Camping Cooking

This weekend I attended a training camp for Guide Leaders. I learned lots and lots of useful things about taking a group of kids camping. One of my favorite things was learning about all of the ways you can cook food using coals, tin foil and cans. It's impressive!

I took pictures of a few methods, but there were certainly others:

Coals + dutch oven = baked bread

Egg carton stoves - we cooked tin foil wrapped desserts over these. I had chocolate stuffed bananas!

And a coffee can stove; perfect I've been told for pancakes, eggs, bacon and in this case, quesadillas!

A turkey was also cooked using a trash can and coals and a ham was cooked in a dutch oven using coals. We baked three cakes using 'box stoves' and made a giant pot of soup using coals.

I've learned a ton!

Sheet Harbour Cottaging

Last weekend Greg and I were invited to spend some time at our friends parent's cottage just outside of Sheet Harbour. It was a beautiful spot on a man-made lake and was previously a camp ground so it was perfect for our myriad of tents! I say we were cottaging because the only thing we did in regards to tenting was sleep and change in it. The cottage has a full kitchen and bathroom and there is a huge deck where we stuffed our faces on several occasions.

It was a great day when we arrived and although I don't have any pictures folks went swimming and other kayaking. Greg and I opted for the kayaking and it was great to explore the lake. We actually tried to chase a loon for awhile....it was on to us.

Pipes direct water from the lake into this pond just next to the cottage, there are a surprising amount of fish and ducks here regularly:

Left: Pitcher Plant found on our Sunday hike. Right: washer toss, what's camping without it?!

After a large, late lunch on Sunday we decided to go for a stroll before eating another large meal. We piled into vehicles and drove about 25 minutes to reach this beautiful walk which ends at the ocean:

The sunset was beautiful, unfortunately my iPhone camera doesn't quite capture it:

Interesting rock formations along the coast, one of the friends along with us is a Geologist so we all learned a bit about rocks:

Left: sparklers by the camp fire - amazing! Right: Instagram shot of a snail:

Left: one of three very cute dogs with us for the weekend. This one wanted to eat all of the food on the table and was successful in a few attempts. Right: freshly made biscuits and cinnamons bunts with homemade jam was ready to go on Monday morning as a breakfast appetizers. Did I mention how amazing this cottage and its cottage owners are?

After eating another extraordinarily large meal we headed out again for a hike. This time we piled in the cars and went to Taylor Head Provincial Park. There is a nice walk along the beach (with clear, cold waters) and it turns into the woods for the rest of the 3km:
 

Barren landscapes and lots of smelly seaweed baking in the sun (it smelled awful!)

Thank you Donald and Renee for inviting us!!!

Mt. Katahdin

We did our best to climb Mt. Katahdin weekend before last, it rained and rained and rained some more. We were able to climb to about 3000 ft to Chimney Ponds, but the ranger at that point didn't recommend we go further. To be fair it was 12 degrees, pouring rain and our finger nails and lips were blue.

Also, my small camera broke because of all of the rain so my pictures of this trip are lacking.

We did have a good time at the campground, it didn't rain all of the time and we managed to have a fire both nights. There was even a lodge at the campground complete with hot tub and bar, yippee!

Here are a few photos from our adventure-vacation!

After setting our tents up in the rain and getting soaked (from the rain) after a paddle in the pond we decided to warm up and dry out  by having dinner at this swanky place. They actually put us upstairs rather than downstairs with the regular people....we were rather dirty so we thought they didn't want to put us in view of their regular customers:

There were lots and lots of clouds all weekend but in this instance they were pretty over the lake:

Saturday morning we got up dark and early to head to Katahdin for 7AM. Like I said it rained, it started about 5 minutes in to our hike and got progressively worse as we climbed up and up. Thankfully we Josh was able to start a fire to try and dry out our soggy clothes. Unfortunately it rained again over night and most things got wet again - womp womp!

