Tidbits
Sleepover at Ikea - Maybe this is the only way to get to the $1 early enough…
A ramen bath - Japanese spa with special baths resembling instant noodles. I wanna play!
Old age homes for dogs - 1) Old dogs don’t like to be abandoned at strange places. 2) Playing with young puppies will probably cause the older dogs to die faster due to exhaustion.
A remote-controlled pigeon - Oh the poor thing…
An article on a brilliant method of teaching grade schoolers about bats and rabies. I smell a lawsuit.
Will trade beer for Crumpler bags. Tempted by the beanbag and messenger bags…
Photos
Thanksgiving in Haliburton
October 16, 2007, 12:54 am
So this last Canadian long weekend, I was *this* close to heading off to Buffalo and perhaps the Adirondacks again, but decided last minute to stay in Canada. I originally wanted to go to Buffalo to get a new lens for my camera, but we were able to find a pretty decent price locally and got it here instead. (Which was promptly returned the next day as Mike decided he wanted to get something “better"). Anyways, so we settled on Haliburton Forest instead. You may remember the place in which I wanted to go originally to howl with the wolves. It was later brought to my attention that this place also offers a treetop “canopy” tour, which I figured would be quite nice to take in the fall.
I gave the centre a call on the Friday before the weekend, and they just happened to have 3 spots for their Sunday morning 9 am tour. This was lucky, aslooking at their availability schedule, the rest of the weekend, and most of the week really, were all booked. Sunday morning means we need to stay in the area overnight, so we decided to camp there. Except for weekends, they need minimum 2 nights stay, so just like that, plans for the entire weekend was made. Who says last minute plans never work??
The drive there on Saturday was a very nice fall drive. The fall colours were peak in that area over the weekend, and everything was so red and colourful. Unfortunately, it was also a very gray and wet weekend, and without the sun, the colours are not as bright as they could be, but still quite incredible. Sometimes, it was like driving through a red and gold tunnel.
The campsite was probably the nicest I’ve never camped at, scenery-wise at least. All their sites are next to the lake, and are usually private enough that you can’t see your neighbours. You can park your car directly on the site, and each site also have their own outhouse. Our site had a private dock, and all the other neighbouring camps were vacant. It was a bit creepy late at night. The only thing stopping me from going back there every year is the price. It was $15 per night PER PERSON! Who charges per person fees for campsites? Furthermore, there’s an additional daily road access fee of $15 a person as well. So that’s pretty much $30 a person a night. Once you have a group of five or six people, might as well rent a cottage! I mean, for $15 a night, you have to drive back to base station for flushing toilets AND it has coin-operated showers. Come on, not even free showers??
Actually, I find the whole place overpriced really. Sure, it’s a private nature reserve and such, but it’s not exactly for charity here. The canopy tour was $95. The wolf centre is $9 (but included with the canopy fee), but all that’s really there is an observation room where you might or might not see the wolves, with the usual animal scenes and little information blurb you see at all nature centres.
The canopy tour itself was pretty good, but not really worth the money. They usually have two tours, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, with max group size of 12 people. It’s usually 4 hours, where they drive everyone to the edge of a lake, we canoe across it to get to the start of the canopy tour. The canoe is a gimmick since you can technically drive all the way to the start now. This was actually a newly constructed treetop tour, it was finished earlier this year. The last one was more remote, and had to be abandoned when a hurricane blew down all the trees there.
The canopy walk is basically a bridge built between spans of trees. We had to wear a harness and keep ourselves clipped in for the entire walk. The walk itself was about 0.5 km, which is considered pretty long for this sort of thing.
The walk itself wasn’t exactly thrilling. You’ll high up, but not *that* high. And since you are in the trees, after a while, it started to feel like a regular hike through the woods. It was a nice hike, but the fact of it being IN the trees instead of under them just wasn’t that big a deal.
The rest of the weekend, we decked it out with busloads of Chinese tourists at the Dorset Scenic Lookout Tower, and went hiking in the rain. Then rushed home for turkey dinner Monday night.
All in all, a fairly fun, if expensive, weekend. Finally got to enjoy Ontario fall colours properly at least.
Photos
Tagged: Travels
Comments (1)
It should be “Come on”, and not “Come no”, at the coin shower part
All fun has its costs, at least you enjoyed it. I am somewhat jealous of the
© Maggie Tam 2007-2009 www.onechopstick.ca
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