Hi Claire.  That's a very good point.  We've never done a trip out of Canoe Lake.  We have, however, sat on the deck when the leaves were at peak, and watched what seemed like every canoe ever made head out onto the water.  Logically, I knew most of them were people who were trying it out for an hour.  That's definitely an option I hadn't considered.

We were on Opeongo from the 9th to the 11th.  The first night we were too tired to stay up and the second night I saw a couple when was cleaning up from two of our group being sick in the middle of the night.  We were supposed to be there two more nights but ended up leaving early since they still weren't feeling well the next morning.  The whole trip was planned around watching the meteor shower.

Does anyone know how the road is going in to Dagger Lake (access 14b) on Jeff's Map? I read a few trip reports and it seems a little sketchy, but I'm wondering if anyone has any current information on it's condition.

Also there are two reservable sites on Dividing Lake, but there is technically only one site that's in the park. The north site is purple on Jeff's Map..anyone know what the deal is with that?  And in general, anyone know what the sites are like there?

We stayed on site 11 (on the PCI map)  The site had some nice tent pads, a good rock at the shore for sitting on, and great swimming.  The little bay between 10 and 11 is about waist deep and sandy, with a beach running part way between the two sites.  We are hoping to get back to it again this year.  The kids loved it (They were 16 and 13)

We spent a few nights at the Kiosk campground, and a few nights at Samuel de Champlain, and there were tons of neat mushrooms around.  Two groups at Kiosk might have ate some...we saw them picking them and taking them back to their picnic tables while they were making dinner, so I don't know if they actually ate them.  Everyone was still alive the next morning....I'd say maybe they had some good knowledge of edibles in the wild, but one of the groups chased a skunk around then we heard them say "don't worry, it's just a cat" so I don't have too much confidence in their wilderness skills.

My husband bought me a Sea to Summit X-pot for Christmas and we've used it on a few trips.  It's been great, and handy to pack up, though not super light, it is easier to slide into the pack. We were looking into getting a bigger one, or maybe the kettle, but my experience with collapsable items in my kitchen has not gone well.  After time (like a year maybe?) things like measuring cups, colanders etc ended up cracking and ripping.  One memorable time I went to scoop flour and the whole cup part of a measuring cup fell off in the bag of flour.

I know the X-pots are fairly new, but the cups, plates and bowls have been around for a few years now so I was wondering how many people here use them, and if they hold up well without cracking and splitting.  I can't help but fear being in the middle of a trip, expanding out the pot and having a big rip form in one of the folded spots.

Earlier this month, on Ralph Bice, we kept noticing our dog crunching away on what we thought were sticks.  He used to be pretty obsessed with eating sticks so we didn't think much of it.  It wasn't until later that our daughter realized the dog was eating a bone, what looked to be from a steak or a pork chop.  At this point he'd eaten about six of them so we started looking around and found a few more tucked under fallen trees near our tents.  He found a few more though.

Another time he found a nice little meal of fish heads at a campsite.

The worst we saw was actually on our first attempt to canoe camp.  We were going to do the Poker Lake Loop near Carnarvon but had car trouble and barely made it to a campsite on the access lake before it got dark.  There was two full cases of empty beer bottles, a bag of various garbage and the fire pit was full of used condoms.  Taking out the first two wasn't a big deal but no way were we touching the condoms.

Just got back from a night at Mew.  My parents drove up yesterday and said the lakes all the way up 35 were mottled white looking (it was too foggy by the time we went through to see the lakes at all)  Today, almost all of the lakes along 35 were pretty well open, just with ice that had blown into little bays.  The lakes along highway 60 were that mottled white ice today...I guess it can go fast when the conditions are right.

Two Rivers has a big open spot where the river flows out.  The river is very high, we tried to hike to the bridge near where Track and Tower meets up with the Highland Backpacking trail, and we couldn't get close to the bridge at all.  

Thanks for the input!  The kids completely punked out and decided they wanted to camp in our Boler so we ended up doing two nights at Oastler Lake Provincial Park, then taking them and the camper to my parents place in Haliburton, so the hubby and I could do a night of canoe camping.  I ended up with a bad cold on the first day of the trip or we would have gone for longer, as it was, we ended up just going to Little Island Lake.  I had really wanted to go in at an access we hadn't been to yet, but time wise, it made more sense to put in along Highway 60, and with the lakes being so booked up, Little Island was on a very short list of possibilities.

I'm definitely going to check out both of the suggested lakes soon though.  We really got our portaging strategy down on this short trip and feel feel more confident about tackling longer ones and going deeper into the park.