We recently had a short 11-day trip in our RV, the first trip this year, so here is a short blog on the trip. We started off with a visit with Danny and Janice in their driveway in Markham. On Monday morning Sharon and Janice went for a walk in the neighbourhood while I worked on an electrical issue with the RV. For Victoria Day celebrations it was Geoff’s turn to make dinner and he had a great Sushi spread and also cooked steak, followed by sharing his Birthday cakes with us. That evening we did sparklers in the backyard, leave a comment on what we tried to spell😉

On Tuesday morning we headed to Kingston to the Rideau Acres campground where we were holding the Ontario Sunrisers Rally. I am the chapter head for this Leisure Travel Van club in Ontario and this would be our spring rally with a record number of 35 RV’s attending (after 6 last minute cancellations). On Tuesday we had the check in process, a meet and greet event with draw prizes, and later a campfire.

The weather forecast kept changing but it finally showed that Wednesday would be better than Thursday, so we moved our Voyageur Canoe Excursion to Wednesday. We had hired a non profit group called The Rideau Roundtable to bring their 2 x 34’ voyageur canoes to the campground so we could have groups of people paddle to the Kingston Mills Locks and hear about the local history and rideau canal flora and fauna. Andrea, Jake, and Max were our tour guides, and they did a fantastic job guiding and teaching us. We have been to locks before but have never had the opportunity to go through one in a watercraft! The Kingston Mills Locks 46-49 is actually the very last set of locks before the canal flows out into Lake Ontario. We had 2 teams go out in the morning and another 2 teams go in the afternoon. That evening we had a catered dinner in the campground hall followed by the RV movie Lost in America.

On Thursday morning we had our morning coffee gathering and then did a group photo followed by a group hike around the campground perimeter and up to the Lookout point. In the afternoon several people tried out Frisbee Golf for the first time. That evening we had another campfire before the rain arrived overnight.

We said our goodbyes to the Ontario Sunrisers in the rain on Friday morning and headed north to Westport where we stopped at the brewery and the bakery and had a walk by Upper Rideau Lake. From there we headed to Perth for our Harvest Host stay at the Top Shelf Distillers. We were their first guests this year and they gave us a lovely welcome package. Our friends from Ottawa, Linda and Phil, were staying in Perth because their power was still off from the prior weekend’s storm damage. They came over to the distillery so we could do some tasting and purchasing. We bought some Peanut Butter Chocolate Liqueur, a Dill Pickle Moonshine, a Honey Garlic Moonshine, Apple Pie Moonshine, and a bottle of Gin. That evening we had a nice dinner at The Stone Cellar restaurant, followed by a lovely walk around the downtown area.

On the Saturday we did a tour around Perth, first to see the Beveridges Locks, followed by a hike along the Rideau Trail where we saw a baby snapping turtle and then lunch and beers at the Laketown Beer Company where I really liked their Coffee Porter. After lunch we headed to Ottawa where Linda and Phil’s power was still off after an entire week. Since the RV had power we could keep the beer cold and Phil made a BBQ Salmon dinner for us and the neighbours, where many bottles of wine were consumed😉 After dinner several different hydro crews came to survey the down tree behind their place that was causing their outage. It was interesting because the crews were from Cape Breton, New Brunswick, and Sudbury. The Hydro crews couldn’t do anything further that night until they got the tree cutting team to come.

Sunday morning everyone needed some coffee so we setup a breakfast station in the driveway connected to the RV. We packed a lunch and went for a 7.5 km walk around Lac Leamy in Gatineau. That evening we had BBQ steaks for dinner and finally after 8 days without power the tree cutting crew took down the problem tree and the hydro crew turned Linda and Phil’s power back on. The other side of the street got their power back in the middle of the night.

On Monday we started our journey to Arrowhead PP near Huntsville. We stopped at a nice picnic area before we reached Barry’s Bay and we saw a Moose when we drove through Algonquin Park. After setting up camp in Arrowhead PP we went for a sunset walk along Arrowhead Lake followed by a campfire.

The following day was an extremely active one. We first did an 11 km MTB circuit on the Arrowhead Lake and Lookout Trails, and this was very physical since there was a 373 m total elevation gain. We saw lots of trilliums and we had a few bad marshy sections with lots of mosquitoes. In the afternoon we were going to take a short walk to the Big Bend lookout (which Arrowhead is famous for) but then we carried on to the Stubb’s Falls trail and therefore did another 7 kms hiking. Needless to say, we enjoyed relaxing by the campfire that evening and even did a Zoom video call for AB’s birthday.

That concludes our first RV Trip for 2022, quite a variety of experiences and lots of visiting with friends. We hope you have enjoyed travelling along and safe travels wherever you may go.