Ants, and butterflies, and racoons, oh my!

Every summer, we visit a different campground in order to see the best that Ottawa has to offer. Since Sheldon's work has attached a leash to him this year (we'll call this leash "Blackberry"), I decided we should camp closer to home this year...Lac Philippe in Gatineau Park. Being so close to the city ensures that he gets some kind of reception although at times, he had to stand on a large rock in order to keep the reception (oh and I'd like to dispute Rogers' "No Dropped Calls" claim, if I may). Although it's supposed to be close to home, it took us a couple of hours to get to the campground on account of lousy directions from Google Maps. Nevertheless, we got there 30 min. before they locked the gates.


Now this leash that Sheldon has attached to his hip has become quite an inconvenience in our lives, so much so that we didn't do much while camping this weekend. Sheldon didn't sleep much either because it kept going off (apparently servers and broken A/C units don't make a good combination). Anyways, the boys were left to entertain themselves a lot.

One activity that proved to be popular (so popular that a movie was made about it) was ant bullying. This activity started innocently enough, crouching down and observing these hard working creatures as they carry away the crumbs from our campsite. Connor even let them crawl onto his arm so he can get a closer look.

Then the game evolved into poking at ant hills with sticks. The game evolved again into spitting on the ants, and eventually picking them up and tearing appendages off. The worse came when they started to throw them into the fire. I had to put a stop to that right away. I had visions of my boys upgrading to small animals and then seeing their faces on television years from now, wanted for...well, you get the idea.

Since we were camping so close to home and we were stuck for activities (reported cases of swimmers itch at the lake), we decided to drive into the city for the ward picnic. Hats off from one activities leader to another...Gail did a great job organizing this event. There was a western theme, complete with bales of hay, "covered wagon" races, and a vegetable relay. Paul tried to prevent our team from winning by stealing vegetables from our team but we won anyways...both times. The event even included an impromptu water fight. The best moment had to be the tug-o-war. Somebody on our team had the brilliant plan during the second try to let go of the rope when the whistle blew. We laughed so hard seeing the other team fall after the first tug! Too bad nobody had a video camera handy at the time.




Brendan was really lucky and caught a butterfly during the picnic. It stayed in his hand for a very long time too. Great for pictures.
















Finally, no camping weekend is complete without unexpected visitors of a woodland species. A co-worker of mine informed me that Gatineau Park is filled with precocious raccoons. They are not scared of campers at all. He also told me that there are have been sightings of Big Foot too, although I wasn't too sure about that one. Sure enough though, last night we were visited by a small group of raccoons. They came up to about 4-5 feet away from me. Then they scurried away and tried coming back to our campsite from another direction. We tried to take pictures of them but they didn't turn out at all. But here is a picture that Sheldon took of Connor and I after.

I do believe I saw Big Foot as well, jogging one morning past our campsite. Although where he got an mp3 player, I'm not sure. But I definitely saw him...quite a hairy fellow I might say. But alas, like all the other Big Foot witnesses, I have no proof. I didn't have quick access to the camera when I saw him.

In the end, it was a very quiet camping trip. I would say relaxing but I'm pretty sure that wasn't the case for Sheldon and his leash. I am happy to be home, trying to catch up on laundry, and lounging in my pajamas. The perfect way to end a long weekend. Actually, the perfect way is to get out of cooking dinner tonight. Hmmmm, I wonder if I can talk Sheldon into ordering out?