what makes winters lonely? Now at last I know. I can't seem to get a consistent pace going this month. During the week I'm in denial that school has started and I don't get much accomplished, but my weekends are jam-packed with activity and adventure.

So this past weekend was a lot of fun. Devin and I are trying to squeeze in some late-summer camping whenever we can. We were already planning to be at Scott's place in North Hatley Saturday for poker, so we just drove a day early to the Eastern townships and camped in Orford Park at Lac Stukeley.

It was all very hectic getting out of town. A last-minute trip to Canadian Tire for Devin while I attended a yoga class at Carleton (one class I didn't skip last week!) meant we were a little disjointed in our efforts and we definitely overlooked a few things and had to improvise, but all-in-all things worked out well. It was already dark when we got to the campsite, but we managed to get set up in the dark reasonably well, got a fire going, stretched out in our new chairs and enjoyed some wine and beer. That's when the dark woods around our site came alive with the shuffling of little raccoon feet. Brave friggin' raccoons, too! They came right into our site with us sitting pretty close and weren't even very scared when we yelled or chased them. I couldn't see them all the time, but knew if I took a picture in the direction of the sounds, I'd catch them with the flash on my camera, so you can see them in a few of my shots here.

The night actually had a few scary moments for me. I did a solo trip on foot in the dark (with a fading flashlight) to the camp depanneur for a second batch of firewood, and I was pretty scared the whole time, what with hardly being able to see the road in front of me. When a vehicle came along on the road I was worried they wouldn't see me and I fell in the ditch trying to get far enough off the road. Silly.

We knew it was going to rain at some point - they were saying 90% chance overnight, so I was pretty happy every time I'd look at the sky and see nothing but stars until we went to bed. Well, that changed pretty quickly. I was awakened by the sound of heavy rain on the tarp and tent above us, and started having weird scary dreams after I drifted back to sleep (the rain would pool on the tarp then run off in a steady stream that sounded like somebody pissing outside the tent, so my dream included a random madman pissing outside the tent before trying to get in and murder us). At one point I was just too scared and woke Devin up just to have some company amongst the unfamiliar sounds of rain and forest. The odd part about this was how I spent my wakeful moments trying to talk myself out of being afraid, but later we discovered a hole in the tent - yes, teeth marks of a determined raccoon trying to get in (probably not to murder us, just foraging for treats). I wasn't so crazy for letting my imagination run away.

Here is my video update from the next morning:



We spent the morning in the nearby town of Magog, enjoying a warm breakfast at Jo et Moi Petit Resto Sympa (very yummy) and picking up various supplies for that night's poker soiree. We did not run into cute Bill, in case you were wondering (he might be busy preparing his campaign - I understand he's the new Liberal candidate in the region).

We saw a fawn on the way out of Orford Park, we saw several deer behind Scott's place, and later in the evening, we got to see more raccoons. These ones were welcome at Scott's, since his family has been feeding the local raccoons for years and have a friendly relationship with them. I captured a good video of the action you can see here, if you are so inclined.

Scott served us a fantastic meal yet again. And before the poker got started, we all took a turn on the Wii, making asses of ourselves in an attempt at boxing and playing tennis. Pretty fun, but my favourite game was the cow-riding. Later I won the first poker game and came second in the next game, so not a bad poker performance. I was getting a lot of good cards dealt to me, so that helped.

I woke up to a beautiful sunny Sunday, we ate another delicious meal and hit the road so we could stop in Cowansville to visit Devin's father. Perfect timing, because he had just been picking apples at a local orchard and we got to savour a couple. Nothing like freshly-picked apples. Next it was spending a couple hours sitting in bad, bad traffic around and through Montreal, then another couple hours to Ottawa to feed some hungry kitties.

See what I mean about a jam-packed weekend..?  | ¶ 11:51 p.m.