The first weekend in October, I went on the maybe last camping trip of the year to Algonquin Park with Amy and Damien. Leaving Toronto after work, we hit the road be 6pm, dinner at McDonalds and a night drive (no Moose) to the campsite. Setting up camp in the dark is a bit more challenging, especially when my tent is still new (2nd time use now). With some great help, it got up well and fast, as it was only slightly below freezing. Most importantly, camp fire and beer and chips were also out fast! Getting up in the morning was hard, it was nice and cozy warm in my sleeping bag, wish I hadn't drunk that many beers at night....I got up quite early, and got some nice shots of the steaming lake.
We made a small fire for breakfast, and heating up the Nutella for our sandwiches...It was still chilly. We drove out at noon to go for the 11km 'Mizzy Lake' hike - along lots of lakes and ponds with 'the best chances to see wildlife' in the park - do squirrels, chipmonks, and birds count??? I start to believe that Moose are only a legend....It drizzled a bit at the start, but then the sun came out, and the fall colours looked even more beautiful. There were a ton of mushrooms in every colour in the forest, awesome for pictures! The path was kind of muddy, wish I had worn my boots...this way, I had to look down at the path the whole time, and my neck started hurting. We did the hike in around 4h (I guess they write 6h to scare people away!), and then drove slowly back to the campsite, where Damien made us a great fire, lasting from 5pm to midnight. We had some hotdogs on sticks, beers, more beers, wine, whiskey, Mr. Creamy and chips. As soon as you moved away from the fire, you could feel the temperature dropping rapidly. It went almost down to freezing that night, but we weren't cold, thanks to booze, tents and fleece pants!
Getting up the next day was even harder...thank you to men's addiction to fire!!! After taking down the camp, we went off for the stiletto-women hike, a very short hike on a 'highway' path up to a lookout. Our next hike was much nicer, walking down to the Whiskey rapids (too bad we forgot the bottle) - the weather was awesome, sunny, the colours came out beautifully! Back on the road (no Moose), we had a great burger at the 'Moose Cafe' - sounds sketchy, but is actually a really nice place, with home made food, and great sugar rich desserts.
Thanks guys for a great weekend!
Back to Toronto, taking out the tent to dry, and falling into bed to sleep early.... one question remains, is there any (big) wildlife in Canada, or are Moose just a myth?
Marjan and me did the Mizzy Lake trail a while back. It only takes 6 hours when the path is literally flooded with water and there's no solid place to put your feet down. The moose are there, just behind the trees, laughing at you ;-) Algonquin is beautiful non the less!
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