In early June, we trucked about 90 minutes NW of town to Cross Lake Provincial Park to paddle Steele Lake. The last 10km of the drive are on gravel and the park has a good set of amenities, including a boat launch and dock, a nice beach, pit toilets, picnic tables, and fire pits. There is also a campground.
You can drop right beside the water and park 30m away. It was slightly smoky when we got there but that soon blew off. There was also a small rim of algae on the edge in places (not the bad kind).
With the wind coming from the south, we turned right off the beach and paddled into it, thinking we'd explore the bay in the SW corner of the lake and then work out way east to a creek mouth. The last time we were here, we went north (left) and scoped out the NW corner.
The SW corner is mostly swamp or muskeg, with the trees fairly far back from the water. There were lots of fish and birds but to much else of note.
As we worked our way along the shore, there were a few higher spots with trees closer to the water.
The highlight was probably spotting this loon sitting on a nest hoping the annoying people would just move on (super zoomed in, apologies for the pixellation).
As we started east towards the creek, we bravely rescued a sand shovel that had floated off the beach!
We got to about here (maybe 6km of paddling) and ran into the hugest fish fly hatch I've ever seen. There was no wind and they were so thick my wife said I looked like Pigpen from Charlie Brown.
At that point, we paddled out into the middle the lake to find a breeze and finally get rid of them. Instead of eating lunch on the water, we decided to just paddle back and eat on the beach.
Overall, a pretty nice paddle. Lots of people fishing, both from shore and out of boats. We did about 7km in two-ish hours and had a nice time. The NW corner of the lake was nicer to paddle than the SW. I'd like to get over into the eastern end of the lake sometime.
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