake in Killarney Park, is only accessible through water, by canoe or kayak. Motor boat is not allowed on the lakes at the park (thank you dear canoe god :-)). So before you turn to 65 years old, you better start learning how to paddle a canoe if you wish to visit this paradise on earth. We did visit it this last long week-end. Labour Day in Canada, September 7, 1998. There were 9 people in our party. Cecilia and I, S, J, and P from Ottawa plus T, A, and their two little daughters, R and M, a family friend from Toronto. You should have been there with us when we first 'stepped' into Killarney water after paddling for about an hour through George Lake, a small portage, then Freeland Lake, plus a 455 meter portage. The ooos and the aaahs and the wows were said by everybody, at least in their hearts. It was magnificent! The different sediments on the bottom of the lake create different colours. If you nature lover cries on seeing that type of beauty, I can understand. Cecilia and I couldn't believe our eyes and we couldn't thank our Creator enough for granting us the time and the rare opportunity to be there. It was the right time indeed because the weather was so perfect during all those 4 days we spent in Killarney Park. Even though we are in September, it was not cold at all. In fact, with the sun almost always shining, it was so refreshing to skinny-dip :-) in the water. If you don't believe in our Creator's kindness, you probably would believe that there is a canoe god :-) who has kindly allowed us all to spent one of our most enjoyable days this year in Killarney. Why?
I told you that it was not easy to book or reserve a campsite at Killarney Lake. Even though the lake is quite big, about 7 km paddling across or couple hours, it has only 11 designated campsites. I started to call Killarney reservation number more than a week ago. After trying to dial 30-40 times, punching 26 digits every time for long distance charge to phone calling card, I couldn't get through and I gave up! I told my boss, I needed to go or take a one day vacation (my company was kind enough to 'give away' Friday as holiday :-)) earlier and if he still expected me to work for him, he better granted it. Now, he had no other choice you see because he also wanted to take Thursday off to be with his family before the kids started school :-). Going one day earlier, Cecilia and I were hoping and wishing that we could get a spot in Killarney Lake, filling a vacant spot left by cancellation. So, after driving non-stop for 5 hours from Toronto, including lunch in the car with Cecilia feeding me :-), we reached the park office early afternoon on Thursday. When I asked the lady at the counter if there was any interior canoe route site available, she said, "We are very busy I am afraid, but you could go to Johnnie Lake." According to S that was not too thrilled when she had to camp in there, Johnnie Lake is not spectacular at all. However, after starting to read the information on her computer display, she said, "Hmmm, you could have Killarney Lake for the first night but move to Kakakise Lake then George Lake on the other nights." I started to smile already in my heart. When she said, "Oh, it looks like there was a cancellation. You could stay at O.S.A. Lake on the 2nd and 3rd night," I knew my guardian angel was doing something with the computer data base :-). O.S.A lake is adjacent to Killarney Lake and therefore is as beautiful. Now, tell me that there is no canoe god, but wait till I tell you more before you said so. :-)
Every time after I came back to Toronto from a visit to my birth place, Jakarta, Indonesia, and had to be in traffic jam, I smiled and felt very happy. Weird? Every thing is relative you see. Our traffic jam in Toronto, is nothing compared to the real traffic jam in Jakarta, a city with a million cars and motorcycles and other types of vehicles. But yesterday, driving along Highway 69 from Killarney, it was the worst. The town called Parry Sound has only two exits, about 2 kilometres apart. It took us 45 minutes 'stop and go' to traverse that part of the road. However, we kept on saying to one another, the trip to Killarney, was well worth the lost of time in traffic. We only lost a couple hours at the most while we enjoyed 100 hours of fun and 'wow' experiences.
It was Friday early morning when the '3 musketeers' :-) from Ottawa joined the 6 Torontonians. I was glad when I woke up and saw two canoes on top of a car belonging to P. Breakfast was done separately between the 2 cities people as we were not sure whether the Ottawans could make it considering they have to drive 7 hours to reach Killarney. Cecilia and I finished our rice dumpling, called 'bacang' in Indonesian. She intentionally made it for the Thursday meals as it is very easy to eat 'bacang' while driving :-).
