Ugh. What a weekend

John, as the Lorax, in Algonquin Park

Holy cow, am I tired!

Mike has been a big ball of nerves lately, with work, school and association stuff. However, his mid-term was due Friday afternoon, and the schedule had been shifted to give him an actual weekend off, so he decided he wanted to unwind by going camping. I hate camping. But I figured John would really enjoy it, so we raided Jer's camping supplies, packed up the kids, and spent a weekend at Algonquin Park.

All in all, it was actually a really fun weekend. It was a lot of work, but it turned out to be a lot of fun, too. Algonquin Park is just north enough to actually look like home, which Mike seemed to really enjoy. But we were joking that it's kind of a Disney version of the north. Yes, there are moose and pine trees and swamps and swarms of black flies. But it all seems a bit too pristine and manicured. It almost felt like it was all created for the tourists. There sure were a lot of moose! Unlike the rest of the tourists, we didn't take pictures of them though. We thought it might be a bit strange to send you guys pictures of moose.

So let's see. A recap of the weekend. We left Friday after Mike got off work, but were running late, as always. We arrived at the park at 11:30 Friday night. We set up our tent in the middle of the night. Thankfully, we had no neighbours at the time. John was afraid of the dark at first. For the first 10 minutes or so, he stayed in his seat in the car. But eventually, he ventured out to see what we were doing, and he thought the whole thing was hilarious. He was squealing with laughter for quite some time, reciting passages of Dr. Seuss's The Lorax (I am the Lorax! I speak for the trees!)I took the lantern and headed tot he washroom at one point, and I could hear him laughing all the way there, maybe 100 yards away. We told him to look up, so he could see all the stars. I haven't seem stars like that in years. He LOVED the tent. He was so excited, it took him forever to wind down. We fell asleep before he did, but when we woke up, he was snuggled in with us. Good thing - it was c-c-c-c-cold!

The next day, we made breakfast, and John explored the campsite, asking what everything was, checking out the trees. He picked a lot of Trilliums for me, and our campsite was close to a lake, so Mike took John down the path to check it out. After that, we went for a drive. Algonquin Park has a number of old cabins, that were used as outposts for park Rangers. They're these little log shacks, mostly built in the 20's. Mike wants to stay in one some day, but most are only accessible by canoe. Some can be driven to, and one can be hiked to, so he wanted to see what one of the access roads was like - it's accessible by hike along the hydro right-of-way. However, before we got there, the road we were on had been closed. A beaver had dammed a culvert, so not only had part of the road flooded, but the water was eroding the road from underneath, where the culvert pipes were. It was maybe a two foot drop to the pipe, which was surrounded by rushing water, so it wasn't a very safe place to be. A bunch of cars were stopped there to check it out. One truck-load was filled with people heading to their cabin. They decided to go through the blockade, and keep going, but as they went over where the culvert was, their wheel broke through part of the road. And Mike said when the guy stepped out of the truck, to make sure it was OK, his foot went through another part. All the guys there told them not to go on - another guy there had a cabin, and he said the road was fine just that morning, so there wasn't going to be any surface left before long, so they may not be able to get home. But they still kept going. The other guy who said the road was OK that morning turned around. He had his grandkids with him, and wasn't going to risk getting stranded at the cabin. But his cabin was accessible by boat, so he was going to get his hands on one to get back and forth.

Obviously, we stopped before the MTO's little tape barrier. But we did park the car, and walk out with the kids to see what the beavers had done. It was really cool! It was a marsh that had been flooded. It had washed across the road, and was maybe two inches deep at the deepest part. But where it was just flooded, it was safe - it was only eroding by the two culverts. But that water was alive! It was teeming with tadpoles! Millions of tadpoles! Swarms so thick, the water was black in some places. And of course, there were tons of frogs. We saw at least a dozen. Maybe two, just in this tiny little pond across the road, maybe 20 feet long. John thought it was so cool! Mike caught a frog for him, so he could see one up close. He just laughed and laughed! When it jumped, he laughed some more! He even got up the nerve to touch the frog, and it jumped, which he thought was really great. And to top it all off, there were hordes of butterflies. Black and white ones, yellow ones, orange ones. Just tons of them! We didn't get to see what we were going for, but it was almost better that the road was washed away. It was a lot of fun. It was hard to drag John away. But it definitely left an impression. Last night in the tub, he was pretending to be a tadpole. Just hope those other people will be able to make it back out!

