a peek inside the fishbowl

To review: every other Tuesday is my day off and I’m trying to use this time to recharge my batteries. No work, no meetings, minimal errands. Last time, I visited the Arctic via the Canadian Museum of Nature.

It’s been awhile since I posted a report of a Tuesday adventure, but since my last missive it’s been a whirlwind of summer holidays and work-related deadlines and I actually haven’t had a proper Tuesday until yesterday.

When a friend suggested we dine at Tavern on the Hill I knew it had to be the subject of a proper Tuesday kind of outing. Read this write up about it over at the Ottawa Magazine website and you’ll understand why I was rarin’ to go, but let’s just say they had me at champagne and hotdogs.

We hopped on our bikes and made our way downtown via the Ottawa River Pathway. The ride passed by in a blink, a phenomenon I attribute to the fact that we chatted the entire way. Unfortunately, the path behind Parliament Hill is still closed so we had to weave our way through downtown traffic. At one point we just gave up and walked our bikes down the sidewalk until we turned toward’s Major’s Hill Park.m

Tavern on the Hill makes excellent use of a small stone building you may or may not have noticed on your downtown wanders. It is on the National Gallery side of the park and was originally built in 1901. In a previous life it was a potting shed, and much later, an art gallery. Today, this is where orders are taken and hot dogs are assembled for the hungry hoards.

It was hotter than Hades that afternoon, but perhaps my sense of the temperature was heightened by the fact that I was very damp and out of sorts when we finally made it there. I guzzled my radler and forgot to take enough photos to fully illustrate this experience but I will say this one important point: there is plenty of seating on the patio area. In fact, I was surprised to see how many people could be accommodated at shady tables and long cushy couches.

At Tavern on the Hill, you in the very centre of a very Ottawa landscape. There are gorgeous views on every side, not matter where you’re sitting or which direction you happen to be facing. This is what it looked like from our spot:

Good to know: Tavern on the Hill accepts debit and credit (this info was not on the website) and from what I could see, the menu is scaled down from original reports. It’s all about hot dogs (of which there are many from which to choose) and cold beverages. Hot dogs are ordered on one side – at the entrance – and the bar is around the corner. I ordered the Mexican hot dog, which was very good, especially paired with my radler (er, or two), which turned out to be the perfect beverage on a hot summer day.

A tip for you: listen hard your name called when your order is ready! We didn’t hear, and as a result our order waited under a heat lamp for a few extra minutes (but this was no big deal, really).

Ottawa Magazine’s article mentioned the hot dogs on the menu are a chicken/pork blend, which isn’t mentioned on the Tavern on the Hill website. As a mostly non-beef eater I did wonder, but went ahead anyway. Veggie dogs and gluten-free buns are available.

If you have mobility issues you will definitely want to watch your step. The umbrella bases, tables, and chairs, take up more of the floor than you may expect and the ground is uneven in parts, especially away from the raised decks.

Anyway, that is neither here nor there. It was a great hot dog, great drink, great company, great view. All too soon, it was time to pack it in, give up the pretty panorama, and return to reality. We had the wind in our hair and full tummies as we followed the river home again. Bliss.

I enjoyed our experience so much I’m already itching to go back. Next time I’ll bring the family and pick a weekday evening to enjoy the most “Ottawa” landscape in the city.

I’ve often said that if you want kids to enjoy hiking, it’s a good idea to offer incentives. (Hopefully, they aren’t incentives that involve mobile devices, as per my wee rant in this previous post.) For us, the payoff of a great view is a big one. Or, as Misty commented, a special snack is also a good idea. As an added bonus, it gives the kids the energy they need for the hike back. This year I decided to offer up a different kind of incentive, one that is both disgusting and cool in equal measure. (More about that in a bit.)

I should point out that the bugs in Bon Echo were at ideal levels in the camp and beach area. Given the wet weather we’ve had, we were expecting a bloody massacre upon arrival (our massacre, that is). As evidenced by this archived post, Bon Echo has stood out as our buggiest camping experience in our family’s history. We expected the worst this year but it didn’t happen. Mosquitos levels were actually very low, and there were no horseflies spotted anywhere. There were, however, deer flies and mosquitoes in the woods and along the trails, which is to be expected. This year, I made special preparations with this in mind. We bought these deer fly patches at Lee Valley. (Go and read the product description. “Silken feet” ? Too. Funny.) It’s essentially fly paper that has been trimmed to fit on the back of a cap.

I hatched a plan. We’d stick these to our hats during a hike to see who caught the most flying insects. The girls were, shall we say, hesitant, until I mentioned the winner would get a pair of cozy flannel pj pants from the park gift shop. Suddenly, they were very excited.

It was easy to install the patches in place as per directions. Unfortunately, I put one of them on upside down and that individual had to be compensated with extra bugs since she started off with a disadvantage.

Bug patches installed, we were off on our merry way to explore the length of Shield Trail. It’s not a little bad hike; about two hours long through varying types of forest. Here’s the official description of it via Ontario Parks:

Shield Trail – 4.8 km (2 hours), loop, moderate
Follow a section of the old Addington Road as it penetrates the rugged landscape of the Canadian Shield where you will see hardwood forests, cedar lowlands and a beaver swamp.

This is what the trail looked like:

The swamp is where the bugs tend to lurk and when they see you coming they rise like a cloud from their breeding grounds. I’m certain all the rain we had created many NEW swamps and mini ponds in the lowlands. It’s always a good idea to scurry uphill to dry land wherever possible:

I’ll admit it was pretty enough, but not the most scenic or interesting trail we’ve seen.

