Items at our disposal: old truck with only half the brakes operational but really high ground clearance. Hiking packs with camping gear inside. My old junk cottage canoe, complete with leaky spot. Duct tape. Extensive set of old paper topos of the area.
That's enough, really, to plan all sorts of adventures. And looking at the map sheet just north of the camp, I realized: there are all these lakes out there, 
and I have never seen them! Furthermore, there are faint (because the paper is so old) roads marked on these sheets, and I didn't even know there were roads much past Ophir! So I convinced Rick that we had to go explore the area north of Rock Lake (to be honest, it took no convincing at all. He got as excited by the maps as I did, and *he* didn't even have that "but it's only 25km from where I used to live, how can I not know this?" feeling.)
So - crappy old canoe on truck. Put plenty of gas inside gas tank. Go. We drove to Ophir, and then turned north,
and kept going. Past Carpenter Lake, bumping along suprisingly well-maintained roads. Surprisingly well-maintained until we got to Primeau Lake, that is - after that, there was a "no maintenance" sign and gullies big enough to swallow canoes right away. I made one attempt to conquer the road with the truck, and Rick's comments about his jeep eating up that road notwithstanding, backed up. This was the end of the road for us. It was time for a tailgate picnic. During our picnic, the conservation officer pulled up on an ATV -
he was interested in our plans with respect to fishing (we had none). We were interested in portage trails (he knew some). He humoured us and told us of the trails to Horner Lake to the east, and noted that there were great campsites over there. Well. That was all the incentive we needed. Or rather, we were planning to go to Horner Lake anyway, even if it took canoe-head bushwhacking and sleeping in whatever flat spot we could appropriate as a campsite. But now we had the word that this was actually an easily do-able trip (Rick's response to this? He started excitedly pointing to less do-able looking lakes on the map. I said "maybe later".)
The first thing we did on Primeau Lake was navigate into the wrong bay. The second thing we did was dig through the packs to find a drinking cup to use as a bailer (leaky canoe!). The third thing we did was pull out the GPS, and conclude that the maps and GPS didn't agree and we were lost. But that's as far as helpless dumb-ass behaviour went: I realized that maps that are older than 25 years could not possibly be WGS84, and Rick reset the GPS for NAD27. The bailer approach worked just fine, but later in the trip, Rick used the fancy duct tape to make the canoe a bit more lakeworthy. And we found the portage without difficulty about five minutes after we stopped to figure it out. So all good.
The portage trail turned out to be a snowmobile trail, complete with speed limit signs (hee). And Rick turned out to be best canoe tripping companion ever, because he not only shouldered the crappy, leaky, heavy old canoe without complaint ("it's so light!" he said. Note to self: find more tripping companions who associate the word "canoe" with "dugout"), but the heavier pack as well. I was left with a hiking pack, the paddles, and Rick's camera (and my imaginary tiara). Sweet. So I merrily bopped along the portage trail to the other side, where we discovered a gazillion cached aluminum boats. This is when we realized that this lake, though at the end of the road, was a popular fishing destination in summer (I know, the RVs parked at Primeau Lake should already have tipped us off, but no... I thought all these people were in the area to screech around on their ATVs. At this time of year, they were, because we pretty much had Horner Lake to ourselves all weekend).
Within minutes of pulling out onto Horner Lake, I spied a potential campsite, but this time Rick - in the stern at the time, and thus in control of the steering - ignored the excited pointing, arguing for more exploration first. I was ok with that, because my five second attention span was already taken with a bare rock face in the distance, and I wanted to go *up there*. This time, Rick agreed, and there was bushwhacking and compass consulting, and then, a view! 
And after that, when we got back down, there was this really great swimming spot where you could jump off the cliffs into the water. Which Rick did - not me, I am chicken, I climbed to the bottom of the cliff before flopping into the refreshing cool. I thought it was a lovely temperature. Tropical boy thought it was bloody cold. But we both agreed that sitting in the sun after the swim was a good idea, and hey, if that involves more snacks, I'm not going to complain. I'll be too busy eating.
