Murtle Lake

We spent 5 days at Murtle Lake Last year.  It is North America’s largest non-motorized lake, and requires a little bit of commitment (and some know-how) which helps keep away the crowds, giving an awesome wilderness experience.  A perfect adventure for families.  This year we wanted to go for a week!

The fun begins with a 2 1/2 km portage…..

Which was pretty easy, with these ‘veteran’ kids.  We happened to be heading out on the most busy weekend of the year, so we were a bit anxious about finding a campsite (first come, first serve) that would accommodate the 12 of us.  We met a bunch of people just after we started canoeing that were all coming from a site that we had been thinking of base camping at, so we just made a beeline there.  For middle-of-the-day paddling, the lake conditions were glassy calm.  Amazing!We had left early to get a head start on the crowds, which completely paid off.  We got thee most PRIMO site, just as a couple were paddling away from it!A creek flowed out on one side, and a huge sandy beach rolled out in front of us.  The kids could choose to swim where ever.A little stand-up canoeingA view of part of our campsiteWe did little excursions away from our camp on some days….Dinner with cousins!This bay stayed shallow for a couple hundred metres.  When it was time to head home from our day outing, they wanted to run ahead of the canoe in the water, and have us pick them up when it got too deep.She looved having her hair brushed.  She turned into a super quiet, mellow, mooshy heap!!One day we went for a walk further down the beach from our campsite.There was a fire ban which was such a bummer, but we still had smores cooked over our MSR.We decided to leave our camp a day early because the weather was changing.  It was beautiful and sunny when we left, and we had lunch in the sun, and then a thunderstorm rolled and the lake chopped up.  Thankfully Chelise fell asleep, because we needed to focus on paddling to get off the lake before the storm hit.And after all that blustery weather, and after setting up a new camp close to the launch area, we all needed a hot chocolate.And some blueberriesWe also went for a little exploratory paddle on a little creek.And after 7 days it was time to take down camp, paddle the short distance to the launch and portage back to our vehicles!!