First Trip to Algonquin Park
/Mew Lake Campground
July 10 - 12, 2020
Our trip to Mew Lake Campground was supposed to be our fourth trip of the season, but a worldwide pandemic meant that our spring trips were cancelled as we all spent many weeks in lockdown mode, barely leaving our houses and only dreaming of getting out to the campgrounds. Luckily, we were able to bring Holly home at the beginning of May and while the weather was nice, she doubled as Chris’ office in our driveway.
Because we had no plans to go anywhere, we didn’t bother to de-winterize her until the weekend before we went to Mew Lake. Nothing like leaving it for the last minute! The process went smoothly and we had running water for our first weekend away from home.
In lieu of camping, and perhaps in the name of quarantine boredom, I purchased a few new things for Holly:
We finally have a teak shower mat! I’ve been coveting one of these for a while and as luck would have it, another Canadian Airstream owner was upgrading to a larger Airstream and sold us their hardly used shower mat. It’s so pretty! And even better, it’s extremely functional (and worth every penny).
While scrolling on the Airstream Addicts Facebook group, I saw a discussion about Fatboy Edison rechargeable LED lights. Of course I googled and found that I could order one from a place in Montreal AND they had the lampshade that I loved. It’s a little pricey, so I did think about it (but hey, we hadn’t been buying much of anything at that point…). It was delivered the day after I ordered it!
I finally went through my photos on instagram and ordered a bunch of Holly (and Daisy) prints from Chatbooks. I put them up using sticky tak and they are a really inexpensive way to personalize our Bambi. I love that they remind us of our past trips!
A few organizational things still needed to be solved and 3M Command Hooks helped solve them. We hung some storage pouches in the closet, added a key rack by the front door, put up a few more hooks and found a small container to attach to my side of the bed (it holds my phone, hair scrunchie and glasses).
Back to our camping trip… Working from home does have benefits! For once, I didn’t need to wait for Chris to come home from work to get away. Such a novelty. There’s no commute and no ability for people to drop by his office to delay him from leaving when he says he will.
I was up early on Friday morning to take Daisy for a walk, so I just puttered through the morning at a (much) slower than normal pace, while Chris took care of a few meetings he had. All of the food, bedding, towels, pillows and toilettries were in Holly and properly stored for travel. For our first time out in the season, I was feeling pretty good about how everything was organized.
The day started out SUPER hot - a high of 42 degrees Celsius, with the humidex (that might also explain why I was moving at a slower pace!). When I walked Daisy at 5:30 in the morning, I was hot wearing only shorts and a tank top!
I had intended to sanitize the water tank when I de-winterized, but didn’t get around to it. We didn’t do it right away after de-winterizing last year either. Just before we left, I went through our checklist and realized that I had missed a few things. Whoops. Note to self… ALWAYS REVIEW THE CHECKLIST! Hitching took about 35 minutes, largely because there was a lot of double and triple checking. The first time of the season is always a bit slower.
Although we were ready to leave at just after 2 pm, we realized that the gardens all needed to be watered. While Chris watered, I made iced coffee in our travel mugs so that we wouldn’t need to make a stop for it. We finally left at 3 pm and, because everyone was still mostly working from home due to the pandemic, the traffic out of the city was a breeze!
We stopped in Renfrew to give Daisy her afternoon walk. We parked on a side street and walked up and down the Main Street (Raglan Street S/Highway 60). It was such a different experience than in past years, with many of the shops shut down or doing curb-side pick up only. It was our first trip out of the city since the pandemic had begun and while we knew what to expect, it still felt weird. Despite it being Friday afternoon on.a glorious (albeit very hot) day, the streets were very quiet and few people were out. We picked up some fruit at the Metro and continued on our way.
The nearly four hour drive was sunny and hot, but as we turned west closer to Algonquin Park, the dark clouds began to roll in. We didn’t think it was supposed to rain until the next day, so we were surprised when the raindrops came just as we were passing through the entrance to the campground. By the time we arrived at our campsite, it was pouring rain!
We had site 93, which was a large, non-electric, waterfront site. It was gorgeous, but had a huge tree with massive, bumpy roots that extended at least 10 feet away from the tree , right in the middle of the site. This made the decision of where to set up a little more difficult. Despite the buckets of rain, I got out of the car and tried to sort our where we should put Holly to get the best view of the water. For our first time out in the season, it was a decently complex parking job, so needless to say, I was soaked from head to toe (quite quickly, as it turns out) and was happy that I threw a few extra pieces of clothing in at the last minute, since I hadn’t remembered my rain jacket or my rain boots. We finally oriented Holly and the rain stopped as Chris was getting out of the car. He was luckier than me and was completely dry!
Scenes from Site 93:
As it turned out, it was so humid, damp or rainy all weekend, that the clothes I had on when we arrived in the rain, never completely dried.
We decided not to unhitch until the next day, but forgot to unplug the electrical - which is why Holly’s batteries seemed to have more charge than they actually had. When I went to get something from the car the next morning, there was a warning that our car battery was low. Whoops. We unplugged and ran the car for a few minutes to be sure the car battery was ok. Third season and we’re still making mistakes! Holly’s batteries ran down far more quickly after we unplugged and we confirmed that they were no longer at optimal levels for a full weekend away without electrical hook ups.
Because we weren't sure how our batteries would perform, we were pretty careful about keeping things turned off. We used our Fat Boy rechargeable light and a few battery operated lanterns instead of Holly’s lights. As much as possible, we kept the water pump off, but it was warm enough that we needed to keep the Fantastic Fan on at 1 or 2 pretty much any time we were in Holly, just to keep the air flowing.