The base of the cliff/swimming spot area was also a great campsite, but it was much too early to make camp. Some exploration by canoe followed. We were mystified by the trees cut off at about five feet above current water levels. We discovered an ATV access to Horner Lake. We oohed and aaahed over the fall colours. We explored some of the well-used sites (one site had rolled up carpet, a tarp frame, lawn chairs, four grills, and the requisite pile of empty 
beer cans in the bush. There were far too many empty beer cans on Horner Lake - I understand the can and bottle ban of backcountry campsites in provincial parks, it really does make a difference). Eventually, though, we agreed that we liked the swimming spot the best, and returned there to make camp.
Of course, Rick is even more useful in camp than on the portage trail, because here was the labour division that evening: I put up the tent and inflated the sleeping mats (note that one of them is self-inflating). Rick repaired the canoe, cooked dinner (including making a fire-reoasted eggplant dip), hung the food rope, 
collected firewood, made a fire, cleaned up after dinner, and hauled water to put out the fire when we went to bed (I guess he was dehydrated, since peeing on it clearly was not enough). Since my jobs took so much less time, I devoted myself to polishing my tiara.
Our run of great weather looked to be over in the morning: we woke up to cloudy, and markedly cooler. Perhaps sensitive to my wimpy tropical boy accusations, though, Rick agitated for a morning swim - and then jumped off the cliff into the water. After shooting my mouth off about the 
lovely swimming temperature the day before, I climbed to the bottom of the cliffs again, cringed, plugged my nose, and cannonballed in. Brrr! It was cold after all. So cold that I bitched about it, more than I usually bitch I mean, and then Rick made me coffee and built a fire to make toast. Good lord, I sound like the worst person in the world to camp with. Perhaps I shouldn't point out that Rick had also done the food shopping and packed the food bags before the trip. Sigh. *Now* nobody will ever read these pages again and say, she sounds ok, I'll go on a trip with her. I am not always lazy, I promise! Only when there are tolerant people who do not ignore my "I think you should.. (make me coffee, build a fire, hang this tarp, cook dinner...)." comments. I just throw those out there to see what I can away with, really! Is it my fault that Rick is good-natured, I ask you? No, it is not. And he *said* he'd trip with me again. (Of course, shortly after he said that, he got into a plane and disappeared, but I hear what I want to hear...)
But back to the trip... After drying out and warming up and my actually getting off my lazy butt to do something (I took down the tent, and put away the sleeping mats and recoiled the food rope while Rick cleaned up and packed away the kitchen and put out the remains of the fire), we went exploring. The 
Thessalon River flows out of this lake, so Rick's idea was that we follow it to the next lake. Please note that both "river" and "lake" here need quotations marks. Tiny stream and puddle, I'd say - and very overgrown. We left the canoe on Horner Lake, and just rock-hopped/bushwhacked down to the next lake, which, as it turns out, wasn't much to look at and I'm glad I was a weenie and said no, let's not 
try and explore there, when we were contemplating campable lakes the day before. It was still fun, though, and the rocks piled up in dike and dam forms were intriguing (we later asked Ian MacKenzie about all of this - he guesses the trees cut off at five feet were logged in a deep snow year, and the rock dams were for raising the lake level, and then the logs were boomed at the outlet and the dams broken to give enough flow to drive the logs down. Neat.)
As it got increasingly cloudy, it was time to go, and we got back to the truck and bumped over the roads back to camp. We stopped at a big pile of what we had thought was sand, but turned out to be sawdust, on Primeau Lake. We found the remains of the sawmill that generated the sawdust nearby. I have no idea how quickly sawdust rots, 
though I was amazed when Ian later told us that this particular sawmill had definitely been gone for more than 50 years. See? So much to explore, so close to home, and I? I know so little!