Algonquin Park Day Trip ! June 9 2020

Anyone who knows me knows that I LOVE Algonquin Park.  This is a wonderful Ontario Provincial Park about a 2 1/2 hour drive from where we live.  We spend as much time as possible there.  We do take our trailer there for a 2 – 6 weeks every year and we also do Back Country camping which involves taking only our canoe, backpacks and a tiny bit of alcohol!

So our Provincial Parks have been closed due to the Apocalypse.  They did open Back Country camping a little while ago but no trailer camping until 22 June.

So, in the meantime, we thought we’d drive up for the day in hopes of spotting a moose which is my favourite animal.  We did NOT spot a moose but we did see mergansers, loons, Canada geese with their families, a chipmunk swimming across the lake, a squirrel swimming across the lake, a rabbit and some other birds and ducks.

Tuesday 9 June……..up at 4:30 in the morning and out the door!  It was a long day but worth it.

So here are a couple of older photos that I took of moose on other trips but that I DIDN’T see this trip !

But we had a nice day anyways, the weather was perfect.  We packed a cooler with our lunch and our lawn chairs and then drove through the Park.  We also did some hiking and sat by the water for a long time, in two different spots !  It was a lovely day.

We stopped at Source Lake and we put our lawn chairs down by the water and watched 3 families of Canada Geese do their stuff.  I have never really watched them drink water before, it’s quite entertaining.  And they were all blowing bubbles!   I have watched moose do that when they are drinking water but I guess never noticed these guys doing it.

The goslings are super cute

While we were sitting there watching these families, Clint noticed a squirrel swimming across the lake.  It must have been about 15-18 years ago, Clint, myself and my sister and her husband were back country camping and that was the first time we saw a squirrel swimming.  We didn’t know they did that and since then we have seen lots of them swimming.   I got some really lousy shots of this one, he was pretty far away so I am not posting them.

These guys were ALL over the place.  They are called Tiger Swallowtails.  This is called puddling as they are sipping water filled with salt and minerals from the ground.  It is normally male butterflies that do this as they incorporate the salts and minerals into their sperm.  Strange eh?

We later drove down to Canisbay Lake and sat by the water and there was yet two more Canada Geese families.  They were also very entertaining.

We sat at East Beach and ate our lunch and this was our view!

Just to the left in the above photo is where we saw a chipmunk swim across the water.  Photo below and it’s definitely not a great photo but I wanted proof that they do indeed swim.  This guy got out of the water, took off and a few minutes later he came back and swam back to the other side.

We saw some ducks and mergansers and loons so that was okay.  But no moose, so disappointed!

At one point, Clint stopped the truck on the side of the road so I could get out and hurry this guy to the other side !  Turtles are very slow until you sneak up behind them and then they can move pretty quick !

The photo below is one of my favourite spots in the Park,  I have photos of a moose swimming across this lake.  I also have photos of a Moose (cow) with her twins.  And once we went canoeing in this lake and as we came back to the beaver dam to get out, there was a Moose and her calves in the little pond in the forefront of the photo.  We had to sit in our canoe for about 45 minutes until they left so that we could leave.  We had to leave by climbing out on to the beaver dam and then carrying the canoe past the little pond.  Exciting!

So hopefully we will get up that way this summer and there will be moose just lounging around waiting for me and my camera.

Hope you enjoyed the photos…………..till next time.