This is a trip log from my solo adventure to Misty Lake in the Algonquin Highlands, August 12-15th, 2025. For an explainer on the trip, see part one of my Ten Years to Misty blog post.

An aerial view of the Rain Lake Cabin, an old rustic ranger cabin at the #4 access point.

I arrived in Kearney - a small town in the Almaguin Highlands 25 minutes north of Huntsville - around 4pm after a seamless drive from Windsor. Kearney is dubbed Ontario's "Biggest Little Town" and is the nexus of two access points into Algonquin Provincial Park. I picked up my canoe rental at Kearney Outfitters and the key to the Rain Lake Ranger Cabin and before long I was stirring up gravel dust zipping down the logging road to the #4 access point. I’d be off grid and in the back country for the next three days. My journey to Misty Lake had begun.

The Ranger Cabin, while situated a stone’s throw from the parking lot, is nice, and is very quiet once all the backcountry campers depart. After I got situated, I cooked a nice steak dinner, took a dip at the end of the dock, and went for an evening paddle where I was greeted by loons and a pair of angry beavers slapping their tails on the water as I got close. I wanted to test my double-bladed kayak paddle with the Northern Keewaydin 15’ solo canoe I rented and I’m glad I did. My decision to use the double blade, instead of the more traditional single bladed paddle that comes with the rental, was a game changer and as a result, it was awarded MVP honours for the trip.

I managed a decent sleep and in the morning I cooked a proper breakfast of bacon and eggs and coffee and packed up my bag one last time before heading out. It had rained through the night and the sky was beginning to clear for what would be three days of glorious weather.

An aerial view of Rain Lake looking east.

I got into the canoe at 8:18am, and started the five and half kilometre paddle down the narrow Rain Lake, passing a campsite I’d stayed at in the fall of 2020, as well as the campsite the seven of us had stayed at on our first night ten years ago. I then portaged to and paddled Sawyer Lake, Jubilee Lake, Juan Lake, and Moccasin Lake, arriving at my campsite on Bandit Lake at approximately 11:40am. In retrospect, I realized I could have travelled all the way to Misty on the first day. It’s something you learn on the ground as you experience your pace and energy levels.

I quickly set up camp and went out to explore. Bandit Lake only has two campsites and the second site remained unoccupied. I had the lake to myself. I cooked dinner over the fire, cleaned up and took a quick dip to wash off, before having a tea, sketching, and quietly listening to the loons and a jazz mix of Art Tatum, Chet Baker, and Bill Evans while I enjoyed the last hour of sunlight. I thought about my friends and when the seven of us spent the first evening on Rain Lake watching a distant thunderstorm from the shore of our camp. I thought about Pete.

Exploring Bandit Lake. Due to the nature of this trip, I only brought my Canon 5D mkii with a 50mm f1.2, and my DJI Mini 4 Pro quadcopter.

I had slept reasonably well the first night and leaped out of my tent at 6am eager to get the day going. I packed up my tent, made coffee and oatmeal, and I was on my way at 7:54am. I had three portages, totalling 1,940m, and two short lakes (Wenona and Muslim) before arriving on the shores of Misty at 9:20am. I immediately looked to the campsite on the left of the portage where the seven of us had set up camp in the pouring rain to delightfully discover it was vacant.

Despite Pete’s first response of *‘I’ll be around the corner that week, so you never know, maybe I can escape for a night but don’t count on me for this’*, he’d later work it out and spend three nights in the backcountry. And unfortunately Ted’s enthusiasm for the trip was cut short when he had to deal with his mother’s health issues.

After setting up camp I went exploring with the canoe where I saw two Sandhill Cranes, and watched a Great Blue Heron fish from a log for an abnormal amount of time. I took a swim in the buff and walked along the shore with my camera, sending frogs into the lake with every step. I layed down for a small nap, did some sketching, and began to look for a suitable place to bury a box of photos and emails from our 2015 trip. Without a shovel or any suitable tool to dig with, I found a hole with some soft dirt at the base of a large Beech tree not far from the centre of the campsite. I dug out more dirt and snuggled the box into the bottom of the hole before covering it back up with dirt and a good sized rock. When it gets unearthed again is anyone’s guess.

