Saturday,
July 21th 2001
Hiking to the Barron River Canyon in the Algonquin
Provincial Park
The Barron river was shaped more or less the same way as the Ottawa river, we talked about yesterday. This river flows through the national park Algonquin. This almost untouched land lies close to Pembroke and is famous with hikers and wild campers. We left this morning after a big breakfast (hiking makes hungry...) and drove the only road (dead end road) into the park.
The road is unpaved, so the car is still a bit dusty... but who cares? This road goes approximately 100k deep in the park. We did only the first 40 km or so. Looks very deserted, not in the last place due too the nice swamps left and right from the road.
Somewhere halfway we seemed to "enter" the park where we needed to "register" which means nothing else than pay 8$50 to get an all day pass. Funny, every one always asks where you're from. So we said "Holland" again, one of the girls from this post jumped in and said "Oh, you are from Holland, Can I say my riddle to you?" sure I said, she responded with an heavy accent: "iek hou von jou". After checking if she really knew what se had said, I shared my appreciation and we quickly moved on for hiking the trail, were we came for in the first place........
At the entrance of the trail, which is a loop as you can see above, we had some interesting information and we could buy a "guide" for .... 37$c. to be thrown in some kind of deposit box...
After a nice and not so difficult walk through the forest, we suddenly arrived at the top of the canyon and had these amazing, breathtaking views.....
I have to admit, that even for these experienced thrillseekers, as we are, the edge of this over 100 meter high cliff was some what threatening....
Interesting to know: the water in this canyon was not always that quiet. 10.000 years ago, when the glaciers melted, this was the only natural way out for the water from the higher area's. The reason is that this valley is originally a so called "fault". At that time the water flowing through this river would have been 1000 times the water flowing through the Niagara falls these days....... can you imagine? 1000 x this (click "this")
Funny, at the end of the trail, you were asked to register the "guestbook", ofcourse we checked all the other registrations as well, but couldn't find any one we know....
We moved on a little back further, to have walk at the lake side before we went back to the hotel for some very safe reading and TV watching....
Later that evening, we went back 65 Million years......... in Jurassic Park III, featuring
at the local cinema....
