2013/10/11-14: Algonquin Park

Back in Germany, some pupils can’t reach their school because of all the snow and the BMW owning Quandt family donates 700,000 Euro to the party of Angela Merkel, who fights against the European CO2 regulations for carmakers that she herself demanded some years ago, when she still seemed to be interested in topics like climate change and environment protection. Thank you, dear fellow Germans, for voting this dishonest *** a third time.

And what are we doing, while Germany faces snow and fights climate protection? In the absence of sustainable alternatives, we rent a car, burn 52,73 liters of gas and add 24,57 kg CO2 to our ecological footprint in order to see the Indian summer in Ontario’s oldest and largest provincial park, Algonquin Park. According to my guidebook, “for many it comprises the quintessential Canadian landscape”.


Lodges inside the provincial park were not available anymore (not because they were overbooked, but because the season is already finished), so we had to stay outside the park. But we liked the hostel in Maynooth from the very beginning.



After a coffee stop in the Algonquin Visitor Centre, we started a hiking tour on the Centennial Ridges Trail. Great weather (it was really warm!), great landscape (imagine the saxon sandstone mountains with a wider horizon and lakes), a great, small trail.



We haven't seen any bears or moose, but some smaller animals (do you find them?):



Although it was raining most of our second day, we didn’t skip our planned canoe tour. You can find 1,600 kilometres of canoeing routes in the Algonquin Provincial Park. Nevertheless, we rented our canoes outside the park in Bancroft and did a tour along the beautiful York River.



On Thanksgiving we had to drive back to Toronto. On the way we did a little hiking tour near the Wolf Island Provincial Park. We didn’t find a trail leading to the island, but we’ve seen some nice houses and colourful trees.



The section of Highway 401 that cuts across Toronto is the busiest Highway in North America. It is divided into “Express” (the lanes in the middle) and “Collector” (the outer lanes, which are serving all exits); Express and Collectors are connected via bridges after every third exit. This crazy highway has been expended to 18 (!) lanes in the last years; it typically carries 420,000 vehicles a day. Sounds impressing? The daily ridership on Toronto’s busiest subway line is 735,000, and this subway line doesn’t need the space of 18 lanes, it doesn’t produce as much noise and air pollution as a freeway and it doesn’t separate different parts of the city in such a ruthless way! But it is as inconvenient and crowded as the freeway…


All in all it was a great weekend in the nature. Now we're back in the huge city and have to catch up some work for university and side job. But the pictures remind us how beautiful Canada can be.