A Week in Pickle Lake

I know what your thinking right now.. Pickle Lake?? Whats Pickle Lake? Where is this place?! Well, let me tell you.. If I didn't have a cousin living in Pickle Lake I would be asking the same question ;) Continue reading and Ill tell you all about the fun we had in Pickle Lake!

Pickle Lake is the most northern community in Ontario with year round roads. It is also home to the famous ice roads seen on "Ice road truckers". Pickle Lake is a very small community, with just one grocery store, two restaurants, and an LCBO of course. There is just one gas station, with very high prices! The grocery store also has insane prices! Most of the people living in the community will head a couple hours out of town to get there bulk groceries, and will just get the odd things from the store in town. As you can see on the Pickle Lake sign above, the population of pickle lake is just "somewhat smaller than Toronto" ;). Realistically, there are about 400 people residing in Pickle Lake. So what did we go to Pickle Lake for?? The high gas prices? Crazy grocery prices?? Well, for starters, my cousin lives in Pickle Lake, so if anybody ever wants to check it out, you let me know! ;) She would be thrilled to have some guests. And, believe it or not, there are some great perks to living in a small northern community! Like, no traffic! The highway leading into Pickle Lake is bare! By this I mean your lucky to have another car pass you within an hour of driving! But anyways, lets take a look into the fun we had during our week stay in Pickle Lake!

"The Grand Tour of Pickle Lake"

First things first, my cousin took us on the grand, 10 minute tour of pickle lake. The tour consisted of visiting a local farm, where we got to see pigs, chickens, geese, goats, a donkey, and the cutest dog ever! We got to walk through the one and only grocery store and check out the difference in prices. Drove down to the Pickle Lake, which is only a 2 minute walk from her place, toured the OPP office (as she works there) and finished off the tour with dinner at the Pickle Hotel. We were even lucky enough to join my cousin on her trip down to the dump, where we were greeted by the local bears! It was pretty cool!

Rafting the Kawinogans River

One of the highlights to Pickle Lake is all the Lakes surrounding it. Which means, plenty of rafting opportunity! And I'm not taking about going whitewater rafting with a big company, I'm talking more like get a raft from Canadian Tire, load up your rafts in a trailer or the back of your truck and head down to the river. The Kawinogans River has 5 sets of rapids varying in different extremes, and between the rapids are 3 stretches of river, giving a lazy river type of opportunity. From start to finish, the rafting circuit took about an hour, an hour and a half depending on how quickly you push yourself through. The views are spectacular, and the rapids are so much fun! While we were out on the water, we were able to watch an eagle soaring overhead, and even had a water snack slide by. The best way to set yourself up to set out on the water, is to have a vehicle at the start and one at the end, as it does not loop. We had so much fun rafting we spent two afternoons out on the water. It was amazing!

Swimming and Lightning Shows

We spent a good portion of our time in Pickle lake in the water, for obvious reasons. Two swims stick out especially in my mind. The one, we were lucky enough to take a drive out to a friend of my cousin's cottage. Where were got to swim on there lakefront property. We spent the afternoon jumping off the big raft they had out in the water, and lounging on it. As we made out way back into shore we watched their groundhog friend scurrying around. The next occasion that stands out, was our night swim. This night was windy, and the waves on the water were HUGE! Needless to say the waves had white caps, and it was pitch dark. We were launched around by the waves, it was incredible. I didn't send nearly as much time in the water though as Jesse and my cousin did. They were out there until they were almost forced out by the incoming storm. By the time they joined me on shore, we were all able to sit and watch the AMAZING lightning show! I have never seen anything quite like this in my life! Because it was so dark, and such a small community, there is no light pollution, which allowed us to watch the storm coming in long before it even hit us. We sat and enjoyed the lights for a good hour. When finally decided we should probably walk back when the storm was only minutes away. We barely walked into her front door before the rain just poured down! Our timing couldn't have been any better! And, about 10 minutes after that, the power went out. So we got to experience a famous pickle lake power outage ;) The power was out from about midnight, and returned back at about 2pm the next day. It really wasn't much of a disturbance for us at all, we set up some lanterns and candles and spent the evening playing Yahtzee. It was a pretty great night!

Otter Plane Ride

I saved the best for last. The absolute highlight to our time in Pickle Lake was our ride, on an Otter Plane. This is a very small plane, and seats about 7-8 passengers. On our last day in Pickle Lake we were super lucky to get to go up for a ride in this plane, for FREE! The ride took us all around pickle lake, and offered the most beautiful views. We were so excited! We had been waiting for the right weather to be able to get up in the air all weekend. Every day we had previously tried, it was incredibly windy, but our last day had finally offered us the chance. If you ever have the chance to ride in a small plane, DO IT! This was an amazing experience!

If you get the chance to visit Pickle Lake, go. It is an experience in itself, and absolutely worth it! We hope you enjoyed the read as much as we enjoyed making these memories! Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for the next blog!

Stay Wild,

Jesse & Jessica