After final packing, the canoe seating arrangement was made, 3 persons in each canoe. It was good to have a mother that was as small and light as her daughters :-). I know J's canoe can take some load and also I rented a canoe that can easily take 500 pounds of load and still be in optimum weight. It's a Swift Kipawa, a beauty to paddle and cruise on. P will disagree :-). He has a wood canvas canoe even though he didn't bring it along because with almost 80 pounds, you surely wouldn't find any enjoyment along the portage trail. He said that wooden canoe is a delight to paddle and I won't believe him even though he has 30 years of canoeing experience since he was still wearing pampers :-), until I paddle a wooden canoe myself.
Cut it out jusni, let's start moving :-). Yes, we started paddling the 'not-so-bad-meaning-quite-pretty' George Lake around 11 AM. First portaging was easy, a very short 80 metres. Off we cruised along Freeland Lake where the water was not so 'free' or a bit clogged with lots of water lilies. The next portaging was not too bad either, 455 metres and with only 49 pound Kevlar of the Kipawa, I could have done ten times of it :-). I didn't say how many stops would I need though. Seriously, the slope was almost even because short portaging doesn't mean easy if you have to climb a 'mountain'. Then ... the 'wows' started as soon as we began to paddle on the Killarney Lake, which was the next lake on the route. The water was much clearer than the tap water at my mother's home in Jakarta :-). As some of you know, the mountains or more precisely, hills around Killarney are dominated by white quartzite, pure silica. T called it marble. So you can imagine the scenery. If you look up, you're surrounded by white marble hills and when you look down to the water, you see nothing but spectacular nuances of colours being displayed. No wonder again that this park is visited oftenly by people from down south, Bill Clinton's lovers, oops, folks :-).
Since lunch time was already past due, as soon as we spotted a nice campsite, we stopped and I shall never forget the site number, 20. I will tell you later what happened or what did we see there. Lunch was served by T and A, a usual Canadian type of lunch, but 'delish' :-) (thanks to S who introduced this new word for our Scrabble game in the future :-)). After settling down at the campsite, we decided to go paddling again toward the open Killarney Lake and ventured around one of the longest portage in Killarney Park, a 3160 metres only :-). We played by the water of a small creek in there, with unique rock formation and small waterfalls. Since Cecilia and I had to prepare dinner, this time an Indonesian style or rice had to be cooked, we left earlier. While waiting for the rice to cook, I managed to do a skinny-dipping bath and Cecilia joined afterwards, only with her swimsuit still intact :-). Well, you can tell that the dinner was nice knowing that the two cooks were very clean and not smelly at all. Everybody loved the 'rendang' with side-dish of 'acar' made by goddess of the hilwans family (that's why I call her boss once in a while :-)). We didn't spend too much time on this first night by the campfire since we were all tired from a long day paddling.
If you know me in person or you're close to, you would probably know that there is an internal 'alarm clock' in my body that would wake me up around 6 AM every morning, 7 days a week :-). However, after getting several 'warnings' from my dear friend S :-), if we went camping together I would stay inside my tent even though I was fully awake. I know that I am 'rough' once I wake up and would make lots of noise that could disturb someone who likes to sleep till 9 AM :-). But, on last Saturday morning, I got a special 'wake up call'. A loon serenaded me at exactly 6 AM as if telling me that I should wake up as usual cause it was our turn again to prepare for breakfast. It was planned that Cecilia and I would do back-to-back dinner then breakfast because we would make 'bubur ayam' or Indonesian chicken-rice-porridge. We would take advantage if there was rice left over from the dinner. Alas, there was no such thing, the rice and 'rendang' all went to the bellies :-). Cecilia's 'bubur ayam' is famous among the Indonesian in Toronto. So, to keep this 'brand image' she already prepared meticulously all the spices and ingredients necessary for the 'bubur'. She bought 'cakwee' or Chinese bread-stick that without it, one shouldn't call what's served as 'bubur' :-). She also brought 'tongcai' (preserved cabbage bits), green onion and fried onion or 'bawang goreng' in Indonesian. Of course the shredded chicken and the spiced chicken broth were not forgotten either.
