Andie and I are back from our mini-vacation in South River, which is half-way between Huntsville and North Bay (near Algonquin Park).
We stayed at the colourful Algonquin Motel, which sells unique glass beads made on the premises.
The main reason is to visit my cousins and their dog sledding operation, Chocpaw Expeditions, during the summer quiet period. The dogs are all trained to be good with strangers. Here is Andie with a favourite.
These Alaskan Huskies are working dogs; they don’t all look alike.
Several times a day the dogs are cleaned up after, fed, watered, inspected, and cared for.
We did a little bit of hiking. The picture below shows where our hike on the Old Nipissing Road came to a soggy halt.
But it was nice to swim.
And very, very nice to visit family.
Now I’m off again to take care of my ancient Dad.
Sunday, 20 August 2006 at 13:24
Algonquin Motel’s Web site is http://www.algonquinmotel.ca/. Their diner is open only in the morning, but it’s worth stopping in if you’re driving Highway 11 (the world’s longest street; yeah, right) between Huntsville and North Bay.
During our mini-vacation I got my first speeding ticket in more than 19 years in the Algonquin’s parking lot.
Sunday, 20 August 2006 at 13:29
Another comment: about the Nipissing Road, you can look at http://www.onlink.net/~woodland/trail.htm. If you scroll down, the paragraph under “From Magnetawan to Commanda” that begins “For the next 2 km …” describes where we attempted to walk.
The picture shows monado’s granddaughter & me discussing just how deep that slough is. Last year I ran this, and managed to get across with just a bit of oily mud on my shoes. This year it was probably thigh-deep in the middle, waist-deep on Andie.
monado remarked to me that Andie looks like Christopher Robin in the picture.
Sunday, 20 August 2006 at 13:34
My final comment, honest: the property on the west side of the Nipissing Road was posted with a spectacular number of No Trespassing signs, far more than one usually sees. The property on the east had one (I didn’t see it). A property has to be “posted” if you want to have folks on the property charged under the Trespass to Property Act, but my feeling is that the kind of folks you want to keep off your property are not deterred by No Trespassing signs; but the kind of folks you wouldn’t mind (such as our little hiking group) are.