This year was the 2nd Annual Map and Flap at The Camp. What is the Map and Flap? Well, it’s a weekend where friends get together and plan canoe trips for the season and spend a good amount of time next to the wood stove and outside. For those who live in Ontario, you know that Family Day long weekend’s weather was glorious!

B, Banjo and I went up after I finished school on Friday to get the place ready for 6 of our friends. I had no idea that the next day would be full sun and that all I could hear was melting snow.

On Saturday we cleaned up and waited outside for friends to arrive later in the day. Everyone settled in and before we knew it, it was night time already!

On Sunday we explored around the farm. B lead an interpretive snowshoe to show some great natural features of the farm. Here is the natural spring we dug out for water that we pumped into 2 large holding tanks at The Camp so we had running water. We had to do this during summer and winter.

B took us through the ‘North Woods’ and then around some of the pipeline used for collecting sap.

We stopped on another pond on the farm to have a cookout. It’s all fun and games until someone looses a wiener (vegetarian, wiener).

My dad came for a visit so we headed back up to The Camp and had a fire outside. To be outside in the sun all day was amazing. I hadn’t seen the sun for weeks! I love winter sun, it’s one of my favourite things about winter. February’s sun becomes stronger and higher in the sky, and I notice it’s longer presence minute by minute.

 

A couple more friends showed up on Sunday and we had an awesome feast of chickpea curry, asian slaw, red and white wine. We were all getting prepared for an evening of presenting our canoe routes.

After a few hours inside being entertained, we went back outside to the fire. What a night!

Our friend Nick wasn’t able to join us this year because he’s traveling in southeast Asia for 3 months. So, to include him in our weekend we did a little thing called ‘painting with light’.

What a fun night! We did some other painting with light photographs, but I’m afraid they’re not rated PG for this blog.

Our last day was Monday and E and C made us an amazing breakfast of almond flour/tapioca/coconut milk crepes with fried mushrooms, baked tomato slices, poached eggs and avocado!

And then it was time for everyone to leave. 😦

So, that’s how we plan canoe trips! I know I didn’t really get into the details, but there aren’t any really. We all bring routes to propose and when everyone figures out their vacation schedules for the summer, we pick the most popular route. Last year mine won, it was an 8-day trip in Temagami on the Wolf-Chiniguchi route (The Regulators Paddle Temagami trip report here). And before that, it was an 8-day loop in Algonquin through Big Trout (Algonquin Thunderbox Tour trip report here). Some trip proposals are 3-4 days, others are longer.

Thanks for reading and spending the weekend with us through this blog post 🙂 How do you and your friends or family plan canoe trips? Spring is just around the corner and I know most of you are already in the thought process!