From Dwight, Ontario

Wednesday, September 29, 2004 - We are now located at the Algonquin Trails campground in Dwight, Ontario which as I said in the last entry is just outside the West Gate of Ontario's very scenic Algonquin Park.
    As scheduled, we left Lindsay on Monday, September 27, which was a sunny and mild day perfect for driving and the 100 mile trip up here was uneventful with the exception of roadwork in a couple areas that tightened the lane up enough to keep me awake, but it was a very pretty drive with quite a number of lakes and increasing hills as we neared the Dwight area.
    Algonquin Provincial Park is quite large (just under 3,000 square miles, or to put it into perspective, roughly half again larger than the state of Delaware) and quite hilly with what is left of some very old mountains (as I recall). It reminds me of the low mountains in some areas of Kentucky, but with lakes everywhere.
    Anyway, although the park has quite a number of campgrounds itself, they don't have pull-through campsites and not all the utilities, so this is why we are staying outside the park this time. We are planning to be here until mid-October.
    My daily schedule at the moment is to get up before the sun, drive the 12 miles to the park so I can photograph the sunrise and early morning light and then shoot whatever else catches my eye while further exploring the park, then head back to the RV to process the photos I took and get a nap and then do the same thing for the evening light and sunset. This involves a lot of driving, but the autumn colors are quite advanced so I have to take advantage of them while I can. Typically in years past the weather invariably thwarted my attempts at capturing the autumn colors at their peak. Already, this year has proven to be quite productive in this regard I'm happy to report.

From Lindsay, Ontario

Thursday, September 23, 2004 - We left Mallorytown, ON yesterday around 10am and drove to our third Odyssey location, the Double M campground which is located on the banks of the Scugog River just outside Lindsay, ON. This was a last minute change in plans as we decided to head to Algonquin Park without a stay at Picton, ON first as originally planned. The drive to here went smoothly and took about 5 hours and was the longest tow we've done so far.
    For those who've followed my News page for years you might recognize Lindsay, ON since my brother-in-law Garth has two cottages east of here by Sturgeon Lake and it is there we have spent at least one weekend a year for all the years I've lived up here in Canada, so this stopover is another twofold location where we not only have scenery to photograph but family to visit and introduce them to our new nomadic lifestyle.
    As I write this I'm sitting out behind Big Harv and facing the Scugog River as seen in the photo above which was taken yesterday afternoon and today looks just like it. There's a gentle breeze blowing, which is good because today was hot enough to have been July rather than late September.
    The second photo above shows what I saw this morning as the day was dawning. Not too hard to take. As always, clicking on any of the photos on this page will show a larger view.
    Sandra likes this setting so well that we are planning to extend our original two day stay to four days, which means we'll leave Monday for Dwight, ON which is just outside the west gate of Algonquin Park where I hope to be this year for the arrival of the autumn foliage.

From Mallorytown, Ontario

Sunday, September 19, 2004 - From the second stop on our Odyssey, Mallorytown, ON, where we've been for nearly a week now. The drive down from Carleton Place with Big Harv in tow went smoothly. We found that driving on the freeway at 55 mph gave us fuel mileage of 13.5 mpg. Driving at 60 mph dropped this to something around 12.5 mpg. Either of these are quite a bit better than we got with our former RV which got about 5 mpg less than that even though it was much smaller and lighter.
    As to Mallorytown, over the years we've driven around the area a number of times so there haven't been any surprises in that regard, except for the lack of internet access. The KOA we're staying in has a computer with a high speed connection available at $4/hour but they won't let me upload files (argghhh!!!!) and open wireless networks have been scarce, with dialup access completely unavailable unless we want to pay for long distance. We did find a few open wireless networks in Brockville 20 miles east of here, but only one where I could park close enough to get access and then not for long since I was illegally parked, but I was at least able to download email. It has become obvious that to use wireless effectively while travelly will require a high gain antenna, something I'm currently looking into.
    Anyway, we've seen some of the 1000 Islands from the parkway and also took a short cruise out of nearby Rockport and 'steamed' around the islands near there, including the one that Boldt Castle is on, as seen in the photo above. From left to right are the yacht house, entrance to the castle's harbor, the 'birdhouse', and rising above the trees on the right is the castle itself.
    For those who don't know, the 1000 Islands region of the St Lawrence river contains 1,865 islands and was once a summer resort area of the rich and famous. The salad dressing of the same name originated there.

Photo Galleries Status

As planned, I've been shooting photos as we've traveled, but before I can post them to the internet I will have to do a major restructuring of my pBase gallery since it is centered around our former home in Ottawa which now makes that organization of the gallery meaningless. But before I can restructure it and upload new galleries I'll need an extended length of time with high speed access and where I'll find that is anybody's guess. We might have to bite the bullet and subscribe to a satellite internet service.