11.7.2012 – 11.7.2012  30 °C

Early start this morning as we drove out of Huntsville, heading east, for the Algonquin State Park. The Algonquin’s (as they are affectionately known) are these pine covered hills and lake areas that have been preserved since the mid 1800s. They are home to oodles of Beavers, Moose, Bears and Deer. Sadly, we must have scared them all off because of course, we didn’t see anything! Well, not totally true, we did see plenty of insects (who insisted on biting me), a few birds and a beaver family way off in the distance but largely it wasn’t the usual animal fest that we are accustomed to when we venture into a National Park or State Forest!

We started our morning by doing a short hike around one of the lakes here in the park. Supposedly, the lakes all freeze over during winter leaving the little beaver dudes to swim under the ice. In fact, the little critters bury their winter food in the mud at the bottom of the lakes so that they have plenty of supplies to get them thru the winter, whilst they snuggle down in their beaver lodges! Pretty smart huh?

We then drove to the other end of the park for some lunch, and a look thru the visitor centre. The centre had plenty of taxidermy animals for us to view… It’s sad when your only glimpse of the animals is after they’ve been killed and stuffed! It also had a great overview of the history of the park. It is one of the older parks in Nth America, so similar to Yosemite or Yellowstone, there were plenty of late 1800s photos on display of people swimming, hiking, fishing and playing in the park. Tourists used to come into the park via railway (which has now closed down) and stay in big fancy hotels. Today, everyone drives into the park, and most tourists camp in the numerous camp grounds. It would be a great place to come for a holiday if you were a local. Plenty of swimming, sailing, canoeing as well as hiking and animal watching to be had in this park!

Our time in the park finished with us going for a walk around a beaver pond and lake. The walk was great because it was accompanied by a hiking guide which told us a lot about beaver’s habits. Apparently, they build their dams to ensure that their lodge is kept safe and to give them a constant food supply. What I mean by this is that Beavers live a good portion of their lives on land, chopping down trees. The beavers strip the trees of their leaves and small branches, which in turn becomes the beaver’s food or goes into building the lodge! The trunk of the tree is then converted into part of the dam, so in this way not much of the tree is wasted. After the beaver has dammed up his flowing river he is now able ot build his lodge, secure in the knowledge that his lodge won’t wash away. There are a couple of other fringe benefits of damming up a creek; firstly, lily pads will grow in the dam (one of a beaver’s favourite things to eat) and secondly, when the pond freezes over in winter, beavers are completely isolated from predators. Wolves etc can’t get into the lodge because the entry to a lodge is below the water line—like a platypus. Beaver’s however, can swim out of their lodge and get to their sticks and stuff that they hide in the mud below the ice. Pretty cool huh?

Our wander around the lake allowed us to see up close a dam, lodge and pond all of which are pretty impressive in their own right. Another interesting fact is that Beaver’s dam up a creek instinctively. Scientists know this because they did some experiments on captive bread beavers. The captive beavers would start building a dam even if the water was totally still all because the scientists played the beavers the sound of running water! The sound is all it takes to tell a beaver that he/ she needs to start damming creeks! Unfortunately the beaver’s that live in the pond that we walked around were right over the other side of the lake so we didn’t get a close up look at them but at least we got to see them swimming from a distance.

Our day ended with us driving another couple of hours into Arnprior (not too far from Ottowa). We had some grand plans of cooking dinner but after such a busy day we decided to just find ourselves a restaurant and have a quick meal. Dinner was at this little pub in Arnprior that sold fish and chips, sadly, dinner didn’t cap off a great day… edible but nothing to write about!

Song of the Day– Aerosmith and Run DMC, Walk this way