Thanksgiving Weekend Camping at Grundy Lake

October 16, 2014October 5, 2015 / Oleksandra Budna / 4 Comments

There was a lot to be thankful for this past weekend. Beautiful sunny weather. Deep blue skies and incredible fall colours. Being with family and friends. Having an opportunity to leave the city and be in nature.

We headed to Grundy Lake Provincial Park for the Thanksgiving weekend. Thanksgiving used to be the last camping trip of the year before we started going camping in the winter. However, since we usually stay in cabins and yurts in the winter, it is still the last camping trip in a tent. That is until we pluck up the courage to try winter tenting.

We visited Grundy Lake a few times in the past but that was a few years ago and mostly in the spring and summer. I had my doubts whether it was the best choice to see fall colours since I remembered lots of pines. It turned out I had nothing to worry about. We booked a campsite at the Poplar campground. When I got out of the tent on Saturday morning, I was bathed in the golden glow of the forest around. The ground had a thick carpet of foliage; the trees were all decked up in their best colours; and beautiful leaves twirled around in the breeze. Kids had lots of fun jumping and rolling in piles of leaves and showering them over each other.

Since our son was still getting over the remains of his cold, we decided to take it easy this time. We spent a lot of time by the campfire and cooked the most delicious food: gnocchi with vegetables, veggie burgers, lentil stew, mushroom and barley soup, and roasted root vegetables (by some universal camping law food always tastes so much better on a camping trip).

We took bike rides through the forest and hit a couple of easy short trails: Swan Lake and Gut Lake. Both trails looked spectacular – smooth rocks, whispering marshes and gurgling brooks framed by interlaced green pines and multicoloured maples, birches and aspens. For more pictures of the beautiful fall forest, visit my Random Pix blog.

By another universal camping law, time always flies so much faster out in the woods. Before we knew it, it was time to go back home. On our way back, I enjoyed the beautiful fall landscape flashing by and started planning next year’s trips. Where should we go next?

Summer Farewell at Pinery

September 5, 2014October 5, 2015 / Oleksandra Budna / 3 Comments

Our Labour Day weekend trip to Pinery Provincial Park is always bitter-sweet. As we are soaking in the last bits of summer, we also have to come to terms with the fact that our busy life of school lunches, after-school activities and bus schedules is just around the corner. This year the bitter-sweet flavour was even stronger than usual. And not because the summer finally decided to show up as we were about to say goodbye to it. We were also saying goodbye to our older son who is starting university this year and moving to Waterloo. Since camping has always been such a great part of our lives, it seemed very fitting for him to leave for college from a campground.

We have been coming to Pinery every summer (and once in the winter) for the past seven years. I still remember the first time we camped there. Our campsite turned out to be in one of those rare for Pinery clusters where all your neighbours are in plain view and where you are awakened by the sound of tents being unzipped as people hurry on their early morning, or occasional middle of the night, trips to the bathroom. After giving up on trying to go back to sleep, I crawled out of the tent and decided to go for a walk. I found the closest dune crossing and headed for the beach. Crunchy, coarse sand between my toes. Gentle warmth of the early morning sun at the back of my neck. The way all sounds cease to exist once you descend between the sand dunes. The feeling of awe as I climbed the dune and looked around.

To me, Pinery has something that speaks directly to a kid in each of us. It is home of quintessential summer and childlike joy. It’s the land of water fun, sandcastles, spectacular sand dunes and mesmerizing sunsets. It’s made of mid-summer dreams and languid musings.

This year was no different. The slightly colder than usual waters of Lake Huron were still filled with excited splashes and delighted screams. The sandy beach (or, as our friends’ three-year-old son once called it, a huge sandbox) with its endless building possibilities was full of adults and kids alike working on their sandcastles and forts. In the evening, as the excitement of the day faded away, crowds of campers would return to the beach to watch the sun dip into the lake. It’s always inspiring to see people waiting for something other than a traffic light change or their double-double in the Tim Hortons drive-through.

While the beach is one of the main park attractions, there are lots of other things to do at Pinery: hike trails, check out the Visitor Centre, watch wildlife, paddle along the Old Ausable Channel or go fishing. One of our favourite activities is biking along the 14-kilometre Savannah Trail followed by ice-cream. This year was no exception. The trail was fun, the ice-cream was delicious.

Unfortunately, as all things in life, the trip came to an end. Our son moved to Waterloo. We took our ritual end-of-summer dip in Lake Huron, stopped for fish’n’chips at Denny’s in Grand Bend and headed towards our back-to-school life. Until next year!

