Day 2 Algonquin Park
June 1, 2024
I had such a wonderful sleep. I was so cozy. I used my blanket that I made, the woven wool one and I had a sheet inside and a sheet around the outside and aa sleeping bag underneath cause I’m up on a cot. I didn’t want the cold air to come up underneath me.
I never knew it was cold with my big pillows. I was so cosy with another blanket on top. at first I had another one of the other sleeping bag on top, but I pushed that off before I went to sleep knowing that if I needed it, it was right there beside me.
I never had to get up in the night-that’s really cool. I usually have to get up in the night a couple times.
my pants don’t have pockets and my sweater doesn’t have pockets. It’s kind of difficult if you carry your phone all around with you to take photos.
you know those wash clothes that are folded from Holland, I safety pinned one to my dress and then I had a pocket.
so I started back on my antidepressants three days ago. It’s working. I am so happy; I was so bummed before.
GS is certainly into making this fire and getting pinecones. It’s very cool.
I think I’ve been to the Bronx zoo. It sounds so familiar. I think that we lived not far from there when I was little, we lived in New Jersey right at the George Washington Bridge. My parents took us to the Bronx.
Why is a big thing now even showing games of all time so glad that I turned that early.
Ben says the Minecraft gameplay is pitiful. It needs to blend with Zelda.
His idea is that You and your friends can build your own castles on distant points of the thing and then have massive battles.
DIL made wonderful eggs with turkey sausage and watermelon. Delicious.
GS and I have been playing Uno with Minecraft cards. I didn’t know any of the rules and I think he might’ve made the rules up for us. Anyway, it was a lot of fun.
Ben went down to the lake and rented a canoe for two days. I have my kayak and paddles here and my lifejacket.
GS got upset when I put the little paper ring strips in the fire. I thought they were packaging trash. So he’s in the tent, dealing with it.
There’s a grackle chasing a Bluejay in this tree. He left. I think grandson is gonna scout out for more pinecone piles.
I worked on my round cylindrical birchbark basket. The little one with the dip in the side for the branch. It turned out pretty well. I tried to make the holes close together and just above one another so the root lashing over the top lays closer to the next one.
After I finished the rim, i used my little knife to cut off the pegs that were sticking through. I’d pegged the wooden disk inside the birchbark. I’m Very pleased with it.
So I started on the large basket of birchbark. It’s very thick and tough, with pegs that hold the flaps up. They will be replaced with roots. But I have not had very much success finding big roots. I did find enough to do some of the rim, but I’ve run out. Perhaps I should look somewhere else. But there is a spruce tree or two right here beside us.
it’s been very nice just sitting around. Grandson has been playing soccer with Abid from Nextdoor. They also played at uncovering fossils from a little block of plaster.
We moved the screen tent over, which then sort of split up the group because some chairs are in there and some are outside.
Ben can’t be in the sun cos of his melanoma, so we waited till late afternoon to go on the water.
I would like to bring the kayak around the side of the campsite through the reeds and the catails.
4:58 PM
We went down to the kayak and canoe at rock Lake, just three campsites away, and kayaked across the bottom of the lake to Rock creek.
We went up for a ways and then came to a beaver dam. The water on the other side is only about 6 inches higher, now high, but I didn’t bother trying to cross it.
Ben, however, got out on the dam after ramming up onto it. He pulled the canoe across, reboarded and away he went.
He canoed up to the bridge and under it. It was quite nice for him. He goes quite fast. I can’t keep up with him.
One of the straps on my kayak seat is broken, so it’s not as easy to lean back and paddle.
So I wandered around on the downstream side. I put a worm on a hook and dropped it in the water. Immediately a fish ate it.
It took him a few bites, but he worked away at it. I tried to see him through the water, using my paddle as shade from the reflection on the water. Too bad I didn’t have on polarized sunglasses.
Ben tried to go to the campsite through the beaver Pond, gave his hand loon call to the family, but saw that nobody was up there.
He went back and got them at the beach, and I went and followed a beaver channel. It led to the campsite beside ours.