Sunday Beth and Josh braved the pond to have another paddle, it was pretty foggy:

On our way back to Canada we stopped in Houlton at a Pizza Hut which was stuck in the 80's. Beth made a delightfully eclectic salad with pretty much everything from the salad bar in it:

Greg and I will eventually get back to Katahdin to climb it and hopefully the weather will be more cooperative!

An Excellent Weekend

**click the picture on the left for lots more pictures of camping and Pictou**

This past weekend flew by: we had visitors (Rick and Nick) from Friday to Saturday, an 80's themed birthday party on Friday night, a romp around Pictou on Saturday afternoon and camping on Saturday night. Sunday we even went back to the beach!

Here we are at the 80's birthday party - Greg went with a moustache and I went with a Molly Ringwald look....which is shockingly similar to what I would wear on any given day (minus the necklace) I also had on a jean skirt and chuck taylors.

Saturday morning we were up and at the Farmer's Market just as it was opening. I've never seen so many carrots in one place at one time! Greg had to water the flowers at the Library as well, Nick helped by posing with him:

Saturday afternoon, without a moustache, we went to Pictou to explore and grab a bite to eat. We went to The Stone Soup Cafe which was DELICIOUS! I had a lobster club sandwich and beef and vegetable soup - oh and a very pink drink with rum from Nova Scotia's Ironworks Distillery:

Exploring around Pictou was interesting, we spotted Nanny C's which we didn't stop in for lunch but I admire their modified Coke sign. We missed the Pictou Lobster Festival by a few weeks but there were fading lobsters on the sidewalks to remind us. And the ship is the Hector, apparently the first boat to the area full of about 200 Scots (which is crazy is you see how not big the boat is):

Yup, the lobster sidewalk again...whoopsie! This excellent sticker was spotted on a monster camper and was begging to be photographed. The last picture is of the lobster hatchery next to the light house, the had these four different stages of lobster as they develop. I must say until they get bigger the water really swirls these little guys and gals around:

We headed to Caribou Provincial Park for our camping adventure. Once we settled in we headed to the beach for some interesting dark skies - there was a bit of rain but it was still really, really warm:

Back at the campsite we were joined by more friends and got supper underway, lots of meat, salads and corn!

This lovely little girl hung out with us as well, looking adorable and acting like a puppy which included regularly rolling in the dirt and looking more spotted than black:

A Weekend in Fundy National Park

After a slow and lazy Friday morning we packed up our camping gear and headed to Fundy National Park where we spent two nights. Despite the comings and goings of fog and mist the weather was great (particularly for hiking) and we had a good weekend of outside.

 

Stopping for a picture at Matthew's Head

A sea cave, perhaps accessible at low tide

On the return we spied a pile of bricks that use to be a building, so of course Greg did what any guy would do...

Found a gun shaped stick and set up shop:

On Saturday we hiked a nice long loop with a number of waterfalls and a great view of a river.

Trail marker

Taking a break, taking in the view

With rain expected we made good use of a tarp, as well as the surrounding trees, branches and rocks to make a stellar kitchen:

An what's Greg and Ali camping without Pizza!? So here they are, we used our new camping stove that has a grill to cook without burning anything. For the most part it worked out,

Camping breakfast is also a treat, where eggs have that extra special flavour of bacon given they were cooked in the same pan. 

I made blueberry jam, which turned into a very hard product after not much time. So in order to eat it you need to heat it up. Given my love of tinfoil I made a little boat to heat up the jam in...it worked pretty well!

The Rising Tides Music Festival was happening in Fundy the same weekend we were camping, which was not planned but very well timed. We took in a set by the Olympic Symphonium and Issac and Bluett. I'm impressed that Fundy has an amphitheater, it had great sound with a good view:

Maine Maine Maine!

We did it, we survived! You might have thought that Greg and I were sucked into the great abyss of AMERICA.

One thing I observed is the crazy amounts of American flags:

Calais, Maine

Bar Harbour, Maine

WAAAAAY more pictures after the jump!