Late in July, I announced to May that she was fun and I was going to stalk her. May didn't waste a lot of time making up excuses: she simply informed me that she was moving far away and thus stalking would be difficult. Clearly, "far" is relative, since I think Deep River is close enough to go to for a fun weekend - and I was undeterred. I informed her that I would show up in late September and expected fall colours, good weather, and for her to cook me dinner. If you don't ask, you don't get...
I got. I got everything I wanted: absolutely perfect weather (daytime temperature in the low 20s with clear skies, fall colours at their absolute peak, and a host who not only didn't have the heart to tell me to make my own damn dinner - no, she even made sure there was beer there even though *she* does not drink. And she made up a bed with a fluffy comforter, and organized a canoe, and piled some maps on the kitchen counter.
We'd both heard so much about the Barron Canyon in Algonquin Park, and we'd both been there on foot at other times and agreed that we needed to canoe it. So, on Saturday morning, we strapped the canoe on the car and went. We weren't doing the "loop", just the easy daytrip which has you putting in at Squirrel Rapids and canoeing upstream through the canyon and back down (actually, the suggested daytrip requires a car shuttle and doing this in only one direction, but I deemed two cars and a 7 km route rather ridiculous - we could easily do 14 km in a day, after all, and use only one car - and pay only one vehicle permit. This is park-rules-land, after all.)
The route really is ridiculously easy - only one portage, and it is short and fairly easy footing (says the girl who carried paddles and a daypack - May *insisted* on being the one to carry the canoe all weekend. I did not argue much, if she needs to prove that she's tougher than me, I'll happily carry the paddles and act girly. Because who wants to carry the canoe? Not me! But I will, if need be...)
It was pretty. We saw two enormously large groups of high school students, and many daytrippers. On our way upstream, we drifted for a few minutes before we could get into the portage. The Canyon itself was nice, though shorter than I'd imagined it when I saw it from the observation platform years ago. We ended up in a rocky bit upstream, having missed the next portage (we were too busy giggling over something, I'm sure - there was much giggling). I thought I was brilliant because I took off my boots and socks and tried walking in the river - but my bare feet did not agree. I quickly 
changed from giggling to whining. May was much tougher than I was, but even she got bored with lining the boat up a river that was kind of pointless because there was nothing *past* the portage except more and more river. We sensibly abandoned the plan and started looking for a lunch spot - which we found, on some massive blocky stuff at the upstream end of the canyon. There we sat and returned to giggling, and were joined by a little chipmunk. We watched group after group pass by. It was, after all, Algonquin Park, and it was the peak of fall colours, and this is a much-hyped route (though I feel the need to add: this is not a route I'd recommend for fall colours. There aren't really any in Barron Canyon, because there aren't that many deciduous trees and no sugar maples from the look of it).
The trip back was uneventful, save for 15 minutes of moose cow observation - she refused to show herself well enough for a picture, so we finally dismissed her with a sulky "cow!" and took off. Besides, we remembered that we needed to go to the grocery store before it closed, so we could eat more! And that we did...
On Sunday morning, I sat at the breakfast table and commented that I'd thought Barron Canyon was maybe a bit overrated - May agreed and, clever woman that she is, charged me with the task of finding the day's activity. I booted up my computer, and found this website. Since we hadn't taken the canoe off the car the night before, I clicked on the canoe tab - but then discovered the waterfalls section, and combined the two to decide on Grants Creek. Before 9 a.m. we were on the road with the directions.
Grants Creek was so totally worth it. We started off in a lazy meandering marshy river, and had to cross two beaver dams (at full ram speed!) in the first few hundred meters. I expressed doubts that there would be much of a waterfall of note on something so slow and lazy, but then we found the first set of rapids, coming dwon from Logslide Lake. The looked rather impressive for rapids - I would have designated them as a waterfall. 
May hauled the canoe to the end of the portage, and off we skipped into the undergrowth to check out the full length of the cascades. We were pretty impressed, and even speculated that we had somehow missed the rapids and this was the waterfall.
But then, we looked across Logslide Lake, and saw the waterall. And as soon as we got a few meters away from shore, the roar of the waterfall was louder than that of the rapids. We went to the base of it and ooohed and aaaahed and 
realized there was much more to the waterfall than you could see from the lake - so May tackled the steep and rocky portage and dumped the canoe at the top - and then we scrambled down the full length of the falls on the wet rocks. It was great fun, and these falls would be even more spectacular during spring runoff: at this time of year, there were dozens of little cascades in the woods beside the main falls, and the falls themselves sent up some impressive spray. With more water, the whole thing would be an impressive roar.
Not content with these discoveries - and with the canoe already on Stewart Lake - we canoed to the next set of rapids. We went a bit further than the portage-builders would recommend, apparently, because where we landed was definitely not the portage. 
Unwilling to backtrack, we bushwhacked with the canoe. At one point, May was making her way up a fallen tree to scale a small cliff with the canoe balanced on her back. I tried to help her, but she shooed me away - she wanted me to take pictures, not help! After I captured her glory, she consented to taking the canoe off her back and letting me help her haul it up - but that was so much 
work that I suggested we park the boat and scout the actual portage. This we did, and we found it, and we walked it to the end to see Grants Creek Marsh. After all the waterfalling, waterstagnating didn't do much for us: it didn't look like the marsh was even all that navigable in these water levels, and we were lukewarm on the prospect. We were even more lukewarm on 
hauling the canoe up that way. So we abandoned the project and returned to Stewart Lake for lunch. During which time there was much giggling, and then - with the long distance stalker who had to make her way home in mind - we returned to the car and the weekend was over. I'm working on my next assault on Deep River already...