I filmed the water coming through the Beaver dam and then when the family got to the dam coming back, I filmed them ramming up onto it, and getting out. They pulled the canoe over, and away they went, way up beyond the bridge.
It was interesting to see how Ben coordinated the whole thing . Step-by-step, very methodically. He has almost no traces of the ADHD he once had.
American redstarts are singing from the trees and bushes. I checked what they were, analyzing the data I had on BirdNET when we went to the office a while before we went to the water.
It’s overcast, which makes it so much better for Ben, as he has melanoma cancer, and has to be very careful about letting the sun on himself. I have these six burn marks on my arms where the doctor burned off the potential cancer on my arms. Not melanoma, but the really slow growing, not bad kind.
Ben has the bad kind.he says they got it all, but it has been known to come back. We have a friend whose husband had the same and it went away then it came back.
I sat in my kayak and Took photos of the plants that I don’t know the names of, growing in the water.
It’s interesting to see where the leaves of Pickerel stems are all either chopped off or eaten off. It’s possible that they are chopped off from the many many canoeist that must come in here. Certainly at the end of the little narrow beaver channel where there was a little pond area, The grasses were flattened in the tops were missing off the weeds.
So now I’m sitting here by the dam just downStream, waiting for them to come back from going up under the main bridge at the road and the office.
Donald Trump was convicted of collection interference with the house money case.
I haven’t heard the news lately, but I did see a headline that the GOP is quite upset. It’s funny that they get all their information from Fox News, and don’t watch the trial information themselves. Amazing what fake news can do to people and their views of life.
The black flies hatched nicely yesterday when it went down to 2°c last night. I don’t know if it actually did, it never felt very cold. I was very comfortable all night; it was so nice in fact that I stayed in bed much longer than I usually do.
I think it was about 830 am when when I got up.
There’s a dog barking. I think it might be in a boat on the water.
It’s probably barking at the geese. When I went around past the geese, they were very content. They had no worries about a person being there close to them.
I guess there are people here all day long, one after another. maybe I’ll try fishing again.
5:32pm
I finished for a little bit more, and watched a couple of small fish. The fish seem to like it near the fast moving water of the dam. As I sat here quietly, a Beaver swam by all along the dam and then just passed me he dove down on his side of the dam.
6:15 PM.
I waited until they came back over the dam and filmed them.
We all headed out of the Creek and back into rock Lake. I love the Black spruce that grow alongside the water. There’s a lot of dead branches on them. That’s what we bushwhacked through in northern BC.
There’s a house alongside the lake. With towels hanging on the line.
InWonder what it’s like to get there. If they have a roadway or someway to get there easily.
I let my line down with a worm on it. And trolled along for awhile, while I paddled about. I didn’t catch anything. After a while, I was tired.
Ben took the family back to shore and let them get out. He headed back out into the lake to do some fishing.
I did get one bite that seemed pretty big, but I didn’t hook it. I’m Not sure how you hook it properly. I’ll have to ask Chat, she knows everything.
My paddle must have a hole in it because it leaks from the middle so it’s taking on water all the time. The way to find the leak is to unhook the two parts, fill one part with water and hold it vertically and see if it drips out of the paddle. If so, that’s my leak or crack.
I’m not ready to get out of the kayak yet. It’s pretty tough sometime. It’s when I have the most chance of falling. But the kayak is completely beached along the shore, so it shouldn’t be too terribly difficult. Just getting up is always the problem.
7:22 pm
Once I took off my life jacket and tossed it, my fishing bag, Phone, and hat onto the beach, I was able to roll over and get up pretty easily. I was sure glad it wasn’t too difficult. Being stuck in a kayak is not the best.
I changed again, having gotten dripped on continually by my cracked paddle. I took them apart and tested it and sure enough one had a big crack in it. DIL and GS were playing happily together in the screen tent, so I went and lay down on my cot.
It was really nice to finally relax. That kayaking Was not as easy as I thought it would be. At the beginning, the wind was against us on the lake, but in the Creek, it was OK.
