After a night of camp­ing, I’m home more than a day ear­ly. The unre­lent­ing rain and insects were enough for me to won­der whether it’s worth for­go­ing the com­forts of home (and rest, and clean­li­ness) for a few new sub­jects to pho­to­graph.

I now have sev­er­al mos­qui­to bites on my body, about the size of my fist each. This is with­out any scratch­ing on my part, and they’re steadi­ly grow­ing. My skin has always react­ed bad­ly to mos­qui­to bites. I’m pret­ty sure I’d have to turn down National Geographic if they ever offered me a job as a wildlife pho­tog­ra­ph­er.

 

From the vis­i­tor cen­tre we check the relief map for our trail. As I’m sign­ing in, Heather G notices my date of birth is in the 80s. I’m the only one, and they joke about how young I am — espe­cial­ly com­pared to Benoît, who’s a six­ties baby — but it nev­er feels like we’re far apart in heart and mind.

We car­pool to the clos­est lot, and strap on our packs for the hike to the cab­in.

The trail is fair­ly easy, and paved most of the way. It’s a very wel­come detail when you’re car­ry­ing sleep­ing gear, rain gear, extra clothes, eating/cooking imple­ments, cam­era equip­ment, sev­er­al days worth of food, enough water to keep you hydrat­ed on the way there, and your pack is over 25% of your body weight.

Continue read­ing “Gatineau Adventure Weekend”…

Went camp­ing over the long week­end. Pictures/video to come soon/eventually.

Went camp­ing again, most like­ly the last time for the year. I’ve dis­cov­ered that I’m too much of a city slick­er to keep up with the oth­ers; I miss show­er­ing too much. The camp­ground was nice, but the paved roads and wash­ing machines sort of took away from the entire out­doors expe­ri­ence. Of course, we also had com­fort sta­tions, lighters, pre-chopped fire­wood, and fresh water taps, so it’s not like we were hard­core camp­ing any­way. It’s good to be able to get away every once in a while, to places with no com­put­ers or cell phone ser­vice, but once or twice a year is enough for me.

The woods were great. Trees stood taller than any I’ve ever seen, and the made the sur­round­ing areas thick with veg­e­ta­tion. The entire camp­ground was gigan­tic, with mul­ti­ple beach­es, qui­et areas, rock climb­ing, and cliff div­ing.

And Aaron pre­tend­ed to be a truck­er. The sto­ry behind the hat: Trolley got a free Hurley hat with a pur­chase he made. Trolley hates truck­er hats though cause he can’t pull them off, and was going to sell it on eBay. Aaron saw it one day when he was over, and tried it on (cause he always tries on the most ridicu­lous things as a joke). Somehow it works for him, although the hat must be worn high on the head and slight­ly tilt­ed to the right.