Okay .. a break from the Chinese Lantern Festival posts … ;P
Last year, during the Canadian Thanksgiving long weekend, I had 3 different day trips .. I went with BF, MLF & Little J to Kitchener/Waterloo for Oktoberfest; went with SY to Balsam Lake Provincial Park; and went with SW to checkout the fall foliage along the Beaver Valley.
This year, I decided to go for a longer trip and spend a couple of nights at Oxtongue Lake (close to Algonquin Provincial Park) dragging JW with me. The trip started with a gorgeous sunrise (we left T.O. at around 6am) before dark clouds moved in bringing with it a lot of rain (we even saw a couple of lightning bolts). 
It was still raining on and off when we arrived at Algonquin Park. The warden said that they had all 16 (or 17) trails open — and wet. So we decided to not go to the Centennial Ridges Trail and went to the Hardwood Lookout Trail instead .. an easy one for a rainy day. 
Surprisingly, there are quite a lot of people hiking the trail (some were very LOUD, disturbing the quietness and peacefulness .. heh, so much for a solitude ).
One good thing about a rainy day .. the Lake of Two Rivers picnic area was nice and quiet! There were about 3 or 4 tour buses, but most of the people chose to stay in the bus (either that, or the busses were actually emtpy ).
The Visitor Centre, however, was somewhat packed! LOL! So we just watched their movie, checked out the exhibit, paintings, and went out to the viewing deck.
The rain didn’t seem to be going away soon enough, so we decided to go to the cottage. We rented a small cottage @ Lakewoods Resort. It’s facing the Oxtongue Lake .. very cool. The place is small, but we had pretty much everything .. they even provided us with plates, utensils, coffee maker (with paper filters! ) and stuff! Of course, I didn’t know, so we brought some of our stuff. Hehe ..
I like the cottage .. we had a squirell as a neighbour, he visited our porch several times. Canoe, paddleboats and kayaks were included in the rental price .. so they told us to help ourselves (just to make sure we wear the life jackets and return everything to its place aftewards). Didn’t go canoeing though .. we just stayed in the cottage and tried to start the charcoal bbq … 
No stars that night .. only clouds … :/
