Skiing at Windy Lake Provincial Park

Winter adventures at Windy Lake or how to do winter right in three easy steps (with video)

/ Oleksandra Budna / 2 Comments

It seems weird to be publishing a post about winter when spring is already in full swing – mud, rain and all. Still as I looked back at another great winter of outdoor adventures, I felt this often maligned season deserved some praise and love. So here we go.

Winter took some time coming in Toronto. But when it finally arrived, it more than made up for its earlier absence bringing record snow falls, freezing temperatures, freezing rain, wind storms, snow storms, even a snow day at schools, which hasn’t happened in a few years. All of this prompted ominous warnings from weather experts urging everyone to not leave the house ever again and, of course, endless complaints about what is actually a pretty normal winter behaviour. As we huddled in bus stops and cursed in traffic jams, we forgot that winter is more than the inconveniences it causes. With Family Day weekend approaching, we were determined to remind ourselves how to do winter right.

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Escape into solitude or winter yurting at Windy Lake

/ Oleksandra Budna / 3 Comments

There is often a moment at the end of a trip when the packing is done, I get whatever firewood we have left and start the fire. That’s my small attempt to soak up the last of the camping magic along with some smoke and to postpone the moment of returning to the world of glass and concrete. Don’t get me wrong: city life has its charms. Occasionally, though, the traffic, the noise, and, most importantly, constant presence of people becomes too much. That’s why moments like these are a necessity. An escape into solitude. An opportunity to recharge.

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Our last winter trip of the season at Windy Lake

/ Oleksandra Budna / 4 Comments

Spring is officially here. And even if the temperatures took a bit of a plunge this week, the signs of nature awakening are definitely in the air. Winter, however, didn’t go away without a fight staging a magnificent comeback last week, especially in south-western Ontario and from what I heard along the east coast. So we thought even if winter this year was slightly disappointing weather-wise in our part of the world, it still brought us some memorable moments, like a New Year’s trip to Gatineau or a surprisingly warm Family Day weekend at Killarney  and therefore deserved a proper send-off. Windy Lake Provincial Park seemed like a good place for our last glamping trip of the winter. The park’s northern location carried a promise of snow. Plus we’d never camped there before.

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