We were desperate to visit Algonquin Provincial Park but due to it being Canada Day on Tuesday 1st July there wasn’t a single pitch available in any of the parks for the beginning of that week.
So we decided to head up in the right direction and try out another one of the 100+ Ontario Provincial Parks. The parks account for 7.6% of this enormous Province, some 8.2 millions ha of park.
On the way we stopped at an incredible Outdoors store where we got the kids ‘kitted up’ with fishing rods and gear. Incredible store with a seaplane hanging from the ceiling, a huge aquarium full of catfish and countless moose heads! Proper boy heaven!!
John got our fishing license for Ontario to start 2 days later. So began 48 hours of over excitement and anticipation and ceaseless questions about where / when / how we would start our Canadian Fishing adventure.
So we arrived at Arrowhead Provincial Park which looked ‘tiny’; a mere dot on the map, next to Huntsville, but in fact it covers an area of 1237 hectares of forest, has 2 lakes, 2 rivers and 15km of trails as well as 378 pitches in their campsite. Not that you’d know as we managed to see only about 10 other people in the whole time we were there.
The parks are great and each one has it’s one ‘publication’ or newspaper with information about it, nature and wildlife facts which the kids pored over and helpful advice about things like what to do if a predatory black bear approaches you!!
We were parked up in the middle of pinewoods so the mosquitos were horrendous. But the setting was beautiful. Behind us were some falls and the lake and rivers were beautiful.
Our first close up encounters with chipmunks and frogs everywhere (due to the rain) had the kids screaming with delight.
So we spent Canada Day hiking and canoeing in Arrowhead Park. We hired a canoe and spent a couple of hours paddling round in circles – not exactly in time with each other. However, it was beautiful and peaceful (well apart from us screeching instructions to each other) and felt like the Adventure we were hoping for.
Then finally on the 2nd July the fishing license kicked in and we got to spend an hour or two on the edge of the river practicing our casting and untangling our lines.
Charlie, slightly overtired that night, cried that his first fishing experience hadn’t turned out how he’d pictured it – i.e. we caught absolutely nothing!!!
Wickenswanderings 