Want to see the final results of our deer fly patch challenge? Do you want to see what the patches looked like AFTER we completed this hike? Prepare yourself for the reveal:

Read the rest of this entry »

Part way through our stay at Bon Echo we rented kayaks and went for an explorational paddle. We usually rent a canoe while we’re camping at other sites but Bon Echo is the best provincial park to do it, especially for beginners.

Kayak and canoe rental is pretty easy here. Just drop by the area they call the Lagoon (find it on the map on the back page of the campground newspaper), pay, grab your gear (they provide life jackets, paddles, and an emergency kit), choose your vessel, and go.

Tip: if you have time, try a couple of different kayaks before committing to one. There are different shapes and sizes, and they handle differently. I randomly grabbed one that happened to be a bit longer with a longer, tapered nose. The eldest chose a smaller one. It was more stable in the water but harder to steer and kept veering off in all directions. (In other words, it took more paddling to keep it pointed in the right direction.) Choose wisely! Speaking of tippy…

The Lagoon is a very shallow starting point, which is perfect for beginners, and, er, people who have spent time in a canoe but are nervous about graduating to a solo kayak. I climbed into mine and promptly lurched sideways, so much so that I had to put my hand down in the water – touching lake bottom – to prevent the kayak from filling with water. (That’s how shallow it is at the start, thankgod.) Mark had to come to my rescue and got me righted again. I only took on a bit of water and thankfully, the camera didn’t get submerged.

This year, for the first time, we opted to rent four kayaks instead of one canoe. It was the right decision, and I’m so glad we did it this way. We booked them for four hours, not really knowing how long we’d need. (You can also opt for one hour or all day.) Our plan: to explore the pictographs along Mazinaw Rock and if we had energy left, to head over to Bon Echo Creek. (For the record we were out for about three hours.)

Mazinaw Rock is a 100m high cliff that looms large at Bon Echo. It’s a distinguishing feature of this park and it is absolutely stunning. What’s more, it features 260 indigenous pictographs, drawn at eye level if you’re sitting in the canoe on Mazinaw Lake. Apparently, it’s the largest collection of its kind, making it a designated National Historic Site of Canada.

I should mention that Bon Echo has a couple of ferries on the go. If you aren’t up to the idea of being the captain of your own ship, there is another way of seeing up close. Both ferries leave from the Visitor’s Centre. One brings visitors over to Cliff Top Trail (as mentioned in this post) and another serves as a guided tour of the pictographs. We chose to go on our own.

Kayaking over to it to the cliff is an easy paddle, even for someone who’s new to kayaking and whose pride was still smarting from that earlier incident.

I quickly learned how to distribute my balance to stabilize the kayak and my blood pressure returned to normal.

Here’s a tip: if you need to seriously readjust yourself, or reach for something behind you in your backpack (i.e your camera or water bottle), paddle back to the Lagoon or up to a place called “the Narrows” on the way to the pictographs. It’s shallow enough there and you won’t tip over, or if you do, it won’t be serious. Just stick to the sides. I pulled myself up atop some river rocks so I could safely get my camera out of my bag. It was a bit rough getting back off of them, but I did it.

The middle channel, which is marked, is for bigger boats to pass. (Fun fact: there used to be a bridge across The Narrows!)

You can see The Narrows in the background of this photo:

You can see there were lots of people on stand-up paddleboards too – including many kids. That tells you something about how calm the water was!

Warning: you will want to take a thousand photos and your family will leave you in their wake.

Before you know it, you will reach Mazinaw Rock. The scale of it will leave you feeling very small. And I’m not just talking about the massive size, but the scale of time as well. While the cliff looms large over you, you can’t help but think about yourself as the tiniest speck on the geological timeline.

The girls enjoyed it too, and I saw them chatting and paddling:

The pictographs were fascinating. Many were faded and hard to spot, but once you knew what you were looking for they slowly started making themselves known to us.

The images represent animals and humans, symbols, and spiritual figures. Do the pictographs tell a story or are they a “Fred was here” kind of tag? There were also tally marks; the width of a finger in groups of three, four, five. What were they counting? (Sigh. Maybe we should have taken the guided tour after all. Next time!)

The pictographs aren’t the only art form that appears on Mazinaw Rock. “Old Walt” is a tribute to Walt Whitman organized by Flora Denison Macdonald, who owned property in the area. Although the poet never visited Bon Echo, this superfan commissioned two stonemasons from Scotland to chisel his words into the rock in 1919.

It reads:

OLD WALT
1819-1919
Dedicated to the democratic ideals of Walt Whitman
by Horace Traubel and Flora MacDonald
“My foothold is tenon’d and mortised in granite
I laugh at what you call dissolution
and I know the amplitude of time.”

We paddled to the cliff and back, and decided that we had time to cruise past the main beach and check out Bon Echo Creek:

If you need to get out and stretch your legs, you can do so by the foot bridge:

… and then we forged ahead:

The water was incredibly still; the banks, shrouded in deep green shade. The only thing that disturbed the peace was an occasional dragonfly, schools of minnows, and one slow-moving motor boat. We spotted a turtle sunning itself on a log. Other creatures of the forest remained invisible to us.

It was definitely worth the side trip.

This is one of my favourite photos from the day:

Click to enlarge!

When we crossed this bridge on foot the day before and we met a perky little red squirrel going in the opposite direction. Imagine our surprise when we saw him again during our kayaking trip! You can see him on the railing if you look closely. Do you think he’s posing for the photo, or trying to cross? :)

The best thing about being on the water is the peace and quiet. It’s so tranquil, and when you rest your oar and float you feel your stresses draining away:

Exploring Mazinaw Rock by kayak was really the highlight of our stay at Bon Echo. I think I’ve found my new favourite family activity. I’m a kayaking convert and would love to do more of it.

p.s. I’m still adding to my photo set from this trip but you can have a peek right here.