Thursday, October 20, 2011

Algonquin

The day after we arrived at Riverwood, we packed a picnic lunch, and hit the road again. This time making tracks for Algonquin Park.
What fun to follow that ribbon of highway through more colorful rolling hills..
dotted with many beautiful lakes.
Just inside the gates to the park we came upon Brewer Lake and we stopped to stretch our legs and take a few pictures.
Please note that it was so warm and sunny that neither of us needed coats. What a fabulous weekend.
We toodled on down the road and stopped at the Visitor Centre to get a map, tour the gift shop...
...and venture out onto the observation deck to take a few more pictures.
AC put his camera to work.....
and seemed quite pleased.....
with the breathtaking views from the deck. Pretty huh?
On our way out of the Visitor Centre AC stopped to have a grand ol' howl with one of his friends.
It was past time for lunch when we left the Visitor centre, so we made a b-line for the closest picnic spot and found a shady table ...
on the shores of this beautiful lake. Sorry, I can't remember the name of the lake, and I left my map at the farm so I can't look it up.
After lunch we decided to go on a stroll along one of the nature trails. We perused the map, picked the shortest trail that promised a scenic lookout at the end of it, and set off. Oh dear, they never mentioned on the map that you almost needed mountain climbing equipment to get to the end of the trail. It was a steady climb, with some really steep areas to navigate. In the picture below you see AC taking pictures along the way. That is one huge rock beside him isn't it, and it was just one of many.
I don't know if you can get a sense of how steep the climb was from these pics, but take my word for it...it was a dandy.
We trudged on, and finally made it to the top. Puff, pant, gasp! I must admit that we had a spectacular view from up there and it was worth the effort to climb to the top, but oh my, what a trek. The decent was almost as hard as the climb.
By the time we got back down to the bottom of the trail and safely in the car it was 4pm and time to head back to the farm. At one of the cross roads we stopped at along the way we saw this store advertising gourmet butter tarts.
MMMMM, tired and hungry we just had to go in and see what they had to offer. Seeing as it was almost in the middle of nowhere, I wasn't expecting much. They did have some interesting chain saw carvings out front so I had a chat with a friendly family of bears before heading into the store.

Boy was I surprised when I got inside the store.
They had row after row of butter tarts of all descriptions - coconut, chocolate chip, raisin, walnut, pecan, coffee, and plain, just to name a few that I can remember. They also had lemon, coconut cream, pumpkin,and banana cream tarts. Shelves were lined with fresh apple, pumpkin and berry pies too. Good grief....how could we choose just two tarts from this selection?
We couldn't....we bought six!
AC wanted to back-track a bit and get a picture of this steeple without a church attached, so we headed back there, took a few pictures, then sat in a shady spot to sip our coffee and munch on the treats we had just purchased. MMMMM good.
Then it was back on the road for the return trip to the farm.
It was a great day from beginning to end.

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