We headed to the Kam for a Saturday afternoon paddle. It was another cold and overcast spring day (no big surprise). We didn’t have too much time today so we only paddled 4.5 km.


Paddling up to the voyageur canoes at the fort.

Fort William Historical Park’s voyageur boat launch.

Very, very slow-going. Heading west against the current on the Kaministiquia River.

What’s so special about this photo? Nothing at all. It’s just a river bank but if my camera had a faster start-up time, or if I was more alert, there would be massive bald eagle swooping down in front of me in this photo. When we paddled around the corner, we could see him perched in a tree but the current was pretty strong and I couldn’t hold a decent position to get a clear photo.

Heading back towards the fort.

What kind of bird is this? Is it a Cormorant? If you have good eyes, you can also see it in the photo above.

Here’s the bald eagle that swooped down in front of me earlier. There were four of them in total but when I took the pic, two of them were soaring high above the tree. This is directly across from the fort’s boat launch.

More miserable weather. The day started out nice but it started to rain on our way to the lake. All spring, the weather has been nice Monday to Friday but terrible on the weekends. Since we haven’t been out paddling much this spring, we weren’t very anxious to call it quits today. We waited out the heavy rain but it was still drizzling a little bit so we decided we would just paddle the north side around the camps. The rain stopped and before we knew it, we were on the other side of the lake. About 3/4 of the way around the lake, we could see the rain heading our way so we went full-out back to the boat launch.
It was really cloudy all day so I was having some problems with my GPS losing it’s signal but we figured that we paddled just under 8 km.

Paddling around the north side of the lake.

The rain stopped so we ventured on to the south side of the lake




Is that the Loch Ness Monster? Is it Ogopogo? Nope, it’s a family of Otters that didn’t want us around. There were four of them and even though we tried paddling away from them, they kept swimming in front of us making very threatening noises. They finally swam in a different direction and once on shore, continued to verbally accost us. While we were paddling out of the bay, they continued to let us know that it was their territory, not ours. I took a few photos of them but, unfortunately, the others were even more blurry than this one.

Another blurry wildlife photo. The zoom on a Pentax W20 isn’t the best and I didn’t want to get too close to the deer so this is the best I could do. After snacking on the road for 10 minutes or so, she was kind enough to let me pass through and continue on my way home.
With my car troubles behind me, our second attempt at paddling Hazelwood Lake turned out much better this time. We got to the lake a little before 7pm and spent a couple hours paddling the perimeter of the lake.


Just testing my new Pentax w20 to see if it really is waterproof. So far, so good.

Heading towards the beach on the East side of the lake. I guess I should have wiped off the lens after taking some pics underwater.

Wow! I cruising so fast that the photo came out blurry.

Passing through the Hazelwood Drive culvert/bridge towards the dam.


Heading back through the culvert while the sun was setting. This would have been a nice photo if my kayak was centered and the lens flare wasn’t there.

Back at the boat launch

What kind of tooth is this? It looks like a bear tooth to me but there was remnants of a deer carcass nearby so chances are, it’s from a deer. It looks too nasty to be a deer tooth. It must be a canoeists tooth.
Website: Hazelwood Lake Conservation Area
Satellite: Google Map