Canada Day Cottaging Part 2

With all of those lakes sitting around, we figured that we should make some use of the available nautical equipment, so we borrowed a canoe and went for a paddle on the lake.  Jax hates the water, but he got into the canoe with a bit of coaxing, and he seemed to be ok after a bit.  

Captain Jax, king of the lake!

We tried to get Jax to swim, but he wasn't really having much fun.  He would sooner be in the boat than the lake, methinks.  The lakes were actually pretty good for swimming - clear and cool but not too cold.

Canoeing is hard work.

We took a drive up to Algonquin Provincial Park, which is a protected park full of moose, beavers, and other native animals.  Amusingly, the side of the highway is full of dead porcupines - not quite kangaroos, but close enough.  We looked for moose which were supposed to be hanging out by the side of the road, but we didn't see any.

The park was beautiful - everything was so green, it was hard to imagine that it was all covered in snow 5 months ago.   Dogs are allowed in provincial parks too, so it was nice for Jax to have a good walk somewhere new.  He was rather interested in the beaver-eaten tree stumps, but we didn't see any beavers.  Apparently in summer they eat water-lilies, so they stay in their ponds - they only need to leave the safety of the pond in autumn (braving the prowling wolves).

This is a beaver lodge - these were dotted around little flat lakes everywhere throughout the park.  The beavers have created all of the lakes with their damming activities, creating the ecosystem where all sorts of creatures (like moose) can live.

Here's a beaver dam - it's hard to see, but they've dammed the entire river on the right, causing the lake on the right.  The water on the left is a trickle, so the plants have grown over it.

The whole park was bright green - in fact everywhere we drove was picturesque green trees and blue lakes.  You can even see a beaver lodge in the lake here.

All in all it was a fantastic first Canada Day for us, and for Jax too.  Hopefully we can get out into the lake country again sometime and find those elusive moose!

Canada Day Cottaging Part 1

Happy Canada Day everyone!  (Yes, that's a Tim Hortons Canada Day donut.)

For our first Canada Day, we decided to do as the locals do, so we rented a cottage for the weekend about 2.5 hours north and drove up into lake country.

Before I moved to Canada, I knew they had big lakes, but what I didn't get is that there are a lot of small lakes too, and I mean a lot.

Every one of those is a lake suitable for swimming, canoeing, maybe fishing.  So the enterprising Canadians build cottages around the lakes, and retreat to them over summer.

A lot of them look like this:

They have their own dock, and sometimes a tiny piece of sand, and usually an outdoor entertaining space of some type with some outdoor chairs and whatnot, and a BBQ.  The green covered area you see there is a mosquito-netted hut, because the entire area is home to the biggest and most bloodthirsty population of mosquitoes I have ever encountered.

So here was our Canada Day - having BBQs on the world's tiniest BBQ, and chilling out.  Here's Stephen and Jax cooking the BBQ.  It's about 8pm in this photo - we get a lot of daylight at the moment.

Steaks, potatoes and sausages!  They don't really seem to have the same type of sausages here as in Australia (or if they do, we can't find them) - they're all crazy smoked sausages instead.  Not so tasty.  BBQ baked potatoes are nice though.

Jax was getting into the Canada Day spirit :)