Winter in the Wild Festival

Head North in February on the Family Day long weekend and you will find like minded outdoor winter enthusiasts attending the Ontario Parks Winter in the Wild Festival at Mew Lake. This event is not limited to experienced winter enthusiasts, but also brings out new and upcoming outdoor adventure seekers. This year we attended as a family to take in this festival and have some outdoor fun on the long weekend.

Since we have to work on the Friday we didn’t arrive at our yurt until around 7 pm that evening. It was a cold night and we quickly got all our gear inside and set up the inside. That evening we didn’t do much around the campground as we knew that the next day was going to be very busy. We did walk to the communal fire pit to say hello to friends but it was early to bed for all of us.

Saturday Morning

This morning we decided to head out to Mew Falls for a morning walk before heading to all the activities that were planned for the festival. The walk to the falls is always nice and enjoyable, plus the cool air in the morning feels just wonderful. As we were up at out early there was no one on the trails with us. It wasn’t until we headed back to the campground that we passed a few people with cameras headed out to take pictures on the wildlife.

Both Dan and Hayden had some fun shaking snow off the trees onto each other. This always gets Hayden laughing and he does quite enjoy being outside in the snow. We saw a few chickadees flying around the trees and we held out our hands to see if they would land on us. We didn’t have any food, but one did come over to check to see if we did.

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Morning Presentation

After our hike we headed over to the visitor center to check out the presentation that morning about “How do Black Bears and Polar Bears Handle the Winter” by Martyn Obbard. His presentation was very informative about where bears hibernate, the tagging process, and how polar bears are dependent on sea ice for survival. He also included a clip from an episode of the Rick Mercer Report where he came out on a bear tagging adventure. At the end of the presentation it made us wonder how close we have been to a bear den in the winter without even knowing.

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Outside the visitor center Hayden wanted to check out the Algonquin Outfitters igloo building demo, put on by Andrea and Paul. Even though he had no snow pants on, he still managed to crawl inside the igloo – without getting wet! There were also snowshoe guided walks and bird watching presentations that were leaving from the visitor center parking lot.

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Saturday Afternoon

Hayden and Dan headed over the skating rink to play with some friends and I went to chat with a few friends before we headed attended the campground Demo Site tour.

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Our first stop on the tour for that afternoon was at the Algonquin Outfitters where Specialized had brought fat bikes for everyone to try. We signed our waivers and headed out around the campground for a little bike ride. By the end of our small tour I wanted to get a fat bike for myself so that I can get out in the winter biking in the snow and Dan wanted to get the new bike with the assisted ride. Attending this festival can be really hard on your wallet, especially after we started walking around and checking out everyone’s hot tents.

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The remainder of our afternoon we walked the campground, looking at all the different hot tents, with again wishes of having our own. This might be our last winter without a hot tent in our possession. There was a large number of people on the rink and around the campfire by the warming tent. We had to stop and check out the fire as Hayden was looking to cook himself, and us, some marshmallows.

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Saturday Evening

Hayden and Dan once again went out to the rink to play a great game of hockey. There were adults and kids of all ages playing together and they had a blast. While I was not skating, I spent the evening with Christina in her hot tent along with a whole bunch of awesome outdoor ladies. There were lots of laughs and catching up on our adventures so far this season.

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Stay tuned next week as we continue our adventures from this wonderful family day weekend. Have you ever attended this festival? I would love to hear about it below in the comments.