Aug. 31st, 2019 Day 1 Petawawa - Lake Travers to Big Thompson Rapids

Our Drive to Lake Travers was uneventful. We signed the rental contract at the outfitter, paid our back-country fees at the entrance of Algonquin Provincial Park and finally arrived at Lake Travers. The only gotcha was maybe having to drive for about 70km on a relatively good gravel road. At least we were able to pick up the canoes right at the Lake Travers parking lot. Then we had to do about another 100km of shuttling one of our cars to the end point of our paddling trip at Lake McManus (thanks Hani) and then get Steve back to Lake Travers. We had good weather and were in good spirits when we arrived. We also arrived reasonably early, but so did several other parties that were just slightly ahead of us. We did inquire at the Provincial Park gate how busy the Petawawa route actually was. And it turned out that Lake Travers was fully booked for the long weekend, but that we were more or less the only party paddling from Lake Travers the Petawawa downstream. We also established that the water levels on the Petawawa were relatively low.

Our Petawawa Paddling tour from Lake Travers put-in to Lake McManus canoe takeout. We stayed overnight at campgrounds roughly where the crosses are.

To get a head start finding a campground on Lake Travers we split up with Zandra and Steve and started padding earlier. We loosely agreed where we would look for a camp spot so Zandra and Steve could find us again. Then we headed out while Steve and Hani dealt with shuttling a car to our endpoint at Lake McManus.

It was my first time on Lake Travers. Over the years I had heard a few people mentioning that it was a nice lake. I think that is a bit of an understatement. Lake Travers is a little gem. It has some very appealing campgrounds located at various eskers that border the lake or reach into it forming very nice sand beaches. Unfortunately (or clearly) all the nice campgrounds were already taken. It was after all Labor Day long weekend and I guess a good number of people simply enjoyed hanging out on Lake Travers for multiple days or the whole week. To make a long story short we actually paddled all the way to Big Thompson Rapid and used the campground there as our first stop because all the nice camp spots before were already taken and we figured there was no point to paddle all the way back and accept one of the not taken mediocre ones on Lake Travers. The Big Thompson campground was not super duper, but not bad either.

In due time Steve and Zandra also arrived. Margaret and I decided actually to paddle back towards Lake Travers to make sure they found us. But after a km or two we saw them coming. They had inquired on the way if somebody had seen us.

Upstream view from the Lake Travers canoe put-in towards Poplar Rapids. This late in the season the Petawawa had very low water and Poplar Rapids did not look much like a rapid at all.

Loading of the canoes at the Lake Travers canoe put-in.

Final Picture before the first portion of our party started paddling.

Zandra took some plant pictures while waiting for Steve: A "Lobelia cardinalis"

And she encountered a heron close-up while still waiting for Steve.

Paddling on Lake Travers: The Petawawa outflow is where the hills in the background form some sort of a "V". We are already past of some of the nice eskers.

View from the Big Thompson portage towards the Big Thompson Rapids. We did scout the rapids, but it did not look promising to try paddling there: Too many rocks in certain places.

Meeting up with Steve and Zandra later in the evening.