After that, we headed back to camp. We went to the beach for a bit. It was evening by then, so the water was a bit nippy. John doesn't like to swim. Mike tried to ease him in by carrying him, but wound up coming out with John wrapped so tightly around him, that he didn't even have to hang on. I had packed John's shovel, so he spent a bit of time digging in the sand, before we headed back to make supper.

Mike told me that it was possible to make chicken while camping. Not being a camper myself, I had to trust him on that one. So he set about to make chicken and potatoes for supper. He slathered the chicken in barbecue sauce, and wrapped it in tin foil, and then put it in the bottom of the fire. The potatoes were wrapped and put into the fire, too.

But wouldn't it burn you might ask? Supposedly, it will not, Mike said. An hour later, he hauled everything out of the fire. By this time, it was pitch black outside. But even by dim lantern light, we could see that all was not well in the dinner department. The chicken wasn't just burned. It was cremated. He managed to pry out a bone, and it crumbled in his hand. I was just about to go grab the hot dog wieners, when out of the charred remains he pulled some white flesh. It took some careful excavation work, but he managed to salvage enough chicken for a light supper. The potatoes weren't burned too badly. We peeled off the black skin, and the flesh inside was edible. But they were so dry, they were almost rubbery. Even the carrots were bad. We'd boiled them on the fire, and they were flavourless and tough. But there was enough there to call it supper, so that's what we ate. Unfortunately, the animals thought it smelled just fine. As we were eating, in the pitch black, with just one very dim lantern as a light source, we could hear forest creatures circling our camp. (The fire was waaaay on the other side of the site) Something large enough to crack twigs under its feet came within a few feet of John, Joan and I. Mike tried to find out what it was, but it scampered away into the bush before he could get a look at it. We figured it was probably either a fox or a raccoon. At least, that's what we hope.

It was too dark to do dishes, so Mike burned the leftovers, and we brought out the marshmallows. John was so looking forward to this part. He wanted to be like the Sneetches on the beaches, because they toast marshmallows. But the fire was too hot, and the sticks too short, and he was too tired to cope with it all, after a day outside with frogs and tadpoles and digging in the sand. So we toasted them for him, but he still didn't like them. Oh well.

As John sat there , slumped in a folding chair, eyes fluttering closed, we decided to squeeze in one more activity. We poked him awake and went for a walk to the beach, to look at the stars. He was a bit scared of the dark, but to his credit, I was too. There weren't many people out camping that weekend to begin with, and most of them were asleep, so there weren't even any fires around. Just blackness and silence. At one point, we passed a truck, and there was a guy in the drivers seat. He said hello, and we all jumped and yelped. Mike said "you may as well have said Boo." He looked like he felt bad - he was just trying to be friendly. Even the beach itself was a bit creepy. There was a very horror-flick type of mist coming off the water, and there were some birds making creepy noises around the corner. But all the creepiness was worth it - the stars were really something! I haven't seen that many stars, that bright, in years. John really liked it at first, and babbled about the stars. But after a while, he went quiet. I thought he'd lost interest. But Mike turned the light on, and we found him face down, fast asleep.

And that's probably how our day should have ended. But it kept going. Mike plays an online combat game, with a few thousand other people. He'd told them we were heading out this weekend, and joked, that wouldn't it be funny if he kept up on his turns while he was away. Ha, ha, ha. Until that point, he was pretty reasonable with it. He played his turns while we were stopped to feed Joan, or something like that. But he loses turns if he doesn't play for 16 hours, and he was due to lose turns. So, determined to be as strange as possible, we piled our sleeping children into the car, and headed to the next nearest town in search of Internet access. What a harrowing ride! That park is TEEMING. We saw two moose, a deer, a rabbit, three cats, and I forget what else. I'd forgotten how big moose were. It was almost surreal, watching this ginormous animal lumbering off into the woods. We saw two females. One was on the edge, and headed to the bush when we stopped. The other was walking down the road, on the opposite side of the street. It was even headed in the right direction. We had actually driven right past it without seeing it at first. We did a double take before it sunk in we'd just driven right past a moose. Mike turned around to get another look, and there it was, sauntering down the road. It looked back to see us, and pulled off to the shoulder to let us past. Mike followed it, trying to scare it back into the bush, so no-one would hit it, but it was pretty determined to stay. It just kept strolling down that shoulder, giving us glances now and then to see if we were still there.

