August 16th, 6.00 am, and waiting outside East side Marios again, waiting for a Queensway Tours bus, same as the start of our first New York trip back in March. At least it wasn't dark and freezing cold this time. We are off to Moosonee on the shores of Moose River, which empties into James Bay at the southern end of Hudson Bay. We will be staying on the Island of Moose Factory the site of the second Hudson Bay Company settlement established in 1673. No, the...

Camping in Algonquin Park After a week in New York it was time for a change of pace. So with Bridget, Martin and Rowie, Donna and I set the GPS for Algonquin Park and Algonquin Outfitters for a two day canoeing and camping trip. But first we would spend the day, and most of the night, with friends Bill and Jeanette at the Blue Skies Festival, held annually near their place, and then leave for the park from there. The Blue Skies Festival is a nearly 40 year ol...

Hi all, back to the blogging game after a short break. Have not really done anything interesting in the time since being at Bill's farm, but it was the Easter Break so we decided to do something a bit more local since "spring is upon us"! Yeah, right! During the week prior to Easter we had cold conditions, ice rain, ice pellets (small droplets of rain frozen into a fine hail) and snow flurries! Yes, snow flurries, our back deck had a light covering of...

Bill's Place Sunday, 3 April, saw us on the road to Bill's farm. Bill and his wife, Jeanette, had exchanged to NSW, near Bulahdelah, in 2008. We had met both Bill and Jeanette at our first Canadian League Educational Exchange (CLEE) meeting in Toronto back in January and again at an Ottawa CLEE meeting here in Ottawa. Bill had been telling us he lived on a farm about 120km out of Ottawa and was going to bring back into production a maple tree block on his far...

March 12th Rowies birthday, Happy Birthday Rowie!! For Rowies birthday we decided to do a local trip, in fact only 15 minutes away, and check out a sugar shack. A sugar shack is where they make maple syrup. The maple sap suitable for making the syrup only runs at the start of spring when weather conditions, mainly temperature, are right so it is now or not at all. The farm also served a brunch so it was decided to take advantage of that. On arriving at the farm...