Weekend at Cottage

I was invited by Mike, one of my friends here in Canada, to join him and a few of his friends for the weekend at his cottage by Sand Lake, which Mary-Anne and I had visited last fall. According to googlemaps, the cottage is located 205 kilometers north of Oshawa, which is about 128 miles. It is not too far from Algonquin Park. It can be fairly cold up there. The weekend before, Mike went up there with his family and it was -32 C, which is about -20 F, on the day he arrived. The cottage is located right next to Sand Lake. Luckily, the weather was rather mild this weekend as it was 0 degrees C/32 degrees F, with temperatures dropping to about -10C at night.

The ice on Sand Lake is, at this time of the year, very thick. At this time of the year (as I learned over the weekend !), there is no running water at the cottage....that means no shower, no tap water, and no toilet. So that meant that we had to use the outhouse and draw water from the lake. The guys had to use an auger to drill a hole in the lake in order to draw water. While I did not take any measurements of the thickness of the ice, I did eyeball it and it looked to be more than 12 inches thick. Mike told me that in the years gone by, the ice would be 24 to 28 inches thick. Anyway, we had plenty of bottled water and used the lake water for dishwashing (after heating it up on the wood stove) and washing our hands.

When I got home last night, my wife said to me “did you learn that there is no running water up there ?” I said “ugh, yeah !” LOL. I also learned that while my boots were okay for the weather this past weekend, it would not do for the cold weather that Mike experienced the weekend before. What passes for good boots in Columbus would not necessarily pass muster up here.

There were a total of 4 of us up here....myself, Mike, Steve and Andre. We spent a great deal of time talking about various things and watching a ton of movies, walking and hanging out on the lake. It may not be a big deal to these guys but I appreciated seeing a slice of Canadian life this weekend