Family Day Weekend Adventure

With the Winter in the Wild Festival now behind us, we had the remainder of the Family Day weekend in Algonquin to do some adventuring that was not following any scheduled events. Don’t get me wrong, the day of the festival was fantastic and I cannot wait for next year, but now it was time to do some of our own family fun.

Sunday Morning

It was another early rise on Sunday and just like on Saturday morning we decided to head out for a hike on one of the tails – the Two Rivers Trail, which is located between Mew Lake and Lake of Two Rivers Campgrounds. There are multiple benefits in getting out in the early mornings for a hike.

1. There is nobody around! So all you hear is your own voice and the crunching of snow under your feet
2. The wildlife that may be in the woods will not be scared off from other people on the trails
3. It’s quiet… did I mention that already?
4. Fresh snow!

So off we went down the trail with the snow crunching under our feet. Overnight there was a nice snowfall, so the trees were also freshly covered in a beautiful snow blanket.

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The trail starts of pretty flat, but soon gets to some climbing which leads to a number of lookouts. It would have been helpful to have snowshoes or crampons on during this part of the hike to get some extra grip, but the trail was pretty well travelled and not too slippery so we made it up the hills just fine. At the top of the hill, the trail opens up to give a beautiful view of the river below, way below as we are now standing on the side of the cliff. In winter we are more cautious as it is harder to tell where the cliff ends and where the snow is just hanging on. Please keep your distance from the cliffs.

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The only friend we saw on the trail was a lonely snowman. The remainder of the trail went down and we completed the entire trail in just over and hour. Once we arrived back at the yurt, we had lunch and I took some time to complete a drawing of one of the trees on this trail.

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Sunday Afternoon and Evening

The boys headed out to the ice rink yet again and spent most of the afternoon playing around. At around 2 in the afternoon there was a local gathering at the fire pit for a Plaid picture. Huge thanks for Marian (The Camping Family) for organizing this photo op, as there are a lot of winter campers here on this weekend and it’s a great way to show Ontario Parks just how much we are all enjoying having the park open all year. As you can see there is a LOT of red plaid! How much more Canadian can we get?

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The remainder of our day we spent around the fire, chatting with all our friends and then enjoying an awesome steak supper on our campfire with Christina. That evening the boys did more skating and we also hung out at the communal fire and warming tent. It is really such a great weekend and I love catching up with all these people.

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Monday Morning

Happy Family Day! Monday morning was our first morning of sleeping in just a little. However, once we were all up we packed our gear fairly quickly and decided to head home. It was a long and busy weekend but we had one more stop to make before we actually headed home.

This year, Opeongo Road was plowed since there was a blue jay study taking place. We heard that the birds were out and flying around all day and will land on your hands easily. Hayden was super excited to have these larger birds land on his hand as we normally have only been able to attract chickadees. As you can see they were very friendly and we were all happy to experience this.

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Once we arrived home the usual duties of unpacking gear, drying out all the items, laundry, and packing everything back into its place began. This gets a little easier with each trip as we develop a system to sort our gear. It’s never the funnest part of the trip, but we had a very successful and eventful weekend so it’s worth it.

If you have ever been to Algonquin Park for the Family Day weekend we would love to hear about it below in the comments. Thanks for reading.