Ah, the splendid quietude of a remote lake in early summer. Loons call wildly to each other after the sun sets. Old men putter around in boats and drown worms, smoking cigars longer than the fish they catch. Ducks float among the dead trees in the shallow areas where the first and second lakes are joined.And a young man paddles through and around the lakes wondering how much money some people dish out to visit a place of such beauty and remoteness, such as the one he is now enjoying free of charge. As he floats aimlessly across the water, he reflects that the only thing better than owning a camp in this particular location is being related to people who own a camp in this particular location.
It has been many years since I have visited this place. I used to come here with my parents and another family with whom we did a great deal of camping, canoeing, hiking, biking, etc. They had two daughters and we were practically raised as siblings. A visit to the camp never failed to provide some interesting discoveries for children of our ages; snakes, frogs, endless clam shells, and in one instance, a large stack of Playboy magazines.Sadly, there was nothing new to discover during this visit so many years later (Playboys were gone, too). However, the lack of stimuli was compensated by hours of reading and floating on the lake. The Wallagrass Lakes are not a high traffic area, which means there are no giant high-speed motor boats roaring across the water or Sea-Doo's zipping from one shore to another. A person can actually sit out on a dock and hear nothing but the movement of air through the trees all day.
There are actually three Wallagrass Lakes. The first and second are pictured here. The third lake lies four miles to the west of the second lake. The water flows eastward, which makes it interesting when a kayaking neophyte tries to paddle westward from the first lake to the second lake and then on through Wallagrass Stream. The shallow passage which bottlenecks the two lakes is easy enough to navigate, even for me. Extra effort is required to keep the current from sweeping you to either side of the inlet. Paddling demands a bit more attentiveness in water that is no more than six inches deep and fraught with rocks and dead wood.Upon crossing the second lake, I come into Wallagrass Stream. The current is swift and moving against me. The way is filled with shallow spots only a few inches deep and rocks big enough to stop my boat dead in the water. There is no actual whitewater, but there are enough obstacles to provide a beginner with some practice in maneuvering his kayak. I retract my skeg and proceed.
I did surprisingly well navigating through the rocks. I pressed upstream until the current was such that I could no longer keep the kayak in a straight line and move forward, which wasn't very long at all. I turned around and began paddling downstream. It was then that I discovered just how quick the current really was as I barreled towards the mouth of the stream at close to ten miles-per-hour. The rocks and shallow spots which I had carefully maneuvered through a few minutes earlier now presented hasty, and sometimes unsuccessful, negotiations. A few bumps later, I was back on the calm waters of the second lake.
It wasn't exactly Indiana Jones riding a raft over the edge of a cliff and into a roaring river of rapids, but it was pretty fun.
