Crown Land Camping In South River

“Do you think we could leave for South River on Friday night?”

I was sitting at work on a Wednesday in the last week of April when I received that text from Darrell and couldn’t help but laugh. Really? I already had most of the gear ready since we had been planning this trip for a couple of weeks, but there were horse chores to do and a few hours of driving ahead of us. Plus, getting all the gear into the truck and getting to South River at a decent time, and hopefully before dark. So many things to consider!

In the end, I agreed that it would be nice to have one extra night at camp and have a full day at our destination. We had a whirlwind Thursday night and Friday and managed to get on the road in decent time.

One downside about travelling with dogs is that they don’t tend to follow your timeline. Molly has a terrible habit of getting excited once she sees the truck being packed. It’s great that she loves the trips so much, but it means she doesn’t relieve herself before a trip. On Friday night we were an hour into the drive when the small from the back seat told us we needed to find a spot to pull over! Fortunately for all of us there was a nice park to pull off in and go for a walk. Unfortunately, I knew that meant we’d be arriving at camp in the dark.

We arrived in South River at 9pm with no daylight left and another half hour or so to get to our site. We had chosen a spot on crown land that we had visited previously, and as we slowly crawled our way across the trail, I was relieved to find the site was empty. Using the truck lights to illuminate the campsite, we quickly setup the tent and then all five of us fell into bed and went to sleep.

I never sleep right through the night when I’m not in my bed, so I woke up throughout the night to various sounds. The coolest sounds were the wolves that were howling not far from our site. Erza woke up to the sound, gave a little woof, and when they howled again she stayed quiet and went back to sleep.

The late night was worth it to wake up, open the tent door, and be greeted by the view of the lake through the trees. Perfection. This is why we camp. Grabbing our fishing rods, we headed down to the lake and started casting. We hoped to catch some of the brook trout in the lake, but on that chilly morning we saw no signs of fish. Nothing rising, no ripples, nothing following our lures. Didn’t matter. What a fantastic way to start the day.

Breakfast that morning was bacon and eggs. While the dogs explored the site and were teased by some red squirrels, we played with the Chilly Moose fridge-freezer and Jackery power station. We’ll have reviews for each of these things in the future, but they definitely up the luxury game for us. Having a fridge instead of a cooler meant our food stayed at a fairly consistent temp, and the Jackery charged everything we plugged into it. These are going to be awesome for our overlanding/camping trips.

The goal for the two days was to fish for trout, explore, and enjoy the sunshine. Having visited the area last fall, we had several lakes and rivers on the list to visit. We didn’t have a boat with us on this trip, so we were relegated to fishing from shore, but that makes it easier to visit a bunch of different waterbodies in a day!

At one river we were treated to a bald eagle flying by. I didn’t get any pictures because Molly happened to jump in the water at that moment and I was simultaneously taking her picture, while telling her to get out, while watching this majestic bird fly by. At another campsite by a lake we had lunch and fished while listening to the calls from the loon at the other end of the lake. Loons are my favourite bird and I just love listening to them. We walked down a trail that disappeared in the brush before emerging at a very small lake with shallow water as far as we could see and a bunch of logs in the way. We walked down to every lake we could over the weekend.

When we weren’t fishing we were driving down trails and exploring new areas. The trails around the lake we were camped on revealed all sorts of animal scat and tracks. Fresh moose tracks, deer tracks, scat from moose and bears…there was a lot to see! Some trails ended at a river, while others became too narrow for the truck to continue down, and others looked like we’d have to pull out the recovery gear to make it through. I was just getting over being sick and was in no mood for a recovery so we turned around on those trails.

After another peaceful night we spent some more time fishing the lake we were camped on before packing up our gear. Darrell did a walkthrough of the site to pick-up garbage that had been left behind by previous campers. Always leave a site cleaner than you found it. I was sad to pack-up as this site had definitely been one of my favourites and I hate having to leave the good sites, even when I know I’ll be back.

For our last day we hiked in to an absolutely beautiful lake that would be best fished out of a canoe. It was such a nice area and since we found a possible spot to camp on the way in, we might add it to our list of future adventures. The dogs loved going for the hike and all three seemed tired and happy by the time we returned to the truck.

We continued to explore and eventually made our way to one last site we had found last year, to stop and make lunch and have a rest before the drive home. The South River area has so many great places to explore and I marked several more trails and lakes for us to visit the next time we’re there. As always, I was sad to leave. Why would anyone want to leave the forest and the lakes and a tent and all that fishing? Maybe one day we’ll figure out how to have more time for it. For now, I’m incredibly grateful for each experience. This was an awfully good one.