Guapa stole some vermicelli from the table, and she doesn't feel that guilty about it.

A little late, but here are the pictures and stories from our camping trip to La Vérendrye Reserve. You can click on the slide-show to get a full-screen version.

The Réserve Faunique La Vérendrye is huge, covering over 12,000 square km with 4,000+ lakes in it and 800km of defined and maintained canoe camping circuits. We started at the serviced entry point, Le Domain on Saturday of the Labour Day weekend. Out intent was to spend two days and one night, avoiding the traffic of the entire North Western quadrant of Quebec being serviced by a two lane highway running through many small towns.

Saturday

We arrive shortly before noon, purchase our park entry ($7/night) and fishing license ($12/day inside the reserve), and pack the canoe.  Everything fits.  Put-in and take-out are on a great sandy beach where the kids played until we left.

Last year we found an excellent campsite and we hoped to get the same one again.  It was the sole site on a very small island with a great view; very successful for our family and the Altons with the dog and kid entourage.  Unfortunately we deduced that our target campsite was taken because we saw two canoes charging full steam to the island it was on. Our idea was stolen by a quicker Quebecer.

Campsites are marked on the map as a number, and on the shore with bright yellow diamond signs visible from a distance.  The number tells you how many tents fit on a site.  We wanted one with only 1 or 2 so we wouldn't have to share and could the dogs and kids run free.  Our new target became a "2" site on the point of a moon-shaped island about 4 kms away.  The nearest other site was completely on the other side of the island.  We chose our side because it was close to other islands, which we thought would provide good swimming, fishing and viewing opportunities.

Success:  The site was vacant and it was gorgeous.  We covered the sign with a lifejacket indicating that we were there.  Canoe unloading and tent set-up followed.

It was late afternoon by this point and I wanted to get a swim in before evening.  Jakub and I, along with the dogs, swam about 100m to a tiny island.  The water was chilly but we had no problems, not even Jakub since he was wearing a lifejacket.  He is turning out to be a champion swimmer.  I decided to take Robert as well by towing his lifejacket.  Fantastic fun at first until a couple of waves wet his face and he started to fuss.  Of course the fussing meant that Robert turned over, got more water on his head, swallowed some, and generally thought that he was going to die.  No danger of course since he was completely secured in his life jacket, but he stopped having fun.  We got to the island and decided to come back because Mommy was the cure for near-death anguish caused by Daddy  Back we went.

Then came dinner:  A yummy pasta, fire-browned marshmallows for desert and tea. One of the great things about this park is that you can harvest wood from the forest, which means big fires for us.  We burned a tree and a half -- don't worry, they were deadfall and not that huge.

At dusk, between dinner and desert, we did a little fishing.  It was very exciting because, although we ultimately got nothing, we saw fish coming to take our bait at least five times.  Bogusia even got a full bite, but it got off before she brought it in.  Jakub lost his fishing rod in the water but cried like it was a leg he'd lost.

Sunday

On Sunday the view from the campsite was breathtaking.  Perfectly calm water upon which floated a slight mist puncuated by the sound of loons exactly like in those Canadian nature commercials I remember.  I did a little more fishing before breakfast, again with no luck.  We caught a leech and sentenced it to be bait this time instead of the fake grubs.

Breakfast was ichiban au eggs and maple sausage.  Delicious and filling.

We headed off fairly early so that we could see something interesting around the lake.  Our tour took us up a little stream to another lake, and past some of the scenery and other islands, until we finally reach a beautiful shallow beach where we ate lunch and played for over an hour.  Since it was close to the take out, maybe 2 km, we decided the dogs could wade that far or chase us on shore.  It worked great except when it got deep and the dogs tried to swim several hundred metres. They were no Phelps doggies and we had to send them back to shore.

That's it.  Take-out, jump in the car and head home.  We did hit some traffic, but it was due to construction not Labour Day jams.  Have a look at the slide show. You can click on it to get a full-screen version.

On the long weekend in September, Jenny and John invited us to go canoe camping in La Vérendrye (the Northern Quebec super-park for canoeing / kayaking). We found out that dogs are allowed, so we were happy to go.

To make it a bit more exciting, instead of getting two canoes (one per family) we decided to rent a canoe for ten people, and pack the four adults (Bogusia, Alex, Jenny, and John), two kids (Jakub and Robert) and three dogs (Joxer, Guapa, and Whiskey) plus all our camping gear into this awesomely-huge canoe.

The weekend was awesome. We stayed two nights, and three wonderful days. Our campgrounds were on little islands (only big enough for us), so the dogs ran free, protecting us from the squirrels and mice. The weather was fantastic, the canoeing was great, and we even got to do some fishing. As usual, there was some competition among the two families: Who can cook the better meal, who can catch the bigger fish, who can swim the straightest in open water, who can lose a paddle fastest, who can make the biggest fire... This trip brought us back to our good old days of camping. Definitely the best fun in years!

Here are some really nice pictures we took of Joxer and Guapa (our dogs) over the last few years.