RPod Adventures - 2021

This year while we are still in the pandemic I decided that I would just stay in the province of Ontario.  It was hard making reservations as we were in lockdown and it seemed like everyone wanted to go camping.  You had to be online early in the morning the day the sites opened for booking or you would lose out.  We made reservations staring after the May long weekend.  The first reservation had to be cancelled as we were still under lockdown, so no camping at Bon Echo this year. We changed the dates of our Algonquin Pog Lake trip, then cancelled those dates after booking later dates at the Algonquin Lake of Two Rivers campground.  Well, my youngest sister and I cancelled our reservations, another sister and her husband kept their reservation and made it a ten day trip.  When the province lifted the lockdown, my youngest sister, her husband and I got in a short trip to Silver Lake Provincial Park.

None of us had been to Silver Lake, it's right on Highway 7 through Ontario so we thought it might be noisy at night but it wasn't bad at all.  We were only there for three nights. We had nice pull through sites. I had my brother in law pull my trailer through the wrong way so that we would be facing each other.  

My sister and I went to a conservation area near by that had a Lady Slipper colony. We were lucky to find that they had bloomed a bit early this year. I don't think I had ever seen so many Lady Slippers.  The pictures don't do it justice. The dogs were allowed on the boardwalk which due to COVID was supposed to be one way but some people walked it in the wrong direction.  

The whole boardwalk is only a little more than 400 m so we walked it twice and also stopped to do a short lookout trail at the same conservation area.

We had fairly good weather; the only problem was Gypsy Moth caterpillars. They were everywhere, you had to watch where you sat so as not to squish them. Many of the trees had most of their leaves eaten by these voracious little critters. It always sounded like it was raining under the tarp due to leaf litter and falling caterpillars. 

There's a nice little beach in the park. We didn't go swimming though as it was rather cool. There's also a rather nice little boardwalk trail through a marsh that connects the campground loops. 

Our next trip after a two day stop at home for a shower and groceries was Algonquin Park at the Lake of Two Rivers campground. This trip would see another of my sisters and her husband join us. Since they were already camping nearby, they arrived first but I wasn't that far behind them. Again I had one of my brother in laws back me in as the space was a little tight and I wanted to be in my site on a angle.  We ended using my site the most as the fire pit was the easiest to tarp. 

We did a couple hikes and couple fairly easy walks in Algonquin. One trail was right across from the campground so we were able to just walk down the highway a bit to get to the trailhead. Another hike was on the Lookout trail, this wasn't a long hike but the ascent and descent were rather steep. We also went to the Logging Museum and the Spruce Bog boardwalk, both easy walks. 

The photos above are all at the Logging Museum. There is a small indoor display which was also open but with COVID they had to limit the number of people inside. 

The Spruce Bog boardwalk is another easy walk. We saw a mother grouse with her chicks. The chicks were all down on the ground while mum warned us off.

From the top of the Lookout Trail, we could see the Lake of Two Rivers off in the distance. Algonquin park is huge, there are many campgrounds right on the Highway 60 corridor but there are plenty of campgrounds in the interior of the park as well as backcountry campgrounds. At the campground where we were, there was a restaurant, camp store and gift shop located just outside the campground right on the highway, so that made getting ice and anything else we had forgotten rather easy. The campground also had a good beach and even a small dog beach. Again we didn't go swimming as the weather was rather cool; one night it was very cold, single digit temperatures in late June.  The only problem we had, other than no potable water in the campground, was that we had power surges, which blew out my Keurig coffee maker and the 30 amp circuit breaker on my sister's little trailer.  I'll have to invest in a surge protector, but they're rather expensive. I replaced my Keurig and I'll just remember to unplug it when it's not being used for now.

Anyway, that's the first two adventures of this second COVID summer. I'm off to Presqu'ile Provincial Park for the next adventure.