Dueling Grizzlies

With no vacancies at any motels along the highway to Algonquin, we found ourselves pulling into the parking lot adjacent to the dark lake around 1:30 in the morning. Because of all the collateral events along the way, the 7-hour drive to Ontario's Algonquin Provincial Park had taken nearly twelve. Border delays, bad restaurants, heavy rain and a detour around a sinkhole (that could swallow a large truck) had all conspired to place us at our destination after all the lodging was either full or closed for the night. Aside from me, our small group consisted of my 13-year old son, Michael and the brothers: Brian and Keith.

We settled into a very uncomfortable night of trying to sleep in the van. And, we kept the windows shut because either it was raining too hard or, when the rain would lighten up, small clouds of mosquitoes would swarm in. After twelve-plus hours cooped up inside the vehicle, exiting only to eat bad greasy food, the odors emitted by three men and a boy were overwhelming. It was not a very pretty sight.

None of us slept very sound, restlessly waking up periodically throughout the night. Apparently, as my son was quick to point out, Keith and I snored at such a magnitude that it sounded like battling grizzly bears. Of course, I've never heard myself but I was certainly in agreement about Keith. Brian, having this secret information about his brother in advance, was sleeping with a pair of aviator's earplugs. All things considered, it was a miserable night and we rolled out of the van at around 5:30 AM because we had pre-arranged a 7:00 AM van-shuttle with the outfitter.

Remember The Simple Plan?

The rain had finally stopped but the ground mist was very heavy and everything was dripping and wet. It was coming up on 7:00 AM and the outfitter's store was locked and dark. It was the summer of 2000. We had driven all night and we were sitting in the outfitter's parking lot looking for our shuttle. The lake was completely shrouded in a thick low fog and tendrils of the mist encircled our van and every other vehicle in the lot. At around 7:30, a couple of young women came down the hill from a bunkhouse to start the kitchen prep for the restaurant, which opened at 8:00. Finally at 8:00, another young woman came down from this same bunkhouse and opened up the outfitter's store.

Now, for the sake of review, our plan, which I thought had been arranged and confirmed, was to depart at 7:00 AM, make the 2-hour shuttle to the put-in and be shoving off on the Tim River at around 9:00 AM. The young lady who opened the store had no knowledge of this plan but said that as soon as "Andy" surfaced we could load up and depart. She also told us there were three others going out to the Tim on the shuttle.

The Smoking Men

We met the three guys, who were sharing our shuttle to the put-in, chain-smoking in the parking lot behind the store. While our route was to follow the full length of the Tim to Big Trout Lake, the smoking men were going to cut off and head down to Misty Lake and eventually to Potter Creek. The intended destination for both our parties was the park docks at the southern end of Canoe Lake. The three of them were going in a single 18' aluminum canoe and most of their discussion centered on whether or not they had enough cigarettes for the trip. They, literally, had one backpack full of only cigarettes.

We tried to strike up conversation about our respective canoe trips but they seemed not to notice us, as they talked very quietly among themselves, and the only two words we could make out were "cigarettes" and "matches". Occasionally they did look in our direction and answered us with simple grunts and nods of the head with their cigarettes never leaving their lips. The smoking men weren't necessarily unfriendly. They just weren't great conversationalists. One of the smoking men departed the group and went into the restaurant and Brian said that if he was going to get breakfast, maybe we should do the same. However, we'd no sooner held that brief conversation, than he returned with a handful of matches. We left them; smoking and murmuring among themselves, and once more rejoined the hunt to find Andy, the elusive shuttle driver.

The Right Tunes

At about 8:30, we met our shuttle driver for the first time coming down the hill from the bunkhouse. It had been a long night for him, as well, because he had partied until dawn with one of the young women who also worked for the company. We quickly discovered that Andy was a young man who was not to be hurried. He made the rounds, in the store and in the kitchen, talking to all the girls and making them all laugh. That Andy was quite the charmer. We followed him around thinking our presence would put some urgency into his pace. It didn't seem to make a difference to him but finally, at 9:00 AM, he asked us to help him load the canoes onto an aging full-size Chevy van. All this time we salivated from the smell of bacon cooking in the restaurant (which had been open for an hour) and we would've eaten but we figured that as soon as we sat down, our shuttle would be ready to depart.

Just when we thought that there was nothing else left to do except depart, Andy vanished. We looked all around the complex for him, including the bathrooms, but there was no sign of him. Twenty minutes later, he re-appeared with a handful of cassettes saying it was a long drive and we had to have the "right tunes". He asked us if we wanted to get some tapes from our car for the trip and in perfect four-part, off-key unison we yelled, "No Andy, let's go"! I think that even the smoking men yelled because I saw their lips move but I wasn’t really sure. At any rate, we only had CD's and, finally, at 9:30 AM the shuttle departed for the 2-hour drive to Access Point #2 and the Tim River put-in.

The Prowess of Andy

While the smoking men smoked cigarette after cigarette, Andy described his night of amorous prowess in great detail and living color, all the while maintaining a very safe speed 10 miles per hour under the posted speed limit. By this time, we had stoically resigned ourselves to a mid-day start and there really just wasn't anything we could do about it. Semi-listening to Andy's exaggerated stories, we studied the Algonquin map to figure out what distance we could cover in half a day. We did make a stop at Tim Horton's and the coffee and bagels filled our stomachs and lifted our spirits giving us a better perspective on the day.

Only one of the 4 speakers in the van was working and, coupled with all the wind noise, we had to strain to hear Andy's perfect road tunes, which turned out to be the Beastie Boys. Now, I had nothing against the Beastie Boys, in fact I owned a couple of their CD’s. However, for my taste, "Fight for Your Right (to Party)" and "Brass Monkey (that Funky Monkey)" weren't exactly the songs I considered a fitting send-off for a week in the Canadian north woods. I think I would have preferred something more soulful from Neil Young or Sarah McLachlan.

So we rode in our cigarette smoke-filled van, with the Beastie Boys wailing out of their solitary speaker, listening to Andy's ridicules stories of his immense libido as we slowly made our way toward the headwaters of the Tim. After making a brief stop in the small village of Kearney for park registration, we arrived at roads-end, and the put-in, at 11:30 AM.

The Mighty Tim

The smoking men scoured the van-floor, collecting all their used butts and then they set out first. We watched them paddle off in their big aluminum canoe, each one, with a cigarette dangling from his mouth. As they disappeared from sight, with the midday sun gleaming off their boat, they looked like a little silver three-stack steamship puffing around the bend. There was an artist with his easel set up at the put-in, painting the landscape, and we talked to him for a few minutes and then, around noon, we also departed. The delayed departure time was to put us a half day behind schedule for the entire trip and we were always trying to catch up.

As we entered the narrow, meandering, switchbacks that trademarked the Tim, I set up a paddling rhythm to the subliminal music playing over and over in my head: "You gotta fight (stroke) for your right (stroke) to parrrrty". Our Algonquin canoe trip was underway.

© (copywrite) Neil E. Miller October 1, 2003