We went to bed after that, but were woken early to the sound of wild animals ransacking our camp. They were after our leftovers. I couldn't tell what was out there, but I could hear a lot of commotion. All of our cooking gear was being tossed around, and things were getting knocked off the table. I thought it must be raccoons, but when I poked my head out, it was just ravens, and the sound of the zipper had scared them away. But in the light of day, many things had been put out of place. It seems that the forest critters were roasting marshmallows while we were away. One bag was missing entirely, and the other had been moved practically into the fire. The tin foil we'd wrapped the chicken in had been picked over, but it didn't look like they were able to find much to eat.

We slept until 11 that morning, and had to start packing up almost right away - check-out is 2 p.m. Once we got everything in the car, we headed to the beach for one last swim. Joan loves to swim! The water was a bit cold fer her the night before, but we brought her in that day, and she loved it! She was laughing and splashing about. John, however, was having none of it. He stayed on shore, digging holes in the sand. We did eventually coax him in on dad's shoulders, but he wasn't having any fun. He kept screaming that he couldn't swim, and that he was cold. So we took him back to keep digging. There was a little girl there who was fully equipped for a day in the sand. She had a whole laundry basket of plastic shovels and sifters and buckets. John just had his one little yellow shovel. So the two of them played together in the sand. It was actually a busy little beach. All young families - maybe a dozen kids altogether. John, my social butterfly, went from person to person showing off all the cool new toys he'd found on the beach. "Look! I have a hoe! I gardening!" "Look! I have two shovels!" It was very embarrassing, but the other family was happy to have someone new for their little girl to practice playing with, so it all worked out - she was barely 2, and also afraid to go into the water. They settled into a little game where John would shovel the sand into her bucket, she would dump it out, and they'd both laugh.

It was just supposed to be a quick swim to wash off for the trip home, but we wound up staying for a few hours. As a result, I brought out the sunscreen a little too late. Surprisingly, John is fine, even though he went a long time in full sun with no sunscreen at all. His cheeks are a little sun kissed, but you'd never know he was in the sun. Mike and my shoulders are burned, and Mike's face is burned a bit too. Joan got too much sun. She was looking pretty red yesterday, but it's looking better today. I was trying to shield her body with mine, and spent a lot of time under a shady tree with her, but she still got some redness on the top of her head, and her cheeks. But she's looking better today - it's just pink. What's shocking with her is the number of black fly bites covering her face. And of course, black flies are the ones that make you bleed, so she spent the whole weekend bleeding. John remarked many times about how I'd spilled ketchup on the baby. At one point, it clicked that it was blood - he told me she needed an ambulance. The worst one was on her eyelid. I had turned to put sunscreen on John, and by the time I got back to her, her eyelid was covered in blood. She was grinning ear to ear, but still covered in blood.

It wasn't even as bad as it could have been. Once we realized she was the preferred specimen for all the biting bugs, we went to the camp store, and found her a mosquito net. It was actually a mesh jacket, but it fit over her car seat, and kept her safe for most of Saturday and Sunday, as long as we kept her in her seat.

After that, we headed on the loooong drive home. Even it was exciting. We got a flat tire in Burlington - we have a nail wedged in the rubber right now. Luckily, we had a jack and a spare, so Mike changed it, and we went on our way. But John watched, and boy, did he think that was cool. When he got home, he changed all the tires on his tricycle, (which for the purpose had transformed into a race car).

All in all, an exciting weekend was had by all. When questioned, John says his favourite part was playing on the beach. But he's still talking about the frogs and butterflies and the flat tire a lot, too. Mike wants to do it again sometime. The advantage is, we don't have to go on a weekend, because I'm not working. But we'll see what his next schedule brings. If we can make it back, he wants to rent a canoe, and teach me how to paddle it. Should be exciting.

In other news, Joan has her first tooth!!!! It's been coming for a long time, and finally popped out over the weekend. She seems much more relaxed now that it's broken through. It's just the top ridge so far, so it's not big enough to bite me. I can see the second one coming, too, but it might take a while before it breaks through the gums.

Anyway, more pictures to follow:


John snapped this picture of Joan

This is John, Dad and the ill-fated chicken.

John on the beach on Sunday. The little girl he was playing with is behind him. He had swimming trunks, he didn't like that wet, clingy feeling, so he took them off and ran around naked. A diaper was our compromise.