Kenora 2013: The Road Trip Begins

The "quick-up" tent we use for travelling

I don't know why we don't make the journey more often than triennially. I truly don't. As a young lad I spent many summer days and nights in the bosom of the Laurentians in Quebec and I thought I would never experience a natural beauty more soul-lifting and breathtaking. I was wrong. I've travelled the breadth of this country from the Atlantic to the Pacific—missing only Newfoundland and the territories to this point—and I have never found any part of it that makes me feel the way the drive around the north shore of Lake Superior does, with the possible exception of our ultimate destination: the incomparable Lake of the Woods. If there were no other claims to our time, attention or pocketbook, I am absolutely certain we would take this trip a minimum of once per year. But then, I am also absolutely certain that if there were no other claims to my own time, attention or pocketbook, I would already be living in that region of the country permanently. But I am not, so I must take full advantage of the life-giving forces of the Near North whenever they present themselves to me. Here—and continuing over the next two weeks—is my account of our most recent Road Trip to Kenora.

Awenda 2012 - Day Four and the Journey Home

Chippy bum!!

Sunday saw the end of the chippies (ha! see what I did there?) which is really an annual thing. They don't ever seem to come around on tear-down day no matter how many peanuts we have left for them. This year there was the additional matter of a thunderstorm that rolled through the area in the middle of the night (of course it would rain just before we took down our tents) which may have driven them underground for a while. In any event, the rains were long gone by the time we rolled off of our paper-thin "deflatable" mattress and got on with our day. There wasn't much direct sun on our campsite, but we took full advantage of the little we had and dried all the things that needed to be dried: fly, kitchen tent, clothes that had been on the line. By the time we left Awenda there wasn't a damp item in our collection, except every single piece of clothing we wore to take down the site. Man alive, was it hot on Monday morning. Not only did the rains not help the humidity/heat duo, they seemed to make it worse.

Awenda 2012 - Day Three - Chippy Party Time

Sarah and her "students"

Sarah and I got up fairly early on Sunday morning in order to cram as much fun as possible into the day, the last we would spend with the Ramendas on this trip. Kristen was the first of her family up and she hung out with us for a while until the rest of her family joined her. We cooked the last of our bacon and fried up some more eggs, then popped over to our friends' site to see what their plans were for the day. The kids wanted to do some soapstone carving and we knew that their time would be tight because they needed to be off their site before 2PM, so Sarah and I offered to take the three over to the amphitheatre area while their folks packed up to leave. This is not an area of expertise for me to say the least, but Sarah - being a sculptor and former art teacher - was a huge help to the kids as they worked on their shark, turtle and bear paw (which Erin later turned into a bird, from what I understand). There were a few other people there but it certainly wasn't crowded. If you didn't want to carve the soapstone you could make your own canoe paddle, but I didn't see anyone doing that while we were there. That would have been my preference had I felt compelled to do something.

Awenda 2012 - Day Two

What a delightful way to start the day!

Because we were so late getting to bed on Friday night and because our leaky air mattress interfered with our ability to sleep soundly, we had a bit of a slow start to our Saturday. Sarah and I didn't get out of our tent until 10:30AM and when we finally ventured down the road to the comfort station we were greeted with the message you see in this picture. Kristen, Erin and Matthew put this sign together at the foot of their driveway and it was a hit for every person who passed it by for the rest of the day. After we returned to our site we rustled up some coffee and fried up some bacon and eggs. When we were done and cleaned up we headed over to the Ramendas' site and hung out there for a while until the kids got too restless to sit still any longer. We knew it was time for the beach.

Back Home in Body but not Spirit - Awenda Day One

Not our plates...but they should be

Sarah and I got back home from Awenda yesterday evening, relaxed but utterly exhausted. We spent a good chunk of our time away playing with some pretty energetic young folk (our friends, the Ramendas, met us up there, replete with their brood consisting of one nearly-13- and one nearly-11-year-old girl and an 8-year-old boy), which will go a long way toward explaining our exhaustion. Add to that the overwhelming heat (thankfully our campsite was in the shade about 90% of the time), the overnight rain on Sunday which caused some issues with our tear down, and the leaking mattress which, in all honesty, we likely would have been better off avoiding altogether and sleeping on the ground. It reached 36 degrees in Penetang yesterday afternoon, about the time we were sitting in the "World Famous Dock Lunch" beside Discovery Harbour, trying to find an appetite to fuel up before driving home. But I'm getting ahead of myself: I have enough material here for one blog post for each day we were away so you'll have to wait until week's end for the story of the drive home.

