Guelph Lake - A-Lining

Last week friends had the cottage and we camped at Guelph Lake. Our first anniversary gift to each other 32yrs ago was sailing lessons on Guelph Lake.  Our initial instinct was to head for different boats and the instructor insisted that we sail together, his rationale being that we would have to sail together at some point.We both got our White Sail certification there.
We have an A-Liner pop up trailer so it's not really camping and not quite trailering. It's A-Lining.

The trailer takes a matter of minutes to set up. The dining tent takes longer.

When the kids were young, we had a Bonair camper, a canvas pop up. We went on two major trips; one out East and one out West. There are things I like about this kind of travel and things I don't. I don't like the mosquitoes (especially on a wooded site), the amazing array of moths when you go to the bathrooms at night, having to remember all your stuff when you go to the shower. I do like the smell of the wood fires (though don't understand why people light them at about 4pm, way before they are going to sit around them), the sound of rain putting me to sleep, everything having its place in the trailer, feeling close to nature. I do recognize the hypocrisy of liking being close to nature and disliking the mosquitoes and the moths - its complicated.
While there we spent a day at my sister(Nicola) and her husbands(Dave) house and, with Mum and Dad, canned Salsa. There was much discussion about how hot/spicy to make it and in the end we cut the recipes hot pepper amount in half for the first batch. The second batch we cut that amount in half and planned on putting none in the third batch but relented and added some.

We all took home some from each batch.
The next day George and I biked around the campsite and Guelph Lake. The Conservation Area has a couple of beaches and lots of camp sites; some "serviced" with hydro and water like ours and many more without those amenities.

Main day use beach

We biked across the dam, that forms the lake, to mountain bike trails on the other side.

Looking up the Lake from the dam.

George on a trail on the other side of the dam.

In total we only did about 12 km but as there were some tough hills and rough terrain we thought it a pretty good workout. The next day we biked part of the Elora Cataract trail (yep, it goes from Elora to Cataract). We started on the trail just East of Fergus, near Belwood Lake. It was pretty flat and through lovely farmland, occasional glimpses of barns, silos and old farmhouses. We were feeling pretty good so decided to go to the little community of Hillsborou. Stopped there and bought some fabulous butter tarts that we had for dessert for our picnic lunch. Then biked back - the last 5km or so were not fun. In total we biked about 30km that day and hadn't done that kind of mileage since .... well, we were much younger!

Barn along the trail.