Staying hitched meant our set up was quick and our Friday night dinner of chicken roll ups was on the table by about 8 pm. It was super easy, as the chicken was precooked and frozen and I had chopped the veggies before leaving. It rained fairly consistently until after dinner when the sky cleared and tons of stars came out. The sky was so beautiful! I wish that I knew how to take nighttime starry sky photos - maybe something I’ll try practicing sometime… Instead, I finished my book while Chris watched a movie.
Daisy woke us up early, ready for a walk, so we all went out. It wasn't raining! We walked around the campground to get a sense of what it was like. It’s a fairly small campground that goes around the lake. There are only tent sites on the other side of the lake from us, all close to the highway where there’s quite a bit of noise from cars passing by. I’ve tried a few times now and it’s impossible to get a waterfront hydro site, but getting a site in the unserviced area was a bit easier. We were one of only two (I think?) trailers in the unserviced sites and the other one was also an Airstream. We noticed that most of the hydro waterfront sites had some really big RVs on them. Many of them parked sideways on the site, so it was hard to even see what the site looked like! On our walk, we passed the beach, which was pretty nice and had a good swimming area, but we didn’t go on it because dogs aren’t allowed.
The Trails around the campground are so pretty
Mew Lake Beach, from the road
It was finally time for coffee and breakfast (our camping regular - eggs with mushrooms, bacon and cheese - yum - and fruit) and a bit of relaxing.
Around noon, we headed out for another walk, this time to the Lake of Two Rivers Store via the bike path. It’s a really well maintained pathway and beautiful to walk or bike on. We arrived at the store, which has a cafe where you can buy lunch, coffee or ice cream, as well as a gift/small grocery shop. There’s also a place to rent bikes. We were planning to have ice cream but I forgot to bring both of our wallets. Oops. We walked about 4 km in total, but it was pretty hot outside and Daisy was TIRED when we were finished. She pretty much just passed out and slept for the rest of the afternoon.
One tired pup!
Chris had some work to catch up on for a few hours in the afternoon, so I read and took photos. Chris waited all afternoon to have an “outdoor rain shower”, but it didn’t begin raining until past 6 pm! Instead we sat outside, where the temperature had finally cooled down and there was a nice breeze.
We took Daisy out for another walk around the campground before dinner and then I continued through the no dogs section by myself. The campground was nearly full - we only counted about a dozen (or so) sites that were empty in the whole campground. The tent sites near the entrance and in the no dogs section were pretty close to the road and we could hear the traffic on the highway. Many of the sites in the no dogs area had beautiful water views though. Our site was a little further in and we could barely hear the highway at all. During the night, we definitely didn’t hear any traffic because our window faced the lake and we had our fantastic fan on (if this isn’t the first blog post you’ve read, you’ll know that we love our fantastic fan and use it most nights!). It also doubles as a great white noise machine.
This was our first trip during Covid and in the past we’ve almost always used the campground showers. But since the showers weren’t open at all during the season, we learned how to take quick showers and wash our hair, in our own little wet bath. It’s not as bad as we thought:) It’s easier and faster for me to wash Chris’ hair, but then we both had showers. Another rookie mistake… we turned on the shower vent, but forgot to open it! It didn’t seem to cause any major problem, but we’ll try not to do that again! The inside of the door was all wet after Chris’s shower, so we think the curtain wasn’t velcro’d properly.
For dinner, we had leftovers - salmon, potato salad (that I made at home before we left) and veggies. So delicious. We watched the movie Athlete A on the iPad and then headed to bed. Although it had cooled down, it was still pretty warm at night. We didn’t even bother to bring a duvet, just a flat sheet. Daisy was exhausted and only moved once - when I got up to use the bathroom. She moved herself to sleep on my pillow! She was well rested by 7 am and ready to go for her morning walk.
We had coffee and omelets for breakfast and then headed out for a hike on the Two Rivers Trail. It was a really nice hike and the best part was that we were able to get there by walking from our campsite. We noticed there are some good trails that we could have done without even having to drive anywhere. The trail took us to a beautiful lookout with a huge drop off. The bugs were out when we stopped to take in the view, so we put on some bug spray and continued walking. The trail was only about a 2.5 km loop, with a bit of elevation. We didn’t find it difficult at all.
We walked back to our campsite, changed into our bathing suits and went for a quick swim to cool off. Lucky for us, site 63 had a great water entry and was empty, so we went from there instead of the beach so that Daisy could swim with us!
View of beach from site 63
We packed up at our site and headed out at 1:30 so that we could grab some lunch and ice cream at the Two Rivers Store. Once we had eaten, we made our way to the dump station. What we didn’t know is that there are only two dump stations in Algonquin Park for all of the campgrounds! Once we made the turn and saw the line up, there was no way to turn around! We ended up in line for a little longer than an hour before it was finally our turn. The trailer in front of us was filling their water tank, which must have been huge (or, more likely, the pressure was terrible), because we were able to stop, dump, clean up and do a “three point turn” to exit and they were STILL filling their water tank!
Goodbye Mew Lake!
Waiting in the huge line for the dump station
Holly hanging out at the lake of two rivers cafe and shop
We finally headed home at about 3:30 pm, a little later than we expected, and pulled into the driveway just past 7:00 pm, happy to have finally been able to go camping in Algonquin Park in 2020!
Next up: Our big summer road trip through Northern Ontario!
Ottawa - Renfrew - Mew Lake Campground (Algonquin Park) - Ottawa
Towing: 544 km
Driving: 0 km (we didn't unhitch at all)
Battery: 12.0
Fresh Water Tank: 5% remaining
Black Tank: 69% full
