A Week in Algonquin

Hello Everyone!  Thank you again for all your kind words, thoughts and prayers with respect to my dad's move.  I've been unable to visit him this past week since I've been on vacation.  I know ... move my dad into a brand new facility, and then hop off for vacation.  It wasn't something I had planned.  The room had become available at this facility just a couple of days after we viewed it, so my siblings and I decided not to let the chance slip away from us, and we moved Dad in as soon as all the paperwork was completed.  Unfortunately, one of my sisters was on vacation the day he was moved in, and then I went on vacation the day after he moved in.  He's a tough man though, and I'm sure he's had the staff running around in circles to please him ;) 

 

Anyway, I'll be checking up on all of that with my family tomorrow.  I assume that no news is good news, and that everything has gone well.  But today we had a long drive home from Algonquin Park ... where my heart lies.

Rock Lake

 

I went with my husband and son, and we had a lot of fun adventures every day we were there.  We did a lot more canoeing this trip than we normally do, but we wanted to get a lot of use out of our new canoe.

 

Rock Lake

 I'll give more details about the trip in future posts, but I just wanted to show you a few snippets of some of the spots we visited.  We did the Old Railway Bike Trail, a 34 km ride ... something we really should've worked up to.  We were all so sore and stiff at the end of the ride, I didn't think I'd be able to move for the rest of the week!  But the muscles relaxed overnight, and not any stiffness remained the next day (thank goodness). 

 

We saw lots of reminders on the trail that we are not the only ones in the forest.  Bear poop (full of berry seeds) and wolf scats (full of fur) are quite common along this trail.  There are quite a few people riding on the trail, so I take comfort in that fact, and hope that the animals had visited the trail much earlier in the morning ;)

 

Bat Lake Trail

 We hiked a few pretty trails, but we were starting to feel like we really wanted to relax, so we just did a couple of easy trails, neither one was more than 5 km.  We'll save the more difficult 10 km Centennial Ridges for our fall camping trip.

 

We saw lots of wildlife in the park this week.  There were many bird sightings of ducks, herons, geese, hawks, vultures and the big black ravens.

 

 

We enjoyed sharing our campsite with the pileated woodpeckers, who were squawking to all the sleepy campers most mornings.  What a racket!  The one below was quite busy digging for bugs both up in trees and on the ground.   We saw him one evening as we were paddling around 'our' lake (Canisbay Lake), and stopped alongside him to take a few photographs.

 

Pileated Woodpecker

 

I think the previous visitors to our campsite had spent a lot of time feeding these little monsters ...

 

 

Chipmunks are so cute, but once you start to feed them, there's no getting rid of them.  They would actually jump into our laps while we sat outside our trailer!  One poor little guy startled me so badly when he jumped on my bare leg (I had my legs outstretched and resting on a facing chair and didn't notice him until his sharp little claws dug into my leg), that my leg jumped up sharply and I sent him sailing up in the air about six feet!  Ooops!  We didn't feed them for the entire week, but they were continuously seeking out food from us together with a red squirrel who was just as cute.

 

There was no end of fun for us at the park.  We had only one half day of sort of rainy weather, but the rest was beautiful.  It was quite hot a couple of days, so we planned canoe paddles with a swim at the end.  The bike ride had a swim for us at the far end of the trail too.  The lakes are so refreshing and cool.  Although we tried really hard to swim off of a rocky area one day in order to avoid the beach, I just couldn't make myself jump into that black water without being able to touch the bottom (not to mention I saw a very big fish slowly swim past me which creeped me out just a little).  I had to admit defeat to my husband, and we headed across the bay to a small public beach where I could walk into the black water without fear.  I really am such a chicken in deep water.

 

Lake of Two Rivers

I had a little mystery solved that has been bugging me for many years.  I'll tell you all about that in another post.  It involves the point in the above photo.

 

Bat Lake Trail

 

This was one of the many wildlife sightings we had ...

 

 

We don't often see bears while we're at the park ... usually lots of moose.  But this bear and her cubs were being spotted all over.  The park has been posting lots of information sheets around, and we had one delivered to our campsite while we were out.  They had lists of things to remember when you're out in the bush and encounter a black bear.  I particularly liked the suggestion that you carry a long-handled axe on your hikes!  We had such an axe, but I don't think any of us was willing to lug that heavy weight around with us.  And if you did have to use it, what if you only wounded the bear?!  They neglected to mention that a wounded bear is much more dangerous than and curious bear. 

 

And I'll leave you on that happy note :)  I've got a few photos (ok...over 600) to sort through before I can write another post.  While I was taking the photos I had a couple of post ideas forming in my head.  Do you do that too?  Remember a little snippet of something to write about some of the photos you take?  It keeps my mind racing along, and I think that's why I ended up with so many photos.  I hope everyone has been keeping well, and I'll be around to visit everyone soon.  Thanks for stopping by again today.

 

Wendy

 

Canisbay Lake, Algonquin Park