Over the Civic Holiday weekend I went on a camping trip with my friends Joe and Lana to Algonquin Provincial Park and then on to Prince Edward County. This was, as far as I can remember, my first time camping, so it was a bit of an adventure. Certainly I've done lots of canoeing and hiking, so the great outdoors are no stranger to me, but I've tended to enjoy a comfortable bed with a mattress more than an inch thick at the end of the day. But I really quite enjoyed the camping trip. We hiked in Algonquin on a few different trails, including the Whiskey Rapids trail pictured at left, and spent a day canoeing on one of the lazy rivers that inspire the name "Lake of Two Rivers" in Algonquin.
We stayed in a campground a bit outside of Algonquin (all the sites in the park were booked; that's what we get for trying to book a week before a holiday weekend). We had a campfire with hot dogs (and didn't die from food poisoning) and marshmallows and 'smores, watched the stars, and then were awoken by noisy people in neighbouring campsites. One morning we hiked up into the hills around our campsite and had wild raspberries and blackberries for breakfast.
After a couple of nights up near Algonquin, we drove down to Prince Edward County (near Belleville), where Joe is from. We'd heard many stories of "the County", but it was nowhere near as scary a place as it was made out to be. We visited Sandbanks Provincial Park and went swimming there, had a great home cooked meal with fresh corn-on-the-cob, and compared local ice cream stores.
