Camping!

It's official - our family has actually stayed over at our property! Earlier in July, Matt and his brother went up for a couple of nights and got the site ready. They put in a privy box (necessity!) and put up a small shed for storage of things like rakes, shovels, and work boots - you know, all the stuff you don't really want to lug back and forth each time. Then the three of us travelled up for a three night stay.

It was a lot of fun! We had purchased a 13 person tent - so we had lots of room to move around - although finding a flat space for a 13 person tent was a tad trickier.

It was pretty hot each day that we were up there - and there was an all out fire ban since it has been so dry. But in the evenings, it got cold. Real cold. Like 12C cold. Sadly we were not as prepared for that as we should have been. We slept in our sweats and under layers of blankets - but our poor dog Mason couldn't fit onto the air mattresses easily. One night he was so restless and shivering that I tucked him into my sleeping bag with me to warm him (and me!) up.

While we were there, we took a lot of boat rides - one into Magnetawan and one down a meandering river into Burks Falls for water and ice cream (about 45min one way). Sadly fishing wasn't at it's best when we were out, pretty disappointing for our little guy.  But because of the fish (and apparently sharks and whales), Alex would not go in the water. Not even his toes. It wasn't until the last night that we finally got him in for a short "bath".

We had camp stove coffee each morning, camp stove bagles, and even the old fashioned cereal in a box (those boxes leak by the way!).

(don't you love my vintage table cloth garage sale find?!)

One night we even had spaghetti - a real hit, can't you tell?

We didn't just have fun the whole time we were there - we did do a little work. One morning Matt and I cleared a large area of brush - mainly poplar stands. Alex was using his own chainsaw to help (the blade cover - it was pretty cute).  Considering we worked for just over an hour, I think we did pretty well.  I didn't have the focus set correctly here, but you can get the idea of the space.

Mason wasn't so fond of this activity - he put a few holes in the tent door trying to get in to hide, but in the end he curled up on a chair waiting for the noise to end.

There is quite a bit of wildlife around. We have lots of clams in our "beach" - not sure why, so I'm going to look into that. There is also a family of ducks that live along our shore which is kinda fun. On our last night we didn't put our garbage away... and a raccoon discovered it... There are lots of red squirrels around, tormenting poor Mason. And our neighbour was telling us a couple of weeks ago he saw a moose swimming in front of our property and then the moose came on shore at our place! Just glad it wasn't a bear.

All in all it was a fun trip. We will do it for sure again next summer!