Camping at Glen Rouge Campground in Toronto

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 :-)

Deadly Hogweed or Cow Parsnip

Portrait Painting Progress

Still a bloody long way to go, but am ramping up weekend painting, putting that is a priority the next 6 months or so.

More progress on the portrait of my daughter last weekend. Will get 3 or so hours again in this weekend.

Since I sit cross legged on the floor, it's hard on my legs and feet, sending them to sleep, which feels horrid waking them up every 20 mins or so.

Some corrections will need to be made as this goes along, and the background in the end will need an assessment, mainly for it being less saturated than the figure, grey back a bit and more atmospheric.

I bought my husband the wrong brushes one day, on a brush buying errand at Curry's which is a walk from my work, but they work awesome for my painting needs, so it worked out. Luckily, because they were expensive.

I accidentally painted on the wall, which won't matter, since I've had the dark burgundy paint since last year, to paint it with, and will do that once Winter comes. White and light walls are not my thing lol!

Fledgling Copper Hawks in Scarborough

My husband and I discovered a Cooper Hawk nest where we often take walks. We've watched the mom and Dad for a few weeks, and the last time we checked on them, there were 4 fledgling hawks that had been born probably 2 weeks or so before our visit. They seem to be doing well! Hopefully next year, the family will be here too, and increasing :-)

Point Pelee Trip 2016

Finally getting around to going through my photos from Point Pelee, which my husband and I visited mid May.

We have been saying for 4 years or so, that we want to make the trip down there. It was going to be a bit pricey because it is a 4 1/2 hr drive or so, from where we live, so staying over was basically a necessity. So, I made it kind of like my 50th birthday, and our 2nd year wedding anniversary, and my one sort of "bigger" vacation activity for this year, all rolled into one. We stayed at the Talbot Trail Inn, which as I mentioned in my earlier Rondeau Post, was super great! We saved on eating out by doing a grocery shop for all our lunch and brekkie stuff, and had a nice one night of the 2 we were there, dinner out at Armando's Italian restaurant. There are not a lot of restaurants to choose from in Leamington, so it seemed to us, actually.

Pelee is a pretty much full day hiking day, so we took lunch, snacks and water, as well as sun screen to reapply. We were gone 8 hours and we walked pretty much the whole distance, stopping our car 2 times in 2 areas, to park then walk, as well as the last little bit, we jumped on the trolley train to the point drop off, and walked down to the point. The point is actually not a large amount of land, mainly it is just a narrow point that reaches out into the lake, and it has a tree right on it's edge. The waves were quite surly the day we were there so it was cool seeing all the water splashing up onto the point. It can be quite perilous so one needs to be careful there, and not be venturing too close to the tip nor trying to enter the water.

There were quite a few beach areas to walk along, gorgeous textures on the long fallen and dried huge tree trunks of drift wood. The marshland there is hugely expansive, far beyond what we are used to seeing in Toronto or the Durham Region, which also does boast of quite a few natural wetland areas. There is a few story wood walk up tower platform which allows one to look far over the marshland into the distance. It is like being in another place other than Ontario. We were treated to a real close encounter with all the nesting barn swallows under the steps of the wood walk up.

What can I say, people go there that time of year, mainly because they are birders. Granted, in the Toronto area, especially at Tommy Thompson Park, you hear and see a lot of birds and a large variety of migrant and resident birds at that. However, it was noticeably well increased at Point Pelee, both in sounds and sighting. Warblers are everywhere, just popping up and in and out all around us. Catbirds, even a Scarlet Tanager. The elusive worm eating warbler though, that many die hard photographer birders were looking for there, eluded John and I lol! Some did see it though, we heard in conversations as we passed others on the paths.

There were also trees there that one does not see in eastern Ontario as much. One being the Kentucky Coffee Tree. Some of the oldest existing trees we have grow along one path there at the park. It's very awe striking if one is into trees.

Quite unexpected, was to discover a male turkey, in full display, stalking the female turkeys, all of them on the beach near the point, in the evening light. Not a bird we would have imagined seeing there lol!

What a gorgeous place on earth Point Pelee is, even the surrounding towns, and the road leading to the park entrance, with people's homes right on the shores of Lake Erie, waves crashing up against their backyard shoreline.

yellow warbler in nest