Autumn has been slow to come for much of Southern Ontario. It has been overly warm the past couple weeks but it is just now starting to cool down which means the leaves on the trees are showing signs of change. This past weekend was Thanksgiving in Canada which meant that I went home. Well, I was only home for a short visit I still managed to go for a walk in the woods and grab some pictures. The first picture shows the reflection of the trees on the water. You are able to see the slight change in color on one of the trees. The second picture is of a dragonfly resting on a plant beside the trail. The third picture is taken from the bench in the first picture. It is just the other side of the lake showing the reflection of the trees and the pond. The last picture is on a country road on the way back home. It shows that the leaves on the maples are just startign to change.
The Algonquin backcountry is a wilderness treasured by many people, sometimes too many. Your quiet backcountry escape can sometimes feel more like a car camping site than a rough backcountry site. As a result of this, I wanted to know if it was just because I was bad at picking lakes to camp on or if there was something else behind it. To answer this question, I wanted to know which lakes were the busiest and which were the quietest in any given year. I filled a Freedom of Information request with the Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks to get the booking data for each “booking zone” for 2024 and 2025. A booking zone is what you see online when you make a reservation. This data provides a lot of information. Easy access lakes are the busiest, while hard to access lakes are often the most quiet ones in the park. The data also shows that lakes such as Burnt Island, which has 43 campsites, are more busy than lakes such as Frank, which only has 1 campsite on it. To try to u...