Saturday June 20, 2009

It was cloudy all day today. It reached 22C (72F) for a high.

This morning I walked in the campground. There is a nice trail that's kind of a logging road that runs for quite a distance and apparently goes in the back of the campground too but I didn't find that trail this morning. Anyway it was a beautiful walk in the woods. I had sprayed myself with Deet and had my walking stick in case I should encounter any beasties.

Starting out - some of the seasonal sites on the right

A fork in the road - I took the one to the left first

This fork went down by the Ottawa River

Then I came back and took the fork to the right

It just sort of ended


This morning and the first part of the afternoon we just hung out at the RV. It wasn't a nice day to go out and take scenery photos. Mid-afternoon we drove into Mattawa (Meeting of the Waters), about 25 minutes away as that's the closest place to get diesel fuel (85.9 cents/litre which was the same as we paid in Ottawa 2 days ago) and I also wanted a few groceries so I stopped at the local IGA Foodland. I don't know how the people here live if they have to rely on that store. The closest large places to shop are Pembroke (82 km/49 mi) to the east and North Bay (142 km/85 mi) to the west so it's not a hop, skid and a jump away.

Downtown Mattawa
Lots of pretty wildflowers in the park by the Mattawa River

When I got home I prepared Pork Adobo for us for dinner tomorrow night and made breakfast for dinner for tonight.

After dinner and dishes, I went to the campground showers to have a shower. NO HOT WATER! I took a shower anyway since I was there and I was hot and tired anyway.

Friday June 19, 2009 - We're on the Move!

We didn't know if we were going to leave today or not. It was supposed to be rainy. Gordon woke me at 6 and asked me if I wanted to leave. I told him it was up to him so he went away and came back at 6:30 and said that we were going to try it.

We left Carleton Place at 8:53 a.m. under cloudy skies and 17C (63F). We weren't far away from the RV Park when the sun came out and stayed out for most of today's drive.

On our way

We stopped for a very short time for construction on this bridge

Pretty wildflowers along the road

Coming into Deux Rivieres

We arrived at Antlers Kingfisher Lodge & Campground around 11:50 a.m. and were set up by about 1:30 p.m. It's a pretty little campground "bounded by the splendor of the Laurentian Mountains along The Lake Temiskaming-Ottawa River Waterway to the North and the pristine wilderness of Algonquin Provincial Park to the South". It's a bit noisy since it's right off the Trans Canada Highway which is quite busy being the only road going north and west.

When we arrived the shorts came out. It's amazing that we had to come to the north to get warm weather but today is indeed a beautiful day!

An inlet of the Ottawa River right in front of us



Our site

View from our side window


After getting set up we went on a drive recommended by the owner of the campground. It's a gravel road that takes you into Algonquin Provincial Park. He said there were often moose there in the swampy areas. Away we went. We stopped at the Algonquin Park Visitor Centre and a pass for the park was $13/day. We elected not to buy it as it was 26 km (16 mi) before we would even get to the park. I'm glad we didn't as we'd had enough of the gravel road by the time we got to the park entrance an NO MOOSE! We did however see a momma bear and her cub running across the road on the way back. They were too fast for photos though.

Heading toward Algonquin Park on the Brent Road

A couple of marshy areas, but no moose!









We started to take a side trip to Wendigo Lake but ran into water on the road so we decided not to go through it although I'm sure it wouldn't have been a problem.

Lilies and lily pads along the road



Once we got back to the highway we continued east to a little park that we had passed on the way in. It was quite pretty there.

Views from the picnic area at the park



Pretty blue dragonfly

Water iris


We reached 30C (86F) today and we had to come to the north woods to get that kind of warmth! We even have the air conditioner on!

We're sure glad we decided to leave today since it turned out to be so nice.

Thursday June 18, 2009

Today was cloudy, rainy and cool. The rain was off and on but it wasn't a nice day. Luckily it wasn't raining when I went for my walk. The turtles were out laying their eggs by the side of the road this morning. I saw four but only had my phone camera so Gordon went out when I got back and got some photos, this one being one of them.

We had errands to do in Ottawa today and were invited for dinner at my sister's place. We got our prescriptions to do us until the end of September and did some other things arriving at my sister's after she got home from work.

We had a good dinner of roast pork, whipped potatoes, corn and strawberries and ice cream for desert. Unfortunately I can't eat the ice cream. The whole dinner was excellent and the best part was we got to spend it with Margie and John and an extra bonus, I didn't have to cook!

Wednesday June 17, 2009

It was a beautiful sunny morning with a light breeze and 21C (70F). I had a lovely walk and did my stretching exercises down by the Mississippi River.

I sat outside reading my Dean Koontz novel this morning while my hair dried.

I went into Carleton Place around 2 p.m. as I wanted to check my blood pressure and pick up a few items. I got parked downtown, found the restaurant and walked around looking in some of the shops. I sat outside on the restaurant patio and I wasn't there long when Susan arrived. We had a great time picking up where we left off and bringing each other up to date on our lives over the past fifteen years. The meal was good too and Susan treated me, thanks, Susan! Hopefully we'll be able to get together again before we head south.

Tuesday June 16, 2009

It was another bright, sunny, warm morning for my walk. We did have some clouding over off and on during the day but it was mostly a beautiful day.

I spent most of the morning on the computer. Gordon was taking apart his old laptop that gave up the ghost when we were in Texas in the winter and recovered the hard drive out of it. The hard drive still works so we drove in to Ottawa to get an enclosure for it so now we have another external hard drive.

Not much going on here today. We decided not to do much since we'll be busy the next couple of days before we leave on Friday.

I did go for a walk down to the river. The frogs are now out and there's this old bullfrog that makes a big racket. Here are some of the frogs.





Wild flowers in the park



Looking toward the Mississippi

Monday June 15, 2009

Today was a mostly working day for me. Up at about 7:30 a.m. cloudy 14C (57F).walked, did my exercises, had breakfast.

I had changed the bed yesterday so separated the clothes, Gordon put them in the truck and I was off to the laundromat. Surprisingly for a Monday morning, there weren't many people there so the laundry went quite quickly.

Then off to Walmart to part with some of my money. I'm stocking up for our trip to the great white north as there aren't many towns let alone grocery stores where we're going.

Back to the RV to put everything away, read a bit, had a brief nap, then vacuumed the place. I had washed all the rugs so now they have a clean floor to lay on!

Last night on Facebook I was chatting with a lady that I used to work with at State Farm. I haven't seen her since 1994 so we're getting together for an early dinner on Wednesday night. We used to do ceramics together, we took a picture framing course, mind you we didn't make a lot of the classes since we'd either go out for dinner or have dinner at my place and dinner turned in to drinking voracious quantities of wine. Those were the days and probably what contributed to my reflux disease! Oh well, it was fun at the time.

Today's photo was taken by Gordon recently of one of the cows in the area. She's either licking her nose or flirting with my husband!

Sunday June 14, 2009

Today started out as a beautiful day, bright sunshine and 21C (70F). I had a nice walk.

I went outside to sit and read and decided I needed to get some work done. So Gordon backed the truck up to the RV, I got my stuff ready and I used my Phab to get the bugs off the nose.

After a shower, I went to take some photos of the new flowers that were out today.




I also got our receipts updated to my spreadsheet. This month is going to be grizzly!

That about does it for my day!