Pas de 'moose', ni de 'caribou' mais weekend super dans le Parc Algonquin
A genuinely fun and full weekend in the Algonquin Park. There were small and slightly bigger adventures, car problems and unexpected circumstances, but this whole minitrip to Ontario's biggest Provincial Park turned out to be one of my better weekends on Canadian soil. But let's not rush and begin at the beginning.
SATURDAY
Saturday morning, 8.45am, all - or nearly all, because Lynette and Charlotte got a bit lost - were present in front of 'Rent-a-wreck' (what's in a name...), unfortunately we had to wait till 9.15 for Mr. Rent-a-wreck to arrive. After having arranged the paperwork, we took off in our 2 Ford Windstar minivans, Aurélie driving the first, Per driving the second. Our mapquest online directions quickly turned out to be not as accurate as I had hoped, which made us lose about 40 minutes. Around 11am we were well on our way north, towards Barry's Bay and the park. The landscape wasn't awsome, however, Aurélie did remark at some point: ça commence quand-même à faire des ondulations maintenant! Eh, je me demande, comment ça s'appelle, les petites collines? I didn't realise she was looking for the English word and I replied, obviously in one of my linguistic moods: Des 'collinettes' peut-être... First flaw of the trip... :)
Around 2.45 pm, we arrived in the park, and decided to do a small hiking track right away. We went up to Algonquin's visitors center, where the whole 'what's the difference between a moose and a caribou?' discussion was solved. Aurélie got confused with French translation of moose, which turned out to be élan, which however is not to be mistaken for a caribou, which is caribou in French. The visitors center had some good and interesting billboards and scenes about the animals we might encounter during our hiking trips: foxes, moose, beavers (and beaver dams), wolves, bears, ... Very confident to encounter at least one of those, we took off for the 1.5km Spruce Bog Boardwalk, which was a very nice walk of about half an hour on steady and firm paths. After that, we all felt up to another similar walk and headed toward the Beaver Pond trail. The park was absolutely beautiful, being covered in a thin layer of snow. We saw some quite impressing beaver dams and some amasing lakes. We didn't see, however, that its rating was 'moderate', while the first one was a trail open to the disabled. The Beaver Pond track turned out to be quite muddy and very rocky, and as it was nearly dusk, we realised halfway through that we might need some flash lights in order to find the way back. With Linas keeping everyone's spirits up by telling ghost stories in the dark forest, we hiked on. If it hadn't been for my flash light, we wouldn't have seen the arrow sign and we probably still would have been looking for the main road. We headed towards Barry's Bay, a very typical 'outback' village of 1 200 inhabitants; our little group of 13 constituted 1 percent of the population, just to give you an idea... :) We had a good meal in a nice place and arrived at 10ish at the Mountain View Motel, which appeared to be quite desolate. They had promised me to leave the keys in an envelope at the door, but no sign of the envelope nor keys at our arrival. Calling the owners wasn't really an option because no one had reach on their mobile phones, which made us realise just how much we were in Canada's outback. 20 minutes later, when we all started planning to spend the night in our cars, the owners arrived and gave us the keys to our cottage and room. We watched Harry Potter (and the goblet of fire) on television had crisps, biscuits and drinks and - most of us - went to bed at a reasonable hour.
SUNDAY
Despite the many night owls among us we managed to hit the road at around 9.45. We had a typical breakfast in one of those VERY American diners and arrived at the park around 12.30 We had decided earlier to do the 10 km Track & Tower Trail (moderate level) and set off, bien en forme. It was around 0°C, so mud and puddles were frozen, which made things a little less slippery than the evening before. It turned out to be a beautiful trail with parts of it along the lake. We all made it to the lookout point and had a breathtaking view of the Cache Lake. It took us the full 3 hours to get back to the cars. Luckily we took cookies and pretzels to prevent us from becoming hyper-faim ;). As we were all quite exhausted we were relieved to see the cars and get in to warm up a bit. But, as you might recall, our car rental firm was called 'rent-a-wreck' and of course, that name couldn't be taken as a joke. One of our minivans had, we thought, a flat battery. We sent the car that was still running to one of the visitor centers to get help. In the mean time, a very friendly Canadian hiker helped us out: we retried charging the battery and Linas discovered it was a security system problem and managed to start the car. The euphoria was great when we found ourselves back on the road. Our car did miss the encounter with two moose, but we were just happy to have our Windstar back in good shape! We headed for Toronto, but had dinner first in one of the less-than-2000-people towns along the road. The restaurant was all decorated for Christmas, very 'kitch' but extremely American (again). Just the way you see it in the films. We arrived back in Toronto safely at about 10pm, satisfied and slightly tired from a great trip up North!
It was the first time many of us really experienced Canada's country side (and cold!). The cars, the little towns, the motel, it all added up to a great weekend with a great group of people. We laughed a lot and just had a good time together. The dominating language was French, which didn't bother me at all. Les 3 Françaises are great girls and French just comes with their package :) I didn't mind at all and we were flexible anyway with language issues (Aurélie: c'est vachement 'cute' ça!)
Quote of the trip (this one had the whole car laughing). Aurélie was very impressed with the 5 speeds on the windscreen wipers and more or less screamed: 'Eh, les filles, il y a 5 speed pour les essuie-glaces! Essayons. Le premier.... (nothing much happend when putting them on speed 1) bon, c'est tous les quarts d'heure. Le deuxième... (not a lot of difference) allez, c'est tous les 10 minutes!
It's probably one of those things you had to be there to find it funny, but I luckily was there and thanks to our fine group we had an unforgettable weekend in Algonquin Provincial Park.