A Different Side of Bon Echo: Hiking the Abes and Essens Trail

August 21, 2014July 5, 2016 / Oleksandra Budna / 8 Comments

Every year, we like to try a new outdoor activity. Last year, we went white-water rafting at Glacier National Park in Montana. The year before, we tried sea kayaking at Hopewell Rocks in New Brunswick. And before that, it was our first multi-day canoe trip through Algonquin’s Barron Canyon. This year, we decided to go on an overnight backpacking trip. We’ve done a fair share of hiking but all of the trails were short and could be finished in one day.

For our overnight adventure, we picked the Abes and Essens Lake Trail in Bon Echo Provincial Park. It seemed like a good opportunity to experience a different side of Bon Echo. We camped at this park before but stayed at one of the campgrounds close to Mazinaw Lake and those tend to get overcrowded, especially on weekends.

The trail is only 17 km long and can certainly be covered in a day but also has five campsites along the way for those who’d like to camp overnight. We booked site #530 on Little Rock Lake. Our plan was to cover most of the trail on the first day. That way we wouldn’t have to rush packing the next morning and still have plenty of time to finish the trail and drive back to Toronto.

We arrived in Bon Echo late on Friday and stayed the first night on one of the sites at the Hardwood Hills campground. In all our years of front-country camping, we have never been anywhere this quiet. That was probably why we slept in. Even our younger son, who usually wakes sometime between six and seven, slept until 11. So if you are looking for peace and quiet but without all the work of back-country camping you should check it out. Plus the campsites are pretty big and private, especially further away from the comfort station.

The next morning, we packed up our tent, made our favourite Power Breakfast to keep us going, picked up our permit from the office and set out on a trail around 1:30. We started at the trail end, which is a bit down the road from the trail parking lot. The Abes and Essens Lake Trail has three loops: 4, 9 and 17 km. At the beginning we met quite a few people finishing the first loop. As we passed the first fork, the number of people dropped significantly. We met lovely campers at site 526 and there were a bunch of tents set up on site 527. Once we got to loop three, we stopped for lunch and some rest.

The scenery wasn’t breathtaking but it was pretty with small lakes, rocky shores and beautiful flowers. As for the terrain, there were some ups and downs but overall the trail was not difficult. We had to take off our shoes to cross the stream leading into Abes. There were a few rocks you could use to skip across but we didn’t want to risk getting all our stuff wet.

There were two more sites on Abes Lake, both occupied and looking pretty big. Once we got past Abes, the trail became really overgrown and that’s where I tumbled over and hurt my ankle. Even as I was falling down, two thoughts shot through my mind: What if I broke something? How are we getting out of here? Once the pain became less intense, we figured it wasn’t a fracture after all and since the only way to get out of there was to keep walking we had to move on. My husband piled up my backpack on top of his own, my kids found me a nice stick and I just hopped along.

The chunk of the trail between Abes and Little Rock Lake was probably the worst part of our trip. And not only because I was hurting and slow. It was really overgrown and at times hard to see the trail. Mosquitoes were ruthless and after a while our younger son, who is a human mosquito magnet, got really cranky. So after two hours of mosquitoes buzzing, my ankle throbbing and my son complaining, an orange campsite sign was a welcome sight. Since it was already almost seven and my foot didn’t look too bad, we decided to stick to our original plan and camp there.

Site 530 is the only one on the lake and since no one seems to be hiking along loop three, not a single person passed our site during our stay there. As I was lying on the rocky shore with my foot stuck into the lake, breathing in the solitude and tranquility, I realized that’s what happiness felt like. There were clouds of dragon flies and damselflies swooshing above and it made our son very happy since they eat mosquitoes. The way he put it: this is a blessing and it’s beautiful too.

Just to recap the rest of our stay. The site had a beautiful view of the lake but hardly any space for a tent. After some turning this way and that, we managed to squeeze it onto a tiny piece of soil between the rocks. On our way out, further down the trail, we did find more space that could be used for a tent and someone had obvious done that before. After the tent was up, we made a minestrone soup but added too much lentils and dried vegetables so it turned into a minestrone stew. Our kids proclaimed it the best meal ever. The next day, while my husband and kids were packing, I was soaking up vitamin D, cooling my ankle in the lake and making friends with minnows and tadpoles.

It took us two hours to finish the trail. We stopped at Mazinaw Lake for a swim to wash off dirt and sweat, grabbed some ice-cream in Cloyne, dropped off kids at home and headed to an emergency room.

Ah, memories…

Canoeing in Kawartha Highlands

August 12, 2014February 13, 2018 / Oleksandra Budna / 4 Comments

Kawartha Highlands Provincial Park, one of the largest in Ontario, offers almost 400 square kilometers of wilderness and majestic beauty of Canadian Shield. Located in south-central Ontario, it is only 200 km away from Toronto, a perfect destination for a weekend canoe trip. In 2011, it became an operational park with over 100 backcountry campsites that can mainly be reached by a canoe (there is no car camping available in the park). Each site has a picnic table, a fire ring with a grate, and a privy toilet, a.k.a. thunder box.