As the afternoon wore on I wrote in my journal ‘It’s the perfect day out - warm, w/ a cool breeze, not a cloud. I’ve only seen one group of campers and they were leaving. Do I have Misty all to myself?’ I later saw a single canoe enter the lake from the Petawawa River portage, then it quickly disappeared behind a bend. Not long after that a group of three canoes entered from the same portage and set up camp a kilometre across the lake.

Exploring the western portion of Misty Lake.

By five o’clock I started a fire and by six I was eating my last meal of dehydrated beans and rice with some candied nuts as a desert. I poured an ounce of whisky in my mug - my first drink in 15 weeks - in one last tribute to Pete. I sat on the large rock that jets out from the campsite and revelled in my decision to come, basking in the sun as it dropped lower in the sky. By 8:30 I was laying in my tent, falling asleep listening to the loons call out on the quiet lake. A few hours later I exited my tent and walked down to the shore, alone in the dark, hours away from civilization, and looked up to a blanket of stars, the Milky Way glowing like an orb. I decided then I only want more of this in my life.

The large rock outcropping to my site on Misty Lake, where the seven of us stayed exactly ten years earlier.

I again woke up at 6am, having achieved a better sleep than the sleep I had on Bandit, and from the netting of my tent I could see the mist drifting over the water. I grabbed my camera and drone and spent some time photographing the beautiful scene playing out in front of me. Mist was rising off the tree line towards the west and as the sun began to rise it illuminated the mist like the glow of a fire. I must have fired off two dozen frames, hardly capturing enough of this beautiful display of Mother Nature. And then, in the quiet, when even the Loons seemed to be sleeping, I heard a loud bang, a crash like a large tree had violently fell. It echoed across the lake. Did I miss my chance to see a moose?

I packed up camp, hesitant to leave the beautiful morning behind, and portioned what food I had left - a can of kippers for breakfast, a Bobo and Cliff bar for the journey, as well as an energy gel, and a full nalgene of water with an electrolyte mix. I left camp at 735am and after eight portages and seven lakes I arrived at Rain Lake at 11:03. There I took a 15 minute break waiting for a group of mom and dad and a young man, three teenage girls, and two dogs to load up for the portage to Sawyer.

My fear when solo camping isn’t really about visitors in the night - an exaggerated and unlikely scenario - but is wind on the lake. As the morning shifts to afternoon, and the temperature increases, so often does the wind. My hope was to avoid paddling Rain Lake with a significant headwind, as it’s said it can often act like a wind funnel. But to my dismay, as I was beginning to learn on Sawyer Lake, I would be paddling head on into a significant wind for the remainder of my journey. Tired, and with my water and food depleted, I paddled steady for the first portion, but the last two kilometres nearly broke me. My legs on the verge of cramping, my mouth dry, and my left elbow with a sharp pain that impeded it’s movement. I paddled over to the rocky shore for a break where I stretched my legs out on the sides of the canoe as I watched a fleet of camping parties enjoy their Friday afternoon tailwind into the park. After ten minutes I forged on, reaching the access point at 12:22pm where a sign on the bulletin board read ‘FIRE BAN IN EFFECT. Algonquin Provincial Park has issued a TOTAL FIRE BAN that prohibits all open fires’. Another summer of smoke had caught up with me.

But my trip was over and my long drive back to Windsor was about to begin. This trip, by all measure - the plan and execution, the weather, the fitness test, and the remaining internal and spiritual work it meant for me - was a sizeable success. The only remaining measure is how it propels me into more solo adventure in the future. I feel confident. Thanks for reading.

Ten Years to Misty: Party Two