Quetico Provincial Park - 2024

My Dad grew up on Robinson-Superior Treaty Territory, in Atikokan Ontario.  A half hour out of town is a provincial park called Quetico.  We passed through a few years ago, and i set my mind to spending a bit of time there, so this year we went out to Quetico for a few nights for a family holiday.  

We got there late in the day, it was a full six hour drive.

I'm not sure what this one was, never seen the like.

Quetico is designated a dark sky preserve, so it was my first tiem trying to shoot the night sky, unfortunately the moon was pretty big, so the sky wasn't too wild.

Since i had never done it before, I didn't quite realize that I was actually able to get some cool Milky Way action,  so I didn't try too hard...  I'm still learning how to use a digital camera well, and I've got a way to go still.

Quetico was pretty nice.  It's really more of a canoe launch type of spot, so I don't think I'd drive six hours to car-camp there again anytime too soon, But the Ontario Park Service is quite good, and honestly is worth the drive, there's always a camp-store and staff on hand, firewood and potable water.

The morning views were pretty nice. 

The whole park is a no motorboat zone, so the swimming was really nice, and the water was super clean.

Quetico-North was a nice little corner store nearby, but they didn't have much in stock cause we showed up on a Tuesday, but by the weekend they had milk etc...

Out on the boardwalk where the undisturbed leaves at eye level make these beautiful discrete shelves... 

The Fam

Stoked on this grouse photo.

Early in the morning, the rabbits would come out.  There was a fair amount of wildlife kicking around the campground, lots of woodpeckers, rabbits, squirrels, snakes, grouse etc... 

Ritual Spaces

We got it together to go on a hike despite the bugs being absolutely bananas.  There were zillions of tiny frogs all over the path, but there was no time to stop, the bugs couldn't have been thicker.

The hike took us out to these nice falls, super powerful.  It was fun to just be there enjoying the mist off the water.   

More Handsome grouse.

I'm really proud of these grackle photos, if you're on a computer, click on them to see the full-sized version.

The thing that drew me out to Quetico and this neck of the woods is that my dad was raised in Atikokan, and I was curious to spend some time out where he was young.  Our last night, it was threatening rain, and so we headed down the road to this nice motel, when i got to chatting with the owner, she had known my family (of course) when they were young, and my grandpa was the attending doctor when she was born.  Very cool.