Back home again, after a visit to Kiosk campground

Morning at Kiosk beach

We arrived home Thursday afternoon about 5, after an overnight stop Wednesday night at another Ontario Provincial Park campground. Kiosk is a small 24-site campground at the northern end of Algonquin Park on Kioshkokwi Lake, and is a popular jumping-off point for canoe trips into Algonquin interior.

The smallish parking lot for canoe trippers was pretty well full. Part of the appeal of this Algonquin access is that it's nowhere near as busy as more southern access points along Hwy 60, and it gets you in to different areas of Algonquin.

The beach makes a nice staging area for loading and launching canoes and small boats:

The couple loading (above) headed out into the lake, starting their trip right into the stiff headwind coming up the lake. They made little progress at first, but kept at it. We got worn out just watching them. :))

All of the campground sites are on or close to the shore of the lake. We managed to get this nice waterfront site for the night.

 

The stiff headwind the departing canoeists faced was also coming right in to our site from the lake. Once again we were really glad to not be in a tent like in our early camping years! There were lots of tent campers here though; it's just not a campground for really large RVs. There are several more waterfront sites around the cove to the right here:

Looking across the cove to our site

 

Campground facilities are limited here. No hookups on the sites. The main toilets are  elaborate composting units:

They worked well, especially compared to the usual vault toilets. They also have several of the smaller vault toilets too, complete with flush toilets though. No showers or laundry facilities. One positive side effect of the current virus issue is that we've found all the campground washrooms kept much cleaner than we've come to expect in Ontario Provincial parks.

It's a pretty drive for the 30 km into the campground from Hwy 17, much of it along a scenic river. 

 

 

On the way home we stopped at a town park in Sundridge, just off Hwy 11. The park is on Lake Bernard, which has the distinction of being the largest freshwater lake in the world without an island. It's a very sandy area, so maybe there have been sand islands in the past that have dissolved into the lake over time? According to Wiki, there is speculation that the lake may have been formed by a meteor impact.

We were a bit early for much of the fall colours, but saw signs the large change is on the way soon:

On this last night especially the temperature got down close to freezing. We made good use of our little Wave 3 propane-powered heater (the hose is attached to it):

We've had the heater for a year or two, using it as a free-standing heater. It was cumbersome though, it always seemed to be in the way, especially the attached propane hose. You do have to be careful of clearances around any heater, and we were always afraid of backing into it or knocking it over.

The heater is now mounted on the end of our kitchen cupboard as shown. Hinges on the aisle side allow it to be swung as needed, either pointing at the van seats as-is or turned up to 180 degrees to point up the aisle to the bed in the rear. The brown knob is attached to a magnet which keeps the heater in place as we drive. This was the first trip using the new home-made mount and it worked well, safe and convenient.