We wake up and realise what a stunning place we’re in, the hosts home is a beautiful glass fronted cottage with gardens landscaped right down to pontoons on Sandy lake which is spring fed and Sandy bottomed. What a treat to have 2 lovely lake locations in a row? Our cabin is a great break from being in the van but oh my it’s hot! Over 35 degrees!
We mess about on the lake having a swim and Alex tries to catch some crawfish and fish swimming under the pontoon in a bucket. There are huge bass and see one we nickname mamma fishy swimming in tight circles and behaving territorially that we guess is protecting eggs. There are dragonflies everywhere which is great and they eat 3k mozzies a day - still lots of biters around but no black fly here as they don’t have them in this location . We hear lots of loons here, one of their calls we’ve decided sounds like a drunk hyena! We can also hear frogs making odd farting noises from the bank but don’t spot them.
We borrow a fishing rod as we realise Guy has left Alex’s behind (cue very upset little bean as the rod was his prize possession) and try to fish we don’t can’t anything even though we can see millions of fish (where are you Robbie??) but we do see the most enormous black carp (about 3ft long and 1ft deep).
We have our first siesta snooze as the temperature rockets and even I can’t face being on the water as I can feel my skin crisping!
To manage little bean’s sadness at losing his rod we endeavour to replace it and cycle into buckhorn the nearest little village about 10km away and find a great bait and tackle store and buy him a lovely new rod and some bits (happiness restored!) Buckhorn is a lovely place in the middle of the Trent Severn connected lakes it looks just like the canals and locks at home (except the giant crystal coloured lakes of course!) After a wine pit stop we spot a bar and grill right next to the locks and grab some dinner in the sun. We get chatting to Mike in his little tender who sees Alex looking for creatures and hunting crawfish at the edge of the canal. Mike is embarking on a sailing loop around the Great Lakes from the states with his wife and sounds like an amazing adventure. He teaches Alex he needs a stick, string and a big of meat, the put a net under this and to hold it still in the water wait for the crawfish to come out and life the net! Mike disappears and Alex tried this and catches his first crawfish! Minutes later Mike reappears and he has very kindly brought his fishing rod back from his boat and tackle (a bobber) and some fresh worms from the bait shop especially for Alex. He spends the next hour teaching Alex how to cast and hook fish, how to release them and what all the fish are - so very lovely. He even teaches how best to take photographs so the fish looks massive!
Building on Robbie's lovely lessons at our last stop Alex is starting to really learn and it’s fab to see. Mike tells us after 60 years being a fisherman it’s more joyful for him to now see youngsters catch their first fish than to catch his own.
The downside is Alex is now desperate for his own worms…in the van, and doesn’t really like breaking them into pieces to use so guess who gets that job? Mum urggggh!
We cycle back at dusk and have a couple of head on collisions with dragonflies (as disgusting as it sounds) and knock to deliver some wine to our hosts Marc and Rhonda.
It’s a little late but they kindly invite us in and we spend a lovely couple of hours chatting and sharing a beer in their bar area. Marc makes his own maple syrup form the sugar maples on their property and he thoughtfully gives us a bottle to take with us. Rhonda is a gifted artist and shows us some of her work around the house in the form of glass mosaics and oil paintings which are stunning! They are keen gardeners like us and we’re looking forward to seeing their garden.
It’s hot again the following day but we’re excited to go to petroglyphs national park where there are canada’s largest known concentration of Indigenous rock carvings (petroglyphs), depicting turtles, snakes, birds, humans and more; this sacred site is known as “The Teaching Rocks" that were used by indigenous tribes to teach their members about significant events such as how the earth was formed and things like fertility.
But first we need to find propane - another stop and another miss we’re beginning to feel jinxed and worried our fridge (and cold beers) will soon be out of juice! We finally find a place on our 7th go and find an app that will guide us to specific locations in future - there are many places that will fill up portable bottles but not so many that have the right hoses and adapters to fill up on board tanks.
We finally get to petroglyphs park, and take a walk through the forest to the glyphs. As they are carved into soft limestone and were being eroded they have been covered with a big glass and concrete shroud. They are beautifully intact and clear and the stories about the different symbols explained to us by one of the Ojibwe tribe who are tasked with the spiritual protection of the rocks are inspiring. The carvings are now black in colour but were once white. Apparently an over zealous archaeologist came along and coloured them all in with a black wax crayon to make them stand out (!!) The ojibwe lady we talk to tells us when she was young and before the protective cover was put in place you could hear water tinkling through the rocks that sounded like voices and she wondered if this was why this location was selected for the carvings. Sadly due to the covering the water no longer flows and she tells us how sad she is that the air and water is too still around this spiritual site.
After a quick picnic in the park we abort a walk as we felt like we were getting eaten alive by the beasties and there was so much poison ivy right along the path we were worried Alex would get burned (apparently the effects of this stuff is really nasty- not something we have back home!)
Of course we had to get some worms on the way home (residing in the van ewww!) and we fished in the lake (very successfully and avoiding Mamma fishie) as a storm started to come in. Rhonda had kindly got their pedalo out for us so we had a family pedal down the lake past the lovely cottages and returned just as a storm started to arrive.
So dramatic to hear the thunder and watch the flashes of lightning and feel the huge temperature drop as the storm broke the hot weather.
With the rain forcing us indoors time to do some planning to work out how to get from Toronto to the Rockies!
We awake refreshed and repack the van and give it a bit of a clean to make sure we have space for Dr Zara whom we are collecting from Toronto later today (woohoo!). We have a quick look around Marc and Rhonda’s lovely veggie patch and greenhouse and see Marc’s wormery (Alex wants one!!)
We know there’s a little public beach with a shallow sandy beach perfect for kids on the lake on the way into buckhorn so we head there after a quick lunch and spend a beautiful couple of hours with me paddleboarding around the lake and alex hunting minnows in the shallows.
Then it’s off to the airport in Toronto!
Emma
コメント