It was fun, especially that I got to see the beaver and watch some fish eat my worm.
They all went to the camp store while I stayed in my tent and waited for them to come back.
He made a really cool loon like sound with his hands. When I heard him do that, I called out to him to let him know I was in the tent. What a great idea to use a call like that, instead of having to call peoples names he sure can make that call really well.
I’m glad that the day is not over and that I’m not at home. I’m glad that we’re going to have a campfire and sit around and have a meal together. How awesome that is.
When I got out of the kayak and looked at my phone, I realized that I had one dot of service, so I uploaded yesterday‘s journal entry to Facebook.
I couldn’t do it on LiveJournal because that wouldn’t open the page. There wasn’t enough cell service to open Facebook.
But I did go on the New York Times and open the articles I want to read. I’m curious to see the GOP reaction. Well, I can’t believe that the speaker of the house is party to whatever lies are being spewed. Didn’t they watch the proceedings? weren’t they there, how could they see all that and still believe the opposite?
I guess they know which side their bread is buttered on. However, I thought Mike Johnson looked like a pretty upstanding honourable person.
11:30 pm
Water or moisture got into the charging port on the phone, so it kept telling me it wouldn’t charge. I used my hairdryer ( site with electricity here) and blew it out for a while. Then finally at the end of the night it started charging.
Ben had done so much canoeing, he wore himself out and went to lay down. He said he was going to change, but was soon snoring.
GS kept calling for him and wanting him to come out and stoke the fire but he was fast asleep at 10:15 which is normal bedtime for them I guess.
Eventually He got up and came out and stoked the fire. GS wouldn’t let me do it. He wanted his dad it do it.
Then there were four of us again and we had lots of fire light. Willem’s lantern that pulls out from the top and hangs was a good lantern for over the sink and stuff.
I was too tired to stay up, so I went to bed. I didn’t have an opportunity to write about the rest of the night, because my charger wouldn’t work.
I covered myself with the extra sleeping bag to keep all the dampness off and slept like a baby again.
I had such a wonderful sleep. I was so cozy. I used my blanket that I made, the woven wool one and I had a sheet inside and a sheet around the outside and aa sleeping bag underneath cause I’m up on a cot. I didn’t want the cold air to come up underneath me.
I never knew it was cold with my big pillows. I was so cosy with another blanket on top. at first I had another one of the other sleeping bag on top, but I pushed that off before I went to sleep knowing that if I needed it, it was right there beside me.
I never had to get up in the night-that’s really cool. I usually have to get up in the night a couple times.
my pants don’t have pockets and my sweater doesn’t have pockets. It’s kind of difficult if you carry your phone all around with you to take photos.
you know those wash clothes that are folded from Holland, I safety pinned one to my dress and then I had a pocket.
so I started back on my antidepressants three days ago. It’s working. I am so happy; I was so bummed before.
GS is certainly into making this fire and getting pinecones. It’s very cool.
I think I’ve been to the Bronx zoo. It sounds so familiar. I think that we lived not far from there when I was little, we lived in New Jersey right at the George Washington Bridge. My parents took us to the Bronx.
Why is a big thing now even showing games of all time so glad that I turned that early.
Ben says the Minecraft gameplay is pitiful. It needs to blend with Zelda.
His idea is that You and your friends can build your own castles on distant points of the thing and then have massive battles.
DIL made wonderful eggs with turkey sausage and watermelon. Delicious.
GS and I have been playing Uno with Minecraft cards. I didn’t know any of the rules and I think he might’ve made the rules up for us. Anyway, it was a lot of fun.
Ben went down to the lake and rented a canoe for two days. I have my kayak and paddles here and my lifejacket.
GS got upset when I put the little paper ring strips in the fire. I thought they were packaging trash. So he’s in the tent, dealing with it.
There’s a grackle chasing a Bluejay in this tree. He left. I think grandson is gonna scout out for more pinecone piles.
