Our Short Trip to Algonquin Park

Early in the summer, after a fun camping trip with my kids to Sandbanks. on a whim, I booked 2 nights in Algonquin Park. We camped at Pog Lake and our site was really great, lovely, semi private, and we loved it.

First night, a Sunday, we got our tent set up by about 5:30pm. Went for a bit of a stroll just in a circle around where our site was. The next day, we planned a long hike at Mizzy Lake Trail, hoping to leave by about 8am. The sleep was so still, one of the best sleeps I've had camping. We double up 2 Queen air mattresses, in stead of buying a really expensive double thickness mattress. This way too, if we are camping with the kids, and someone's air mattress leaks, etc., there's a spare. Works too, in case one of out air mattresses were to get a leak, or break, not fill. Having 2 is a safety net.

We headed for Mizzy Lake Trail by 8:30ish, and began our hike by 9 or so. This trail is not for a new hiker, it is long, if one wants to do the whole thing. It is worth it. A lot of the really great scenery and such, the huge pond area with the lily pads and flowers, the shoreline landscape, and such, is more than half way through. We saw Canada Balsam trees. John showed me how when he was in his 20s and 30s, he got the balsam sap from the little puffed blisters on the trees, to mix with linseed oil and make the most beautiful medium for oil painting.

The trail, and we were warned, was quite mucky and had flooded areas, this year, as there had been a ton of rain in June. We did find out that this was very true. There was a lot of finding alternate ways past this sometimes large black boggy, mucky shallow pooled and drenched wet areas. Tree roots, semi dry edges, stones, logs, sticks, even lain thick fallen tree branches placed by others before us, all these innovative ways to traverse past the worst areas that we had to hope would work. None of the ground was even, and we did spend a lot of time looking at our steps and the ground, you had to. It was hard, but we managed.

There were so many varieties of fungi, like I'd never seen before. There were tons of coral like ones that literally littered the forest ground in some areas. here were very few birds or wild life. We did see a few toads and frogs, a couple different kinds. Unfortunately we did not spot any moose, and happily, no bears or wolves. There was a moment on the straight gravel path, about half way, that there was this horrible stench, and we suspected it had been a nearby or passing moose, since we do know they reek, and that is an area they are often seen. We did see lots of butterflies. The area near the large marsh, there were a lot of flags marking where turtles had buried eggs. It would be quite the site to see when they emerge and make their way to the water! There were very few mosquitoes, which was great.

On the trek, we ran into people from France and Germany. The German group helped us across one of the worst boggy areas, which was super awesome. The one guy in the group was funny.

Though, I caused the hike, which is 11.4 kms or so, to end up taking 8 1/2 hrs, as opposed to the 3 - 4 it should have. Too much stopping to look at things, and take photos. Not that all the crazy bog areas of the path that we really had to figure out how to get by, helped. By about 3/4 of the way I got a little upset, I was exhausted, my feet killed, and I was so sore form all the uneven stepping and climbing over things to keep going. The trail is marked, and certain points are numbered, so in the little booklet, we could judge how close we were to the end, the parking lot. Needless to say, we were tired, way past the hour we thought we'd be done, and filthy. We had hoped to go to Whitney for a dinner, as we did not bring any dinner food, but after getting back, showering, and then me losing my phone and having a fit, we ended up eating lunch stuff for dinner at our site. It was still nice, though I was upset that I had been dumb enough to leave my phone in the bathroom. We did, though, the next day, get it back from the park office. I had it with me mainly in case the kids needed to contact me about anything specifically, while I was away.

The day of leaving, we stopped at the art centre there, and we saw some wonderful work. It was teeming rain and we had packed up just in time, stuffing our tent all loose in the back of our car since it was coming down hard the last little bit. We went into Huntsville for lunch, on the way home, at Te Docks, which was great. The rain was so hard at times on Highway 60, we drove with hazards on, like the other cars, and we could barely see. Later on, we heard parts of the road were closed, lots of areas had power out, and that by Thursday, Huntsville had had the worst flooding and most rain they had had in decades. It was already becoming bad as we left Muskoka. Pick up trucks were boating through grill height water in one parking lot that was quickly becoming a shallow lake.

All in all, it was a great trip, good weather, not bad sleeping, lots of cool sights, gorgeous terrain, and a nice experience at the site.

Exciting Birds and Animals This Summer So Far

We've been to a few of our local haunts this past late Spring and Summer so far.

This year, we've seen a few really cute sightings and had some cute encounters with baby animals, and have seen some juvi birds.

In these couple of instances, I didn't get good pics, only a couple not so great cell pics, unfortunately, as I didn't have my DSLR.

On the way to the entrance to the RT in the morning, there's a cement accessibility ramp, as well as stairs. It was May or early June, and as I headed for the stairs, my husband, who walks me to the subway some mornings, spotted a tiny baby bunny. Then, we spotted 3 more. One was actually half way up the ramp heading towards the doors that enter the walkway to the TTC. I dropped my bag and chased it to try to capture it so I could put it back with its brothers and sisters. They all were hanging around the empty square garden area at the base of the walkway. I did finally corner the little thing and cupped it in my hands, holding it until I got it to where the other bunnies were. I didn't like that they all still seemed so vulnerable, but there was no way I could really do much about it. My husband said that an hour later they were no longer there. A month later, we spotted one, a bit bigger by now, in the grassy area outside our condo.

The next encounter, outside the window of our ground level condo gym, we spotted a shadow going back and forth every 10 minutes or so, out of the corner of our eyes. My husband looked behind and out the window was a mom squirrel carrying a baby squirrel up the cement pebbled pillars that lead up to a narrow cross way on the outside of the building. I waited for a bit to see if she'd go get another one, but she didn't appear. Weeks later, there again, was the mom, up on the top of the narrow crossway with her one baby sitting beside her, in silhouette against the bright sky. The pic shows a reflection in the window, too, of the Mom and baby squirrel.

Getting back on track again, we've had some cool bird sightings so far this year. A brown thrasher at Rosetta, blue jay, cat birds, cute squirrels, a black squirrel with a red tail, red eyed vireos, wax wings, flycatchers, hummingbirds already, and more!

The biggest thrill was getting to see the little baby Killdeer at Doris McCarthy Trail in early July. They were so tiny, adorable little replicas of their parents. I couldn't get great shots, even with my 70-300 mm zoom as they were pretty far away.