It has taken five long years for the kids and I to get back out into the canoe and go camping. A major change in life (moving to Bancroft and building a house) had left us with little time for canoe trips. The last weekend in September was unusually warm and perfect for a fall …
Algonquin Provincial Park
The Bridge Community Church (Bancroft) Men’s Canoe Trip, 2019
We got a bit of weather extremes during this weekend paddle up to Tom Thomson Lake and back. Here is a time lapse to illustrate the difference that weather can play on the mood of a canoe trip.
I know – the title of the film sounds a little presumptuous and all encompassing. Another option, ‘My Wilderness Portrait’ (to me anyways) sounded too juvenile. I usually spend way too much time oscillating between titles until I get frustrated and (in this case) just go with my first instinct. This film is made from …
We learned a lot while attempting for the first time to camp in the winter. I can tell you now that research is no substitute for experience. Based on the research I had done, we had a very successful trip. There were a few things that we did learn the hard way. The hardest part …
It was time to explore a part of Algonquin that was new to me. I had never started a trip from the Smoke Lake access point. This was a quick weekend trip – only one portage to get to our destination. As you can tell from the photographs, we had a lot of rain mixed …
Spending a few days snowshoeing in Algonquin Provincial Park is a great place to be at Christmas! Staying in a yurt at the Mew Lake Campground has started to become a tradition in our family. This kind of winter shelter allows us to winter camp with toddlers, who refuse to stay inside of their sleeping …
This was our first experience at winter camping! Well, maybe we cheated a little. Pulling our truck up to a heated octagonal, heated tent on a wooden platform with bunk beds is probably not exactly winter camping. We did have to consider the fact that our daughter was only 9 months old! We drove up …
We brought our “wide-eyed wonder” girl back to Algonquin Provincial Park at 5 months of age. The water was a lot warmer after a full summer of solar gain. The nights were a little cooler and more comfortable than mid July, especially for snuggling with my wife and daughter. Most of the weekend was spent …
I have always exposed my kids to the great outdoors since… well, since the chord was cut. We played in the streams that flowed over the Niagara Escarpment, swam in the frigid waters of western Georgian Bay and the warmer waters of Lake Huron, canoed in the local town river (pictured below), snowshoed in the …