Crappy Tire

I love Canadian Tire even if my Mountain Equipment Coop going friends derisively refers to the store as Crappy Tire. As far as camping goes, it’s good for certain things, while the coop is good for other stuff.
I’ll buy cheap white rope to hang a tarp from Crappy Tire but get a nice, ultralight cooking set from the coop.
White gas from Crappy Tire and an expensive water filtration system from the coop.
I’ll get a Colemans cooking stove from Crappy Tire but expensive rain gear from the coop.
I’ll get the bike for my kids at Crappy Tire but the flat tire repair kit from the coop.
And so it goes for things big and small.
That’s why I smiled when I stumbled across this photo on the Crappy Tire website.

Massassauga Provincial Park

We just got back from a few days of some back country, interior canoe camping in beautiful Massassauga Provincial Park southwest of Parry Sound. The area where we were is similar in topography to Algonquin and not quite the classic windswept Georgian Bay landscape so well known to many. Although, every now and then you get a taste of it as the photo below shows.
The weather held out and not a drop of rain fell.
The bugs were long gone.
Bass were caught.
Good food was eaten.
There was much swimming and canoeing.
Life couldn’t get better.

The portage point provided quite a contrast to how people travel into the back country.
Here is how one group travelled:

And here is how another group we met travelled!

To each his or her own, eh!
As we left, the weekenders arrived and there was quite the usual jam at the portage point. But everybody knew that the campsites were well spaced out and that within minutes, solitude would be their main companion, except for those whose campsites were on the narrow channels.