Exploration Is Curiosity Put Into Action

The next morning was bright and beautiful. We were toasty warm in the cabin that night. Maybe even a bit too warm. I got up a bit earlier than the other girls and decided to go for a walk and spend some quiet time before everyone else got up. It was nice to get out and go down to the lake to do some quiet reflecting. 

A Darner dragonfly joined me on the dock. It's blue and green colouring matched the water and the reeds. 

After awhile I headed through the pine tree lined trail back up to the cabin to see if they were awake yet. 

Along the way I admired the beauty of an Orange Hawkweed flower. 

And a Calamints flower. 

I was wowed by the bright red of the whirly gig seeds of a Mountain maple tree. I had never seen any that were red before. I had only ever seen green ones. 

A little chipmunk was peeking out at me from behind some foliage. It looked to be eating some seed of some sort for breakfast. 

The only other person who seemed to be awake when I got back to the cabin was Julie, and she seemed to have the same idea as me on this beautiful morning. She was enjoying some quiet time. However, she had chosen to read a book. Since I didn't want to disturb her, and the others still weren't awake yet, I decided to continue my walk. 

I walked past the cabin and up the road that leads to the cabin. 

A little Oven Bird sat in a tree at the side of the road watching me. 

And another Grouse came onto the scene. There are so many Grouse in this park! 

When I got back to the cabin the second time, everyone was up and making breakfast. We spent our morning and early afternoon just hanging out and playing a few board games. By the time late afternoon rolled around, we got restless and decided to go and see the other side of the park. So, we hopped into the car and drove over to the main office at the north end of the park.  In hind sight,  this was probably the gate we should have gone to when we first arrived the day before. We could have driven down a different highway and it would have led to this gate house. It would have been much closer to our camp.  But you don't know what you don't know. 

Inside the north gatehouse, there was a small gift shop. The park employee only spoke French. So, Julie did all the talking for us. We had asked about the trails, and the lady suggested we try the suspension bridge trail. We were surprised by this and told her that we had been told at the other gate that it was shut down. But she insisted that it wasn't. We thought that it was strange that the employees at the north gatehouse had specifically told us we should go and check out that trail but the one at the south gate house said it was shut down. Which one was correct?  We never did find out because we decided that we didn't want to make a long drive (would have been about a half hour drive through the park) only to find out that we couldn't go on the trail.  We figured that we would maybe come back another year and try again then.

It was such a hot day out, that we enjoyed the air conditioned shop as we looked around at all the souvenirs for sale. Then we each bought an ice cream bar and headed outside to eat them.  

There was a large area filled with picnic tables by the lake. 

We chose one that provided a bit of shade and we sat down to eat our ice cream treats. 

Near by there was a jungle gym and sandy play area for kids to play at. 

This north gate house is where all the regular campsites were. I wasn't very impressed by them. They were much too wide open with no privacy. You could easily see the next site because there were no trees between them. This meant that there was also no shade. 

I suppose these sites would be ok if you had an RV. But if you were tenting it, these sites were not great. 

After eating our ice cream we needed to wash our hands and use the rest room.  The comfort station was inside the back of the gate house. The large stainless steel outdoor sink was pretty impressive. 

The washrooms were located through a door at the back. 

Inside was actually very nice. It was large and clean and new looking. There were flush toilets, plenty of sinks, and hot running water. 

Once we were back outside, we headed down to the lake. We had all day and we weren't on a time schedule, so we explored at our leisure. 

Down at the lake there were shacks where you could rent canoes and where they stored gas for motor boats. 

There was a dock and all sorts of red and green canoes as well as blue kayaks. 

People could launch their boats from a large gravel area at the lake. 

We walked back up towards the gate house and noticed that there was another camping section down a little side road. I hadn't noticed it at first because it was tucked away behind a wooden garbage can shelter. 

These appeared to be the "ready to camp" and the walk-in sites.  I explored carefully because I didn't want to disturb anyone if there was someone camping there.  

Just like many of the other walk-in sites that I have seen, these ones were provided with carts that you could use to bring your belongings from your vehicle to your camp site. 

​The first site I came to was site number 5. 

It was a "ready to camp" site with a big canvas tent set up on a wooden platform. No one was there but I still didn't stay long.  You couldn't see inside, but on the outside it had chairs, and a dish rack and you could see that there was a propane tank supplied with it. Presumably for a propane cook stove, I would imagine. 

It also had a fire pit with an interesting looking grill on top. The grill seemed to have handles on either side. 

Many of the walk-in sites were not that great. They were very small or not private enough.  

Some were a bit too shady. 

One of the best ones was site number fourteen.  It probably had the most room of all the walk-in sites. 

It also seemed to have a good balance of shade to sun.  

When we had seen all there was to see, we got back into the car and drove back to camp. We wanted to cook supper at the fire pit tonight so we checked the fire danger levels before we left the gate house. It was a little on the "be careful" side, but there was no fire ban, so we were happy about that. 

Back at camp we got the fire started and did a search for sticks that w could use to cook our hot dogs and marshmallows on. 

We noticed that our fire pit also had an adjustable grill with handles on it. This was the first time we had seen grills quite like them. 

We brought out all the fixin's for home made mini pizzas. All you need is some bread and butter (or garlic butter), some pepperoni's, grated cheese and tomato sauce. 

Layer it all together in a frying pan, throw some tin foil over top, and cook it until the cheese melts and the bread toasts. So simple and so good! 

While we waited for the pizzas to cook, we cooked some hot dogs over the coals. 

After supper we sat around the fire until it had burnt out and until the day turned to evening. 

As the day wound down, we made our way back down to the lake to see if we could see the sunset.  

There wasn't much of a sunset but there was enough to be able to catch a little bit of pinks and purples just above the tree line. 

As darkness settled, we went into our cozy cottage and played board games and drank our drinks and laughed and had a great time. Tomorrow would come all to fast. Tomorrow we had to go home. 

And in no time at all, morning came and it was time to go.  Another year of glamping at the cabin was over. We had barely began packing up when we started talking about what we would do next year. 

As we drove down the road we were greeted with a farewell party of Grouse. 

There were five in all and they were in no hurry to get out of the way. We took our time watching them cross because we were in no hurry to get back to the city and to the daily grind either. 

As we watched the last of them disappear into the bush we felt lucky to have had the opportunity to see them and to have had such a great weekend with wonderful friends.