So we started early to cook the rice first and then processed it to become rice porridge. While we were starting to boil the water, we looked toward J who slept outside his tent on a rock. He was waving and gesturing us to come. It must be serious scenery as we noticed J was still wearing his underwear :-). So I turned off the stove and we proceeded toward J and S who also slept outside. We couldn't believe our eyes when we looked about 100 metres to the distance J was pointing. A black bear was roving near the shore, a stone throw from our campsite, a spit from our 'john' or 'wooden throne' :-). P and us almost made Toronto Star's headline, "Experience canoeist from Ottawa and young couple from Toronto were eaten alive by bear". :-) Yes, our tents were the closest to the box.
Other than seeing bears in the zoo or once by the road in British Columbia I have never seen bear in the wilderness, nor has anyone in our party. With excitement we kept on watching him/her (sorry can't check the gender for sure) until he/she saw us and took turn watching us :-). We said hello, but only in our hearts as we didn't want to cause miscommunication you see, speaking in a language he/she didn't understand. We weren't looking for trouble. Finally, after enough checking that none of us was suitable for his/her breakfast, the bear left. That was how I will always remember our campsite number 20 in Killarney Park, the very first site after 17 years camping in Ontario, where I saw a bear.
I was not sure whether excitement from seeing a bear or the delicious 'bubur' caused people to be so hungry. half of a very big pot was empty in no time and people had 2-3 times serving. "Delish ...," said S who admitted to have 3 servings and then put the remaining on a container for her lunch :-). As it was already warm and nice, we decided to go swimming by the beach close to where the bear was. We were a bit surprised when we looked at the spot of where the bear was standing, to see a 'white bear with yellow short' :-). Yes, it was P who went to that far end to burn energy from the 'bubur' so he wouldn't gain weight in this trip because of all the wonderful meals.
That Saturday was indeed a special day. Loon woke me up, a bear came by our campsite and shortly after breakfast, a beaver was swimming along the lake by the shore. I have seen many beaver dams and heard their splashes at night or in the wee morning but I have never seen one swimming in the wilderness. Yes, the week-end at Killarney was indeed a big favour from our Creator, not only for me, but I believe for every one of us. Not only were we able to get a campsite at Killarney Lake, we were going to go to O.S.A. Lake and found another beautiful site, on a small but nice island (about 15-20 minutes to paddle around).
O.S.A. Lake is perhaps the only lake in Canada that has initial as its name. It stands for Ontario Society of Artists. So the second most beautiful lake among the lakes at Killarney Park was named after this society where the famous Ontario Group of Seven painters belong to. It is deserving for them to be remembered since they worked with the government to have lands set aside that form the beginnings of Killarney Park.
We left our campsite at Killarney Lake almost closed to lunch time as people voted to have lunch at O.S.A. Lake with the idea to hopefully being able to get an island campsite. When we reached the first one, it was already occupied but the second one was not. It turned out to be very pretty, with two "rocky mountains". R and M christened the first one to 'Peepee Mountain'. They had to rush there prior to seeing the box :-).
As we paddled prior to getting the island, we realized that S was right. Indeed this lake was as beautiful as Killarney, only a bit shorter or smaller and therefore the colour variations were not that many as in Killarney Lake. There were several rocky beaches on the island, all of them were swimmers' paradise. I brought along couple books and the game of Scrabble as usual. Only very rarely, would I be more interested to do other things than reading book or playing Scrabble with Cecilia. That was swimming in clear, green, turquoise, blue water :-). If you love jumping and diving (I don't like doing this because my valve system is not that good :-)), you may not want to go home from Killarney. It was proven when on the last day, at the last hour, S, J, and P went out to a diving rock platform and enjoyed their earthly paradise by jumping for about an hour. Since I was getting restless because it was important for me to leave early to return the rented canoe, Cecilia and I went to join them, only to watch them coming back as we neared. I already stored my swimming trunk somewhere and because the sun was too hot, I took all my clothes when we were not too far from the shore and jumped to the water from the canoe, leaving Cecilia paddling by herself. If you haven't realized, that was called skinny-jumping as opposed to skinny-dipping :-).
