Alona Bay Creek, Canada - Polarsteps

On this hard stretch, in the name of not 'just getting through it' we decided to take to the time to stop and explore the Agawa Bay pictographs; we parked our bikes in the parking lot and hiked a steep trail down to a rock ledge by the turquoise water, where for many generations the Ojibwe made records in red ochre on the flat surface of the cliff. Thousands of paintings have faded over the years; the ones you can still see there now are 300-400 years old, and depict animals, Mishipeshu the great water lynx, and various hunting and battle scenes. The glacial rocks themselves that you hike down to the pictographs were split millions of years ago by volcanic activity; in Ojibwe oral tradition the splitting was an act of revenge by the Thunderbird. This place was amazing, and we're glad we didn't pass it by. We finished the day on/in the lake again, in another unofficial free campsite with some other campers a little up the way from us and a rope-assisted climb down a sleep slope to the water, which we did a few times for swims, washing our dishes, and the next morning filtering lake water to fill our water bottles. -Sara