Camping in Algonquin Park

Sitting by the campfire roasting marshmallows, watching the sun set over the mountains and the forests while the stars come out and reflect in the calm lake... Yes, that would certainly have been wonderful. That isn't quite the camping trip we experienced, however. Looking at the pictures below, you might think it was all nice and sunny and fun:

Caneoing on Stratton Lake heading to our site













The quintessential scene with our canoe on the shore:














The actual trip stated quite nicely. The drive up went well, we got our canoe at Algonquin Portage, got to the Achray campground and set off. I must give high praise to Kelly for being such a great girl in the canoe. We were afraid she'd jump out to chase loons or go meet other people and in doing so make us capsize and send all our gear to the bottom of the lake, but she sat nicely and kept a serious watch for threats from, I don't know, sharks or water bears.

Right, so we head out onto Grand Lake and we went right past the portage to Stratton, so we turn around in Carcajou Bay, making the same mistake about ten other people had made before us. It started raining rather intensely for a while but had pretty much stopped by the time we got to the portage. We took a few minutes here for a snack and drink, then paddled off in search of a nice site.

We found a spot close to High Falls and set everything up, found some firewood, had dinner. That's when the fun began.

Imagine the most intense rain storm you've ever seen, and focus it entirely on a single lonely tent in the middle of the Algonquin Park interior. Then make the storm a little more intense, take away all natural light, add the threat of wolves and bears and such and you have some idea of our situation on Thursday night.

The rain never, ever let up. After a few hours, Kelly left her towel in the corner where she'd been sleeping so nicely and jumped onto the air mattress and didn't want to return to her corner. That's when I put my hand down on the tent floor, which, unexpectedly, waved. This was because there were a few inches of water under the tent. It so happened that the flat spot we'd chosen was slightly lower than the area around it so the spot turned into a lake. The tent held up well but it could only do so much, so we had to move the tent in the middle of the night, in the middle of the storm.

Anyway, as it usually does, the sun eventually rose and with its arrival the storm finally broke. With the site, the forest, the entire park being soaked, along with much of our gear, we decided to cede defeat and head home. Sure, it isn't the trip we might have wished for, but we will certainly always remember it!

Hope you all had a great weekend,

Alain

strawberry treats

MMMMMmmmm tasty strawberry treats. With our freshly picked strawberries we made milkshakes and strawberry ice cream topping and angle food cake with whipped cream and strawberries (one of our favorites!)

Here are some photos of the angel food cake (yes, there is some cake under all that whipped cream), and us enjoying our tasty treats.

You're jealous aren't you?

Doesn't it make you want some strawberries??

Strawberry Picking

woo hoo! We LOVE strawberries! Who doesn't love strawberries. Let me tell you, it is even more fun to eat the strawberries when you picked them yourself at the strawberry patch right around the corner from your house! That's right, Barrhaven has it's own strawberry patch, gotta love that preserved agricultural Greenspace.

The strawberry season is probably very close to over, but these are from a few weeks ago. We spent about 40 minutes picking strawberries and got about 8 litres in that time. We might have gone a little overboard... We got home and looked at each other and our 8 quarts of strawberries and thought, "Wow, that's a lot of strawberries, what are going to do with all these strawberries???"

Well, we got cooking.

It worked out okay, more about the treats in the next post. We did end up using up virtually all of the strawberries, and have some frozen for future treats.

oh ya, did I mention, We Love Strawberries [and buying locally].

M