I told you many times in my previous stories, when we went camping to the interior, we ate gourmet meals at dinner time. Most of the time, people would cook from scratch. On the first night at O.S.A. Lake, J cooked a gourmet spaghetti a la J :-). The last time I had gourmet spaghetti was in a restaurant named Frenchie on NASA Road near NASA headquarter in Houston. So, you can imagine how much money we saved this way, we didn't have to go to the USA where our Canadian dollars would not be appreciated :-), we didn't have to fly since Air Canada was and still is on strike :-). The interior camping fee that we paid was basically spent for the pine and birch trees that we burned all evenings. Thus, the swimming and diving were free. :-) Dinner at the last night was a very special Hungarian goulash, cooked by S with 6 helpers :-). Yes, it's kind of natural to have helpers when you cook, but S really has a style. For those helpers already too hungry, she had prepared a special treat, houmous or Middle-East chickpea pate with small pita, as appetizer. Being a bit allergic to chilly or anything that is spicy hot, I ate the goulash with difficulty even though it was delish :-). Yes, the pepperoni used in it was a hot one. It was so good that A decided to save it a bit for home :-). The best compliment to a camper's cooking skill!
While still talking about food, you would think that breakfast will be boring, right? Bread or sandwich or cereal or stuff like that. Not so on the Sunday morning when T had his turn to prepare for breakfast. Having nothing to do after waking up at 6 AM and finished lowering down all the food bag from the rope, I helped T. Yes, every night we had to haul our food up the tree and hung them on a rope, far from our tents. It was my noble duty to lower them in the morning and carried to the campsite. After polling people the day before, whether we wanted soup noodle or fried noodle, almost unanimously people voted for a more delicious fried noodle. Initially T was a bit lost because we did not have enough ingredients to fried the noodle. We didn't bring egg or was finished earlier, there was no Indonesian soy sauce, a very important spice. Finally, we didn't lose our creativity. We cooked it with 'gossip' :-). Yes, we gossiped about people that lately have hurt the cook so much :-), not knowing that there were 3 women listening as they understood Indonesian. So, it was not surprising at all when people found that the 'gossipy fried noodle' was delicious as well.
After the 'gossipy fried noodle' breakfast on Sunday, we went to another lake on the west side or at the end of O.S.A. Lake, Muriel Lake. It was so-so or nothing spectacular. We met a guy and a gal at the start of our portaging who came from Threenarrows Lake, the biggest lake at Killarney Park. He helped J carry the canoe I rented from the water to the land and I could watch the expression in his face. It was a kind of disbelief :-). He said, "I just did a 2K portaging, they called the pig (indeed, it was the steepest portage in Killarney). I wish I had a canoe as light as that." His canoe was a whitewater Swift Dumoine with tough Royalex material but weigh 72 pounds. Indeed, it was a delight to portage the Swift Kipawa, 49 pounds even though it has a length of 16'6".
Lunch preparation at our lunch place by Muriel Lake was disastrous as we couldn't find an even ground. Cecilia and I had to cook by the very shore on top of a big slab of rock. The menu was a simple rice noodle with meatball and Romaine lettuce, 'bihun bakso' a la Cecilia :-). Of course the 'three musketeers' :-) from Ottawa went through their diving rituals while we cooked lunch. S graciously distributed her products of dehydrated mangos and peaches, homemade, for dessert. The mangos were finished within a minute or two because they were so delish :-). We paddled back home not too long afterwards because a special program was awaiting.