Taking the Weekend Off

Well, not fishin' per se. Camping. Sarah and I are getting up to Georgian Bay for the weekend and I just didn't have the time this week to put any posts "in the can". Looks like my streak of daily posts will come to an end today at 108. And, you know....I'm ok with that. Ol' Grumpy P will be back on Tuesday (Monday if it's pouring and we come home early) with hilarious tales from the Ontario wilderness. Be sure to tune in for that!

In the meantime, let's all sing:

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Just Trying to Make it to Friday

Another shooting today in Toronto. At least this shooter had the "decency" to only hit the one person. I guess that's an improvement.

And then there was the small matter of the machete attack about 100 yards from our car dealership. So, what: it's gotta be the heat, right? Right?

Sigh.

Our beautiful, annual site at Awenda

Well, if we make it to our car safely on Friday morning we're off to Awenda this weekend. We've camped there the last three years in a row, but usually in a large group that goes mid-month. This year that gang went to Presqu'ile and we just didn't want to go there, so we booked a week later on the same site we've had every year (pictured at right). Our friends the Ramendas will be joining us for most of the time we're up there and that will be a really nice treat for us. We're getting out of Toronto early Friday morning to beat the weekend traffic (which, in Toronto, starts around 11AM these past couple of years) and we're not coming back until Monday afternoon or evening, depending on the weather, for exactly the same reason. My kids are splitting the weekend cat-sitting duties for us, which we really appreciate.

Happy Father's Day!

Grumpy P and Pop, 1965

Yesterday I mentioned that I had a "terrific post planned" for today; I finished it a few minutes ago but I noticed that: a) it said absolutely nothing about my Dad in it; and b) tomorrow is a full day with scant free time to write another blog piece. So I shelved that post until tomorrow and will use today's space to talk a little bit about my Dad and Father's Day. Here is my Dad at 30, horsing around with me (aged 4) at a campground somewhere (my best guess would be Silver Lake Provincial Park near Perth, ON), looking slim and active and impossibly young. We camped a lot when I was a child, first in a heavy, dank old canvas tent which I loved and later (when my Mom got her way) in a pop-up soft-top tent trailer. When we weren't camping we were at my grandparents' cottage in the Laurentians; renting a house for two weeks (or longer) in Old Orchard Beach, ME; taking a month-long cross-country trip to Vancouver Island and back across the northern States; or driving down to Orlando to visit Walt Disney World. We traveled a lot back then and I loved every minute of it. I never got bored on those trips, which I think pleased my Dad no end, no matter how mundane the attraction that we had to stop the car at and visit.

Feels Like Camping Season!

A quiet road in Pancake Bay Provincial Park

After 3 months of silence, the @OntarioParks Twitter account suddenly sprang to life yesterday. My feed was filled with tweets like:

Most Ontario provincial parks are open this weekend. Get out and enjoy them with family and friends.

Adventurous? Go hiking or canoeing in an Ontario provincial park this weekend.

Pack up your tent and get out to a provincial park this weekend.

Itchin' To Travel

The Blue Jays are playing tonight down by the lake with the Dome open - the second-earliest date this has happened in any season since they moved there in 1989. (For trivia nuts - like me - the earliest was April 16, 2002. Thanks to @ShiDavidi for the information.) This is getting me excited for the prospect of getting out of town this spring and summer for camping, day trips, visits to see Sarah's mom in the Ottawa Valley and, of course, whatever long road trip we decide on (most likely it will be Kenora as usual, which is fine with me).

This, in turn, caused me to look back through some pictures I had taken on these trips over the past few years (at least the years I owned a digital camera!) and I am going to post a couple of my favourites here. Most (except the last two) may be found on my Flickr photostream in case you're not "satisfied" with the samples here.

"What are you lookin' at?"