P.S.: as soon as people put their pictures online I will post some of them here. Check them out, the scenery is unrivalled!
SATURDAY
Saturday morning, 8.45am, all - or nearly all, because Lynette and Charlotte got a bit lost - were present in front of 'Rent-a-wreck' (what's in a name...), unfortunately we had to wait till 9.15 for Mr. Rent-a-wreck to arrive. After having arranged the paperwork, we took off in our 2 Ford Windstar minivans, Aurélie driving the first, Per driving the second. Our mapquest online directions quickly turned out to be not as accurate as I had hoped, which made us lose about 40 minutes. Around 11am we were well on our way north, towards Barry's Bay and the park. The landscape wasn't awsome, however, Aurélie did remark at some point: ça commence quand-même à faire des ondulations maintenant! Eh, je me demande, comment ça s'appelle, les petites collines? I didn't realise she was looking for the English word and I replied, obviously in one of my linguistic moods: Des 'collinettes' peut-être... First flaw of the trip... :)
Around 2.45 pm, we arrived in the park, and decided to do a small hiking track right away. We went up to Algonquin's visitors center, where the whole 'what's the difference between a moose and a caribou?' discussion was solved. Aurélie got confused with French translation of moose, which turned out to be élan, which however is not to be mistaken for a caribou, which is caribou in French. The visitors center had some good and interesting billboards and scenes about the animals we might encounter during our hiking trips: foxes, moose, beavers (and beaver dams), wolves, bears, ... Very confident to encounter at least one of those, we took off for the 1.5km Spruce Bog Boardwalk, which was a very nice walk of about half an hour on steady and firm paths. After that, we all felt up to another similar walk and headed toward the Beaver Pond trail. The park was absolutely beautiful, being covered in a thin layer of snow. We saw some quite impressing beaver dams and some amasing lakes. We didn't see, however, that its rating was 'moderate', while the first one was a trail open to the disabled. The Beaver Pond track turned out to be quite muddy and very rocky, and as it was nearly dusk, we realised halfway through that we might need some flash lights in order to find the way back. With Linas keeping everyone's spirits up by telling ghost stories in the dark forest, we hiked on. If it hadn't been for my flash light, we wouldn't have seen the arrow sign and we probably still would have been looking for the main road. We headed towards Barry's Bay, a very typical 'outback' village of 1 200 inhabitants; our little group of 13 constituted 1 percent of the population, just to give you an idea... :) We had a good meal in a nice place and arrived at 10ish at the Mountain View Motel, which appeared to be quite desolate. They had promised me to leave the keys in an envelope at the door, but no sign of the envelope nor keys at our arrival. Calling the owners wasn't really an option because no one had reach on their mobile phones, which made us realise just how much we were in Canada's outback. 20 minutes later, when we all started planning to spend the night in our cars, the owners arrived and gave us the keys to our cottage and room. We watched Harry Potter (and the goblet of fire) on television had crisps, biscuits and drinks and - most of us - went to bed at a reasonable hour.
SUNDAY
Despite the many night owls among us we managed to hit the road at around 9.45. We had a typical breakfast in one of those VERY American diners and arrived at the park around 12.30 We had decided earlier to do the 10 km Track & Tower Trail (moderate level) and set off, bien en forme. It was around 0°C, so mud and puddles were frozen, which made things a little less slippery than the evening before. It turned out to be a beautiful trail with parts of it along the lake. We all made it to the lookout point and had a breathtaking view of the Cache Lake. It took us the full 3 hours to get back to the cars. Luckily we took cookies and pretzels to prevent us from becoming hyper-faim ;). As we were all quite exhausted we were relieved to see the cars and get in to warm up a bit. But, as you might recall, our car rental firm was called 'rent-a-wreck' and of course, that name couldn't be taken as a joke. One of our minivans had, we thought, a flat battery. We sent the car that was still running to one of the visitor centers to get help. In the mean time, a very friendly Canadian hiker helped us out: we retried charging the battery and Linas discovered it was a security system problem and managed to start the car. The euphoria was great when we found ourselves back on the road. Our car did miss the encounter with two moose, but we were just happy to have our Windstar back in good shape! We headed for Toronto, but had dinner first in one of the less-than-2000-people towns along the road. The restaurant was all decorated for Christmas, very 'kitch' but extremely American (again). Just the way you see it in the films. We arrived back in Toronto safely at about 10pm, satisfied and slightly tired from a great trip up North!
It was the first time many of us really experienced Canada's country side (and cold!). The cars, the little towns, the motel, it all added up to a great weekend with a great group of people. We laughed a lot and just had a good time together. The dominating language was French, which didn't bother me at all. Les 3 Françaises are great girls and French just comes with their package :) I didn't mind at all and we were flexible anyway with language issues (Aurélie: c'est vachement 'cute' ça!)
Quote of the trip (this one had the whole car laughing). Aurélie was very impressed with the 5 speeds on the windscreen wipers and more or less screamed: 'Eh, les filles, il y a 5 speed pour les essuie-glaces! Essayons. Le premier.... (nothing much happend when putting them on speed 1) bon, c'est tous les quarts d'heure. Le deuxième... (not a lot of difference) allez, c'est tous les 10 minutes!
It's probably one of those things you had to be there to find it funny, but I luckily was there and thanks to our fine group we had an unforgettable weekend in Algonquin Provincial Park.
P.S.: as soon as people put their pictures online I will post some of them here. Check them out, the scenery is unrivalled!
posted by Anouk | 4:40 AM
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