I worked on my round cylindrical birchbark basket. The little one with the dip in the side for the branch. It turned out pretty well. I tried to make the holes close together and just above one another so the root lashing over the top lays closer to the next one.
After I finished the rim, i used my little knife to cut off the pegs that were sticking through. I’d pegged the wooden disk inside the birchbark. I’m Very pleased with it.
So I started on the large basket of birchbark. It’s very thick and tough, with pegs that hold the flaps up. They will be replaced with roots. But I have not had very much success finding big roots. I did find enough to do some of the rim, but I’ve run out. Perhaps I should look somewhere else. But there is a spruce tree or two right here beside us.
it’s been very nice just sitting around. Grandson has been playing soccer with Abid from Nextdoor. They also played at uncovering fossils from a little block of plaster.
We moved the screen tent over, which then sort of split up the group because some chairs are in there and some are outside.
Ben can’t be in the sun cos of his melanoma, so we waited till late afternoon to go on the water.
I would like to bring the kayak around the side of the campsite through the reeds and the catails.
4:58 PM
We went down to the kayak and canoe at rock Lake, just three campsites away, and kayaked across the bottom of the lake to Rock creek.
We went up for a ways and then came to a beaver dam. The water on the other side is only about 6 inches higher, now high, but I didn’t bother trying to cross it.
Ben, however, got out on the dam after ramming up onto it. He pulled the canoe across, reboarded and away he went.
He canoed up to the bridge and under it. It was quite nice for him. He goes quite fast. I can’t keep up with him.
One of the straps on my kayak seat is broken, so it’s not as easy to lean back and paddle.
So I wandered around on the downstream side. I put a worm on a hook and dropped it in the water. Immediately a fish ate it.
It took him a few bites, but he worked away at it. I tried to see him through the water, using my paddle as shade from the reflection on the water. Too bad I didn’t have on polarized sunglasses.
Ben tried to go to the campsite through the beaver Pond, gave his hand loon call to the family, but saw that nobody was up there.
He went back and got them at the beach, and I went and followed a beaver channel. It led to the campsite beside ours.
I filmed the water coming through the Beaver dam and then when the family got to the dam coming back, I filmed them ramming up onto it, and getting out. They pulled the canoe over, and away they went, way up beyond the bridge.
It was interesting to see how Ben coordinated the whole thing . Step-by-step, very methodically. He has almost no traces of the ADHD he once had.
American redstarts are singing from the trees and bushes. I checked what they were, analyzing the data I had on BirdNET when we went to the office a while before we went to the water.
It’s overcast, which makes it so much better for Ben, as he has melanoma cancer, and has to be very careful about letting the sun on himself. I have these six burn marks on my arms where the doctor burned off the potential cancer on my arms. Not melanoma, but the really slow growing, not bad kind.
Ben has the bad kind.he says they got it all, but it has been known to come back. We have a friend whose husband had the same and it went away then it came back.
I sat in my kayak and Took photos of the plants that I don’t know the names of, growing in the water.
It’s interesting to see where the leaves of Pickerel stems are all either chopped off or eaten off. It’s possible that they are chopped off from the many many canoeist that must come in here. Certainly at the end of the little narrow beaver channel where there was a little pond area, The grasses were flattened in the tops were missing off the weeds.
So now I’m sitting here by the dam just downStream, waiting for them to come back from going up under the main bridge at the road and the office.
Donald Trump was convicted of collection interference with the house money case.
I haven’t heard the news lately, but I did see a headline that the GOP is quite upset. It’s funny that they get all their information from Fox News, and don’t watch the trial information themselves. Amazing what fake news can do to people and their views of life.
The black flies hatched nicely yesterday when it went down to 2°c last night. I don’t know if it actually did, it never felt very cold. I was very comfortable all night; it was so nice in fact that I stayed in bed much longer than I usually do.
I think it was about 830 am when when I got up.
There’s a dog barking. I think it might be in a boat on the water.
It’s probably barking at the geese. When I went around past the geese, they were very content. They had no worries about a person being there close to them.
I guess there are people here all day long, one after another. maybe I’ll try fishing again.
