Beresford Lake Park has 26 basic sites in total, about 10 are seasonal rentals. There are washrooms, a garbage area and free firewood. There is no beach or docks, but there is a park like area with nice rock shoreline for fishing. swimming and areas to pull a boat onto, albeit that is onto rock.
The park was about half full for Labour Day, likely due to the forecast of rain and cooler nights. We don't get out truck camping much but certainly enjoyed the comforts of using our coleman air bed with camp mats on top to ward off the cold air in the mattress. That likely contributed to the 9-10 hours of sleep we got each night and waking up refreshed instead of achy.
We had purchased a Guides tarp from MEC prior to our Obukowin trip but never used it out there but finally used it this weekend and we are indeed impressed. It will certainly be nice for future trips.
Having camp fires really does help make any trip and usually we don't get to have that in the wilderness and having the fire ban lifted for the weekend was an added bonus. It was unforetunate that some people have forgotten how to take care of their fires. When we returned from our day trip on Monday to find most people had already left, the two adjacent sites still had fires going in the pits. Sure, it is a steel enclosure, but the one neighbour had left logs burning.
Fishing was alright, we caught pike and pickerel from shore at the park and some nice pickerel on the Garner on sunday afternoon. We attempted to fish the lake proper saturday night and got into some nice jumbo perch but the wind arose and we were blown off the lake, literally. We decidedly have the wind against us this year but had a good lesson on running downwind in large waves. Unable to quater around a point without being rolled, we ended up on shore a ways from the park but it turned out we were adjacent to the boat ramp, so we portaged through the bush then set out again to round the last point and surfed to camp.
We explored the Garner on sunday and kept hearing an airplane but never saw it. We finally figured out it was an airboat in Grassy Rice Lake just downstream, harvesting the wild rice. We have seen the remnants of this venture on Leaf Lake and Obukowin but this was totally cool. Monday morning we actually saw the airboat in the Manigotagan as they prepared for another day of harvesting. Basically a crude steel structure, similiar to the photo we took on Obukowin, atop a jonboat with the large rice collector across the front. They just drive the airboat through the rice and whatever is ripe falls into the collector on the front. A second regular boat with most likely family were along to collect the rice once the apparatus was full, so the airboat could make further passes. The Manigotagan is lined with rice on both sides all the way out to Long Lake so it must be profitable still with the ease of access.
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