For 20 years, we drove past this campground, along the 401, to and from Ajax and Whitby. Now, I live in Scarborough, but my kids reside in Durham.
Not having been camping for about 6 years, I came up with this kooky idea of, "hey, let's go fun camping 20 mins from our place" lol!
The idea was sort of half serious, but it then became, "let's book it!" and I went a head and booked it. Typically, long weekends, which is the weekend I chose, most campgrounds force a 3 night booking. So, I figured, this works anyway as we can take our time packing up and leaving on the Sunday. Turned out it was raining anyway, so we left our tent up Sunday night and came back Monday morning to pack it up, dry. The kids' tent, we packed up the Sunday in the rain as they have space at their house to dry it out, we don't at our condo.
I bought our tent on a whim through Walmart, on a whim as it had a great price. It ended up being Perfect! And Huge! I bought a 5 pc starter camping set, it came with 2 chairs, a tent, a fly and a little shelter that can be set up separately (we didn't use this).
It was great fun! At first I was like, I'm going to cancel it. What will we do. The kids are big now, they aren't little kids, it's harder to entertain them. Boy am I glad I didn't! It was loads of fun! Besides the kids teaching myself and John how to play Presidents, feeding peanuts to the piggy Chipmunk, and making half assed Smores with marshmallows and chocolate covered digestive biscuits, and hot dogs for dinner. Shauna my daughter made an awesome camp fire. My Dad lent us lots of lighting and a burner for cooking eggs in the morning. However, there was one major permeating thing that kind of made the whole weekend.
Pokeman Go!
I kind of figured, no, my kids don't have time, they work full time during the summer. How wrong I was lol! They were well into the game, and they have been doing a Lot of walking! My son said 5 KMs a day on weekends with friends lol! As well, they've met lots of people playing it, where they excursion to on transit, down by the lake, etc. It's quite the positive phenomenon is how I am seeing it.
We did lots of hikes, the kids were all for it. We also visited Swan's Marina and the pier in Pickering, down the bottom of Liverpool. We went fairly far and saw areas I'd never been to. It was a lot of fun! And what did we see a lot of? Hoards of people walking or standing, busily on their phones, playing Pokeman Go! lol! It was hysterical and it was fun! I'd say 80% of the ones we passed were playing it, couples, groups, families, youths, older people, the list goes on. Many of these people would normally not even be walking the trails normally lol! John and I walk the Glen Rouge trails a lot, and we've Never seen so many people on them, especially teens.
The cicadas were quite abundant this summer, we saw several, one even in the process of shedding its shell. We were freaked out by a wolf spider in an opening in a tree trunk. There was quite a few patches of deadly wild hogweed, part far in from the trails, and often marked so that walkers would know to stay away from it.
In any event, we had a great time. The hikes were fun, lots of exercise, the campground is nice, and we even saw a first bird sighting, an Indigo Bunting! Lots of cedar waxwings hung around the trees in the campground, and we saw deer and lots of rabbits and chipmunks. It was a cool weekend :-)
Not having been camping for about 6 years, I came up with this kooky idea of, "hey, let's go fun camping 20 mins from our place" lol!
The idea was sort of half serious, but it then became, "let's book it!" and I went a head and booked it. Typically, long weekends, which is the weekend I chose, most campgrounds force a 3 night booking. So, I figured, this works anyway as we can take our time packing up and leaving on the Sunday. Turned out it was raining anyway, so we left our tent up Sunday night and came back Monday morning to pack it up, dry. The kids' tent, we packed up the Sunday in the rain as they have space at their house to dry it out, we don't at our condo.
I bought our tent on a whim through Walmart, on a whim as it had a great price. It ended up being Perfect! And Huge! I bought a 5 pc starter camping set, it came with 2 chairs, a tent, a fly and a little shelter that can be set up separately (we didn't use this).
It was great fun! At first I was like, I'm going to cancel it. What will we do. The kids are big now, they aren't little kids, it's harder to entertain them. Boy am I glad I didn't! It was loads of fun! Besides the kids teaching myself and John how to play Presidents, feeding peanuts to the piggy Chipmunk, and making half assed Smores with marshmallows and chocolate covered digestive biscuits, and hot dogs for dinner. Shauna my daughter made an awesome camp fire. My Dad lent us lots of lighting and a burner for cooking eggs in the morning. However, there was one major permeating thing that kind of made the whole weekend.
Pokeman Go!
I kind of figured, no, my kids don't have time, they work full time during the summer. How wrong I was lol! They were well into the game, and they have been doing a Lot of walking! My son said 5 KMs a day on weekends with friends lol! As well, they've met lots of people playing it, where they excursion to on transit, down by the lake, etc. It's quite the positive phenomenon is how I am seeing it.
We did lots of hikes, the kids were all for it. We also visited Swan's Marina and the pier in Pickering, down the bottom of Liverpool. We went fairly far and saw areas I'd never been to. It was a lot of fun! And what did we see a lot of? Hoards of people walking or standing, busily on their phones, playing Pokeman Go! lol! It was hysterical and it was fun! I'd say 80% of the ones we passed were playing it, couples, groups, families, youths, older people, the list goes on. Many of these people would normally not even be walking the trails normally lol! John and I walk the Glen Rouge trails a lot, and we've Never seen so many people on them, especially teens.
The cicadas were quite abundant this summer, we saw several, one even in the process of shedding its shell. We were freaked out by a wolf spider in an opening in a tree trunk. There was quite a few patches of deadly wild hogweed, part far in from the trails, and often marked so that walkers would know to stay away from it.
In any event, we had a great time. The hikes were fun, lots of exercise, the campground is nice, and we even saw a first bird sighting, an Indigo Bunting! Lots of cedar waxwings hung around the trees in the campground, and we saw deer and lots of rabbits and chipmunks. It was a cool weekend :-)
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| Deadly Hogweed or Cow Parsnip |
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