July 3rd, 2006 - Algonquin Canada Day
On the Canada Day weekend in 2006, Myself and a few friends went to Algonquin Park to relax and do some simple site camping. Our site was fairly secluded, and had a lot of high trees which we used to hang an antenna. We set up a ham radio and did some DXing.
The first night was very interesting, the sky was clearing up from after a rainfall, and the stars were coming out in full force. Jeff and I walked all over the park that night in the darkness. We stayed down at the beach for a long time watching the stars, and the distant thunder storm flashing in the sky. It was amazing!
The 2nd day we went to Whitney for breakfast, and collected liquor and various other food supplies from the local store. We had breakfast at the Mad Musher. The Mad Musher is a nice restaurant right in downtown Whitney. We used to frequent the Whitney Diner across the street, however they changed their menu and no longer serve all day breakfast - which is very disappointing. Anyhow, we headed back to camp and got drunk... it was great!
The 3rd day (Saturday) we went to various exhibits around the park. First we went to the Art Museum where we marveled at the stunning paintings and sculptures created by people visiting Algonquin. Some of the paintings were so high definition you would swear it was a photograph.
Then we visited the Algonquin Logging Museum... We walked all around the outdoor exhibit and saw / read how logging started in the park, and how they used to log in such remote places way back in the day.
After that, we drove to Whitney again since we were fairly close, and we picked up food for our dinner. We drove back and sat around the campsite for a long time. The chipmunks and red squirells were getting very friendly... to the point where we had to discourage them... Anyhow, we made some dinner and some of us tripped on shrooms and some of us got drunk. Tripping on shrooms is much like getting drunk, however your brain activity increases. Your vision improves 10 fold, easily. and you can see in the dark.
We ended up going for a walk that night, through the park in the pitch black with no flashlights. As usual we ended up at the beach, and we sat there and watched the stars and did some morse code communication with campers on the other side of the lake with our emergency flashlight. Then a group of Russians came out to the beach and got naked and started skinny dipping right in front of us, they didn't know we were there. we quietly watched, laughing at them. They got out and as they were drying off, a loon started calling from the other side of the lake. They tried calling back to it, and their attempt was so horrible that we cracked up laughing - but we stayed quiet none the less. Anyhow, we wanted to get back to camp, so we stood up and walked past the Russians and they looked at us like... WTF? where did they come from? Anyhow we ended up sitting around the campfire for a while and then going to bed around 3 am or so...
The next morning I woke up fairly early. I took this photo of myself as I was reading thru a map book looking for new adventures. We ended up going to the beach and there we found a ton of people. Several were canoeing. One group in particular who we will call Team Rubber, brought a brand new inflatable rubber raft to go canoeing with on the lake. now that is all well and good, however there was a bit of a wind and current this day. The two guys didn't really know how to paddle and within minutes they had floated away and into a swamp. Several canoeists went to help them - however none of them could do anything to help. For whatever reason one of the Team Rubber occupants jumped out of the raft and went for a swim. This was great other then the fact that the wind was pushing the raft faster then the guy who was swimming, could swim !
Eventually, somehow, the guy in the raft got back to the beach. He was actually paddling a lot better at this point then when he first started off. I still have no clue where the guy who jumped off the raft went to. Anyhow, we went back to camp, and we wrote some HAM Radio tests. I got a 84% on my advanced test, which I was happy about, as I didn't really study. Then we drove home around 9 pm or so on Sunday night. We were planning on staying for Monday, but we had already had such a great weekend, we decided to head home so we had an extra day to clean up and get stuff taken care of prior to having to go back to work. All in all, it was a great weekend.