What? No one's curious about Algonquin? I'll never canoe there but QJ now has topographic maps just the same. (You need to Login or Register to view media files and links)

Seriously though I'm curious now. Anybody here ever paddled Algonquin?

Yessiree - Algonquin Park - I've heard the fishing is easily TWICE as good as in Quetico AND there has NEVER been ANY infestation of the dreaded Belgian Birch Bark Beetles.  Also, I understand the Park Service will soon offer inexpensive "shuttle service" across the portages on the southern side inside of five years.  Sounds like heaven.

What more could one ask?

Algonquin sounds like a destination a lot of canoe campers should consider.

Too bad I've cinched down my own plans for this year....

Jimbo   8)

mk631,

As I understand it, the "rental" portage-monkeys ride on the oliphaunt's back when they return for the 2nd load.  It's a sight to behold, with them hanging on to the antlers & all that. 

Speaking of beholding, we are all beholding to Dr. Samuel Gamgee for his successful cross-breeding & creation of the oliphaunt species from the female moose and the male elephant.  Interestingly enough, it was his father, Dr. Gaffer Gamgee, a noted ichthyologist at Baylor University, that did something similar, decades ago, with the male Muskie & female Northern Pike... producing the Tiger Muskie, now so widespread in the USA.

Those oliphaunts are terribly formidable-looking creatures.  I'm sure glad they have become domesticated.  I wasn't aware they had started using them near Fern in the Q again, though.

Jimbo   8)

I've been to Algonquin twice - first time about 35 years ago - camped in my van for a few days at a roadside campground in the park and did a little day tripping.  The most memorable bit of that trip was an exploration I did back into the oldest red pine forest I've ever been in.  The trees must have been three to four hundred years old, and all the same huge size.  No undergrowth, just rolling mounds of brown pine needles dimly lit on a beautiful, sunny day.  It was really eerie and disorienting.  I had no compass so I didn't go much farther in once the lake was out of sight.

The second time through about 10 years ago, we canoed in after picking up my brother who lived in Detroit.  I was expecting BW/Q and was really disappointed.  Way too many people on the entire route we took, and just seemed to be missing the northwoods feel.

Geee... Jimbo 

Speaking of the oliphants...  need we be looking for Ents... in the Murkwood Forest ???  is that is the Q or Algonquin???   And will Orcs be taking the place of the Windigo??? 

Perhaps you've been puffing on Bilbo"s pipe too much...

Bruce

Forty plus years ago my father would take me fishing in Algonquin Park lakes & in the lakes just outside of the park.  A lot can change in that time, of course, but it seems to me that Mad_Mat is right about the lake trout & brook trout.  I believe we also caught a few whitefish and even a bass from time to time. 

I recall those lakes seeming a little less fertile for fishing than what I've become accustomed to further west.  I believe this is actually true.  In recent years, I read something in a journal about the ecological basis for this.  Might have had something to do with the "acidity" of the water.  Honestly, I don't remember the details.  Fewer fish per hectare than the Q, though, for sure.

Even though I was a young kid at the time, I DO remember seeing a fair amount of logging & mining activity in that area.  However, those memories are swamped by the greater sense of "wilderness" that can overwhelm a very young kid from urban NJ.  Seemd "pristine" & wild to that naive boy.

I'm sure the area still offers some fine canoe routes.  No doubt northern parts of it provide a very reasonable substitute to the Q if "fishing" is not your main interest.

Jimbo   8)