Up to North Bay I was right on schedule, so North Bay to Ottawa went very smoothly. The mosquitoes however, were an experience. I had no places aligned to stay between North Bay and Pembroke, so I picked a rest stop that was almost exactly half-way. What the map didn't show was that the stop was right on a large pond, an ideal breeding ground for mosquitoes. It took about five stages to set up the tent: I'd pull it out and put it down and then run away as fast as I could to lose the mosquitoes. Then run back and do a few more thing.... Finally grab the bag and run inside.

My tent is totally mesh, right almost to the ground. The fly then goes over top of that, right to the ground. Once any mosquitoes get in the fly, they're pretty much stuck there. This photo doesn't come close to doing justice to the number of mosquitoes that were on the tent that evening.

They made two sounds. The typical buzzing, but quite loud because there were hundreds or thousands of them, but also a continuous shhhh noise from trying to buzz around but hitting the fly. I wanted to get a photo then but it was very dark and I was very tired. This is what it was like when I woke up. I guess many of them gave up in the night.

Finding a strategy to get out of the tent that morning is a whole other story. Amazingly, through the whole thing I only got a few bites.