Tidbits
Sleepover at Ikea - Maybe this is the only way to get to the $1 early enough…
A ramen bath - Japanese spa with special baths resembling instant noodles. I wanna play!
Old age homes for dogs - 1) Old dogs don’t like to be abandoned at strange places. 2) Playing with young puppies will probably cause the older dogs to die faster due to exhaustion.
A remote-controlled pigeon - Oh the poor thing…
An article on a brilliant method of teaching grade schoolers about bats and rabies. I smell a lawsuit.
Will trade beer for Crumpler bags. Tempted by the beanbag and messenger bags…
Photos
First Portage Trip to Algonquin
August 22, 2010, 5:58 pm
We went on our first portage trip last weekend to Algonquin. It was a fairly short trip that looped around the Canoe Lake area. We arrived on Friday morning and launched around noon. We camped two nights, and got back early afternoon on Sunday.
This is the first time we went camping in the backcountry. In the past, we’ve mostly stuck with car camping, where we can pretty much park our car at the campsite. However, the experience wasn’t all that different. Maybe it’s because we had a canoe to put all our stuff, instead of putting everything on our backs and hiking for miles and miles. The actual portaging part was the more unpleasant part of the trip, where we had to carry our packs and the canoe across land to reach the next body of water. Thankfully, the route we picked had very short portages. Even so, I didn’t find it particularly pleasant to hike with all my gear on my back. We’ve already packed very minimalistic, but I still find it uncomfortable to hike for long distances carrying all my camping equipment on me. And we didn’t even have the food!
The canoeing part was not too bad. Mike and I aren’t exactly experienced paddlers, and had a rough start where we keep zigzagging instead of going in a straight line. We never did manage to figure out how to go consistently straight, we always ended up drifting off-course and then having to compensate. We were also slow and kept getting passed by everyone. So of course Mike ordered a book afterward on how to canoe.
We were also incredibly lucky that the weather cooperated all weekend. The forecast called for rain, but it never reached us. The first day was beautiful, blue skies, sunny, but not too hot. Barely any wind, making the canoeing easier. Second day was overcast and rather humid. There were storm clouds everywhere that evening, but they all managed to miss us. We had brief drizzles, but nothing serious. On the way back Sunday morning, the skies were still overcast, but the wind picked up and we had to fight the current all the way back. That was rather tiring, and we were glad we had two days of canoeing exposure beforehand before we had to tackle that water. The real storm arrived literally 15 min after we got back to the docks. We had just loaded the last pack into the van, and was standing under the trunk door when the sky opened up and the rain just came down like crazy. If we were on the water, in those waves when that rain came down, we would have been in so much trouble.
I think a long weekend is long enough for me to be spending in the outdoors though, a week long trip would be way too much. We ate mostly the freeze dried campers food, where you essentially just add boiling water to the PACKAGE and eat directly out of it. It lacked fresh fruits and veggies. That, combined, with the lack of proper plumbing, made a few evenings a little unpleasant. Ultimately, I don’t need to shower, but I do need proper toilets!
Our route can be found here:
http://bit.ly/bj7NFS
Photos up on Facebook
Oh, and on the drive home on Hwy 11, we got rear-ended cause the A4 behind us was following too closely. But that’s a story for another day, and yes it is story-worthy!
Tagged: Travels
Yellowstone 2010
July 30, 2010 | Travels |
Our major summer trip this year was to Yellowstone National Park. We were there for the last two weeks of June until before Canada Day, for around 10 days. I went with my parents and Mike. Yellowstone is on my list of places to visit because of how famous…
1000 Islands for Victoria Weekend
June 03, 2010 | Travels |
Had a nice little vacation in the Thousand Islands area over the Victoria long weekend. The 1000 Islands area is a little east of Kingston, with the main tourist area at Gananoque. So first, it was nice to only have to drive 3 hrs to get to our destination for once, and second, it was the perfect weekend to spend near the water, being so hot and sunny. We left Toronto on Saturday morning and came back Monday night.
Not ready for summer
April 02, 2010 | Shopping |
I’m so not prepared for the crazy summer weather we have this weekend. I remember last weekend being like -5 and freezing. How can it be 25+ just a week later? The weather forecast algorithms must be so confused; it is predicting negatives again for later this week. I…
Ah California, where you can surf in the morning and ski in the afternoon!
February 23, 2010 | Travels |
Mike wanted to go skiing at Tahoe this season, and had vacation booked for the Family Day week even before we decided to go to Vancouver for New Years. And even after Vancouver and Whistler, he still wanted to go to California. We then realized that the weekend leading…
