Algonquin Park

I went camping at Algonquin Park for 5 days and 4 nights with my gf, Kristin. We covered about 50km in 4 "full" days of hiking, which probably doesn't seem like much considering you can cover that driving on a highway in ~20 min, or on a bike in 2 hrs, but it was a lot. We averaged around 2.5km/ hr when walking, and we both though we had a good "pace" considering how heavy our packs were ( I'm pretty sure mine was around 40lbs ), and how uneven/ rough the terrain was. So a typical day we would...

wake up sometime between 7 and 8 am
Get the food out of the trees ( to prevent animals from eating it), eat breakfast
Pack up our stuff and head out around 10am
Hike for 2-3 hrs with a short 10 minute break here or there to eat a cliff bar/ apple
Eat a lunch around 1pm. Taking a good hour break for lunch
Hike another 2-3 hrs and finally settle down around 4pm.
Go for a quick swim, soap up a bit, set up camp and eat dinner around 7pm.

For food we had oatmeal/ granola for breakfast, apples/cliff bars for snacks, trail mix or crackers with peanut butter for lunch, and dehydrated foods (tofu pesto/ red pepper pasta/ chicken + peas) or canned chili or rice pilaf and tuna for dinner.

The food got a little repetitive, and the dehydrated foods- although very good considering how light they were, got a bit old. I didn't mind the all water diet, as for liquids I drink mainly water, beer and the occassional grapefuit/orange juice.

But all in all it was a very good trip. We got very lucky with the weather as the forecast called for rain basically every day, but we only got hit with rain on Thursday (our 2nd to last day). We saw a moose (A MOOSE!) in the woods, plenty of bear tracks, quite a few birds, a snake (priceless sounds from Kristin upon almost stepping on it), approximiately 50 million toads and a gazillion mosquitoes.

Highlights of the trip would probably be the campsites, we had some great views, and we had the 2 best campsites on the entire set of trails available to backpackers. Going for a swim after walking the entire day was great and just relaxing after a long day of walking was great. The walking itself varied, mosqsuitoes were a pain in the ass but it gave me a lot of time to think about nothing- clear my head a bit. Its kindof funny but before the trip it occurred to me that i'd have a lot of time to think about things, but i ended up spending the whole walks just thinking about nothing.

Anyways, without further ado, here are some pictures

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2404911&l=d0003&id=28100421

note: if you have a facebook account, this will bring you to your inbox. Just go to my profile and then you'll see it.