We got up early this morning to walk to the beach and then on to town. Our campground owner said it was only "a kilometer or so" to the beach, and that many of his seasonal residents often walk down there from camp. We thought: "Piece of cake."
As we left the campground, we saw the last of a large caravan of Canadream rental RV's packing up to leave. Caravans and tour buses have been the bane of our existince everywhere in Canada since July 1 when the tourist season started. Luckily, this time we were just leaving on foot rather than trying to navigate around them in our RV.
Our campground owner has several horses, including this beautiful Arabian horse, who immediately took to Kathy:
We had to walk along Highway 60 to get to the beach road, and even though it was only 8:00 am or so -- and Canadians, as everyone knows, are never up before 10:00 am -- we expected the highway to be deserted. Wrong! It seems that, up here in the vicinity of Algonquin Park, lots of Canadians are eager enough to get out to paddle their canoes in the Muskoka, that they're even willing to get up early to do so. So we had to be mindful of the traffic.
Our campground map indicated that two bakeries were in the vicinity, so, as we passed Henrietta's Bakery, we stopped in to see if Henrietta had any loaves of bread for us to buy.
Why, yes, indeed! Lots of loaves of lots of different kinds of bread!
We continued our walk down to the beach, and passed the Dwight Public Library, which boasts murals depicting images by the well-known Canadian painter Tom Thomson. This mural was by Ron Murdoch.
Tom Thomson, born in 1877, was an Ontario artist who, over the course of his short career, produced roughly 400 oil sketches on small wood panels, along with around fifty larger works on canvas. They consist almost entirely of landscapes, depicting trees, skies, lakes, rivers and other nature scenes. His painting utilizes broad brush strokes and a liberal application of paint to capture the stark beauty and vibrant colour of the Ontario landscape. Thomson's accidental death at 39 by drowning came just prior to the founding of the Group of Seven and was seen by his contemporaries as a tragedy of Canadian art. He developed a reputation during his lifetime as a veritable outdoorsman, talented in both fishing and canoeing. The tragic circumstances of his drowning on Canoe Lake in Algonquin Park enhanced his mythic reputation in the popular imagination.
The Group of Seven, also sometimes known as the Algonquin School, was a group of Canadian landscape painters who believed that a distinct Canadian art could be developed through direct contact with nature. The Group of Seven is best known for its paintings inspired by the Canadian landscape, and initiated the first major Canadian national art movement.
The Group of Seven, also sometimes known as the Algonquin School, was a group of Canadian landscape painters who believed that a distinct Canadian art could be developed through direct contact with nature. The Group of Seven is best known for its paintings inspired by the Canadian landscape, and initiated the first major Canadian national art movement.
We pondered Thomson's art and early demise as we walked down to the public beach on Lake of Bays, passing some old boathouses that might have made their way into a painting by one of the Group of Seven:
Fog was settled over the lake, giving the waterfront a somewhat mystical look:
To our surprise, the park boasted some red chairs! We couldn't resist a Red Chair Photo. While they are not official Parks Canada red chairs, they nevertheless deserve Honorable Mention:
By the time we left the beach, we began to wonder how long this walk would be. Our campground owner had estimated the distance to the beach as "about 1 kilometer," but it felt much longer. And we still hadn't found the moose.
So we wandered back up to Highway 60 toward the center of town. Lo and behold, we encountered this very frightening bear!
Some things about the bear struck us as strange. First, it was black -- but it had the hump of a grizzly bear. Perhaps this was a new breed we had never heard about. Then, as we looked more closely, we realized it had the nose of a pig! A very strange breed of bear, indeed.
But we had digressed, and we still had to hunt the moose.
After a walk of perhaps another mile, we finally found our quarry -- The Moose!
Kathy had a scrumptious Eggs Benedict with lean back bacon. David went straight for the center of the target and ordered a side of lean back bacon with a side of homefries. Believe it or not, the restaurant served a fresh-ground Sumatra coffee from a local roaster, and it was very good.
The good food and very good coffee filled our tummies and made the very long walk back to our campground much more enjoyable, despite the increasing traffic on Highway 60. By the time we reached our campsite, we had logged 5 miles -- a very, very long coffee walk. It's not often we start our day with a hike. And we still had a paddle scheduled for this afternoon.
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