Yes, I had been telling Cecilia since way back that we need to practice life-saving or swamping the canoe in case our canoe turned over or we went overboard. We need to get a feeling how easy or how difficult to get back to a canoe from the water. The opportunity came when the two angels, S and P volunteered to give a crash course on canoe life-saving technique. The first demonstration was when P intentionally turned his canoe and he went under. S then showed how to do canoe-over-canoe rescue from hers. I followed her way and at least I could now say, I did it :-). My only hope, I would never need to do it again :-). The other demonstration was when P jumped from the water to the canoe. This was easy for me but Cecilia got bruises :-). The most difficult, so that even our teachers couldn't do, was if both paddlers went to the water with the canoe swamped or rolled over. We were only told, we had to go under the canoe, lift it from the water above our head, roll it to empty the water, expect miracle to happen and we will get an empty canoe waiting for us on the water to jump over :-). Please pray this would never happen to us, especially when the water is chillingly cold.
It was full moon on that Sunday, so Cecilia and I discussed or contemplated that we should sleep under the moon and stars on the rock by the shore, to watch the sunrise. Even though we brought only one sleeping bag or were not prepared, we bit the bullets and did it. Having passed some kind of training when I was still climbing mountains in Indonesia and often had to sleep without tent, in no time I felt asleep. P said there was a windstorm in the morning and I felt it a bit. Cecilia, 'the teflon lady' followed me too to 'dreamland' thereafter. We woke up later on when the sky in the east already shed some light. It was an experience, not easily forgotten to watch the sunrise, all by yourself, beside the most important person in your life :-). Yes, we were in full harmony with one another and with nature :-). It took us an hour to wait for the sun to creep but as soon as it was there, within three minutes we got a round sun.
As I mentioned earlier, we had all kind of experiences during this camping trip to Killarney interior. Full moon and sunshine all the time, bear and beaver came by us. But it was nothing :-). Because the canoe rental place would have been closed at 6 PM, we left the gang shortly after lunch at the end of Killarney Lake by the 455 metres portage trail. So Cecilia and I still had to paddle two lakes with one short portage in between. The weather looked menacing, big cumulus cloud hung over us. By the time we started paddling on Freeland Lake, the wind was unbelievable. We had to paddle both on one side of the canoe because steering the normal way didn't make any difference. It took us 45 minutes to cross that small lake. I couldn't forget the recovery of paddle taught by T, one of my teachers from Ottawa. She said, "In windy condition, you return your paddle horizontal to the water." I had mastered that technique and it was so useful. It made a difference. We were so surprised that at the end of Freeland Lake, the rain and the showers turned to hail :-). Indeed, it was a special gift to experience all kind of weather in this trip. By the time we paddled on the last lake, George Lake, the wind had created quite a big wave, at least one foot if not higher. We paddled with confidence though because we knew that our canoe was designed to handle this kind of wave. In fact it was a good test of our paddling and Cecilia's steering ability. She made one small mistake however. After confirming the route upon checking the map, she threw it back to me. Off it went flying to the water and we had to spend extra energy to come back and fetch the map from the water, in such a nice weather :-). Another test of husband and wife togetherness I guess and we passed with flying, oops paddling colour. :-) We landed on the shore of George Lake around 3 PM and were it not for the traffic jam, we would have reached the canoe rental place you see. We ended up to be there by 7:30 PM but like a miracle, the store was still open, specially waiting for us. This story better be ended here because I could continue for another hour. Some of you already knew what happened and please keep it as a secret :-). There will be other times to tell, in summary we were smiling all the way home. No wonder Canada was just selected again by United Nation, for a record-setting fifth year in a row, to be the best country in the world, thanks to its nature lovers people like you all my dear friends :-). Please pat your back if you haven't done it lately. Cecilia and I will rub our back that was still a bit sore after 4 days paddling in Killarney, a must place to see, a paradise on earth. Take care, God Bless, thank you to be with us and to share all our wonderful
The place is looking to be awesome. Now a days, It has become too easy to for trip by taking travel insurance. We can take it at very cheap rate and can enjoy fully.