5:32pm
I finished for a little bit more, and watched a couple of small fish. The fish seem to like it near the fast moving water of the dam. As I sat here quietly, a Beaver swam by all along the dam and then just passed me he dove down on his side of the dam.
6:15 PM.
I waited until they came back over the dam and filmed them.
We all headed out of the Creek and back into rock Lake. I love the Black spruce that grow alongside the water. There’s a lot of dead branches on them. That’s what we bushwhacked through in northern BC.
There’s a house alongside the lake. With towels hanging on the line.
InWonder what it’s like to get there. If they have a roadway or someway to get there easily.
I let my line down with a worm on it. And trolled along for awhile, while I paddled about. I didn’t catch anything. After a while, I was tired.
Ben took the family back to shore and let them get out. He headed back out into the lake to do some fishing.
I did get one bite that seemed pretty big, but I didn’t hook it. I’m Not sure how you hook it properly. I’ll have to ask Chat, she knows everything.
My paddle must have a hole in it because it leaks from the middle so it’s taking on water all the time. The way to find the leak is to unhook the two parts, fill one part with water and hold it vertically and see if it drips out of the paddle. If so, that’s my leak or crack.
I’m not ready to get out of the kayak yet. It’s pretty tough sometime. It’s when I have the most chance of falling. But the kayak is completely beached along the shore, so it shouldn’t be too terribly difficult. Just getting up is always the problem.
7:22 pm
Once I took off my life jacket and tossed it, my fishing bag, Phone, and hat onto the beach, I was able to roll over and get up pretty easily. I was sure glad it wasn’t too difficult. Being stuck in a kayak is not the best.
I changed again, having gotten dripped on continually by my cracked paddle. I took them apart and tested it and sure enough one had a big crack in it. DIL and GS were playing happily together in the screen tent, so I went and lay down on my cot.
It was really nice to finally relax. That kayaking Was not as easy as I thought it would be. At the beginning, the wind was against us on the lake, but in the Creek, it was OK.
It was fun, especially that I got to see the beaver and watch some fish eat my worm.
They all went to the camp store while I stayed in my tent and waited for them to come back.
He made a really cool loon like sound with his hands. When I heard him do that, I called out to him to let him know I was in the tent. What a great idea to use a call like that, instead of having to call peoples names he sure can make that call really well.
I’m glad that the day is not over and that I’m not at home. I’m glad that we’re going to have a campfire and sit around and have a meal together. How awesome that is.
When I got out of the kayak and looked at my phone, I realized that I had one dot of service, so I uploaded yesterday‘s journal entry to Facebook.
I couldn’t do it on LiveJournal because that wouldn’t open the page. There wasn’t enough cell service to open Facebook.
But I did go on the New York Times and open the articles I want to read. I’m curious to see the GOP reaction. Well, I can’t believe that the speaker of the house is party to whatever lies are being spewed. Didn’t they watch the proceedings? weren’t they there, how could they see all that and still believe the opposite?
I guess they know which side their bread is buttered on. However, I thought Mike Johnson looked like a pretty upstanding honourable person.
11:30 pm
Water or moisture got into the charging port on the phone, so it kept telling me it wouldn’t charge. I used my hairdryer ( site with electricity here) and blew it out for a while. Then finally at the end of the night it started charging.
Ben had done so much canoeing, he wore himself out and went to lay down. He said he was going to change, but was soon snoring.
GS kept calling for him and wanting him to come out and stoke the fire but he was fast asleep at 10:15 which is normal bedtime for them I guess.
Eventually He got up and came out and stoked the fire. GS wouldn’t let me do it. He wanted his dad it do it.
Then there were four of us again and we had lots of fire light. Willem’s lantern that pulls out from the top and hangs was a good lantern for over the sink and stuff.
I was too tired to stay up, so I went to bed. I didn’t have an opportunity to write about the rest of the night, because my charger wouldn’t work.
I covered myself with the extra sleeping bag to keep all the dampness off and slept like a baby again.