I spent the last two weekends away from the city communing with nature. First I went to Alex's cottage with Alex and Jason, as well as Alex's brother and some of his friends. It was a great trip as expected, with late nights, swimming at the beach and much poker playing. The weather was perfect and the people were excellent. I didn't bring my camera though so I have no pictures. If you're on Facebook I was tagged in some though, so check it out if you're interested.
This past weekend I went a bit deeper into nature on a canoe trip into the interior of Algonquin park with my mom and some family friends from Ottawa. After some initial car-related difficulty getting to Ottawa, we set out early Saturday morning for the park. We canoed in to our campsite and then proceeded to set up and prepare the site for our stay. I spent a bunch of time dragging and gathering fire wood for the weekend, in particular using a small saw to cut up a very large dead tree and then an axe to split the logs. This, combined with canoeing, was more physical work than I'm used to, so I was pretty tired that night. Supper was awesome though. Steaks cooked over the fire, with garlic potatoes and carrots (cooked in aluminum foil over the fire).
On Sunday I went fishing in the morning, and was able to catch a bunch without any effort at all! The place we fished at was full of fish, and as soon as you put the line in the water you basically had a bite. They were mostly small fish though, so we tossed them back and after a while head back to the site. The rest of the afternoon was spent relaxing and chatting, and also cutting and splitting more fire wood. I built the fire for that night and it was most excellent. Building and maintaining fires is one of my favourite parts of camping.
On Monday we paddled back to the launch site, headed back to Ottawa and got cleaned up and comfortable. I took Tuesday off so that we could stay in Ottawa Monday night instead of rushing back. It was definitely a good idea, despite the rolled tractor trailer on the 401 that caused the drive home to be extremely painful.
