We were destined for Little Tupper Lake and decided to check out Rock Lake instead. In 2008 Skip, Bob and I hiked into Rock Lake to check out the portage trail. There was one vehicle at the parking lot. We shuffled gear, since going to Little Tupper we hadn’t planned on doing a portage. Eric took the kitchen backpack and carried the food pack. Kathryn carried the Bill’s Bag, life jackets and backpack cooler. I carried my backpack, canoe and paddles as we single carried down the portage trail.

Rock Lake is located northwest of Route 28 and 30,between Indian Lake and Blue Mountain Lake. While the trail sign says .5 mile the actual distance is closer to .8 mile –about a 20 minute portage. If you go straight down to the lake you have a beaver dam to get over. If you take a right and go over the bridge you can get to the lake below the dam.

From the parking area the red marked trail goes through a forest of red and white pines. At 0.3 mile the Johnny Mack Brook is on your left. At 0.6 miles reach the junction of a snowmobile trail and turn right following the snowmobile trail over Johnny Mack Brook on a bridge. At 0.8 miles the trail turns left and heads to a campsite on Rock Lake.

At the lake we found two canoes parked along the shore. We looked across the lake and saw a large empty site directly across lake where three years ago we spotted hunters camping during our spotting trip. We landed on the sandy beach, checked out the campsite and decided to stay.

One interesting facet of the campsite was a large number of owl pellets of containing squirrel and mice bones. Eric found many of these pellets below the large white pine trees and collected bones trying to recreate a squirrel skeleton.

In the afternoon we toured around the lake looking for campsites and swimming beaches.

We went swimming from a large sandy beach on the south side of the lake.

After swimming we hung around camp: taking pictures, resting, playing cards and listening to podcasts.

We baked four fruit biscuits, using our Backpacker Oven, and tea in the late afternoon. Below Kathryn wades out to get clean water to filter through our Base Camp water filter. We made pasta primavera for dinner.

In the evening we had a small fire and turned in shortly after nine o’clock.

Sunday morning Eric started and fed a small fire “to keep the bugs away”. Kathryn and I watched a family of sapsuckers flit around the trees above us.

We explored the inlet and outlet of Rock Lake and then went swimming again before having lunch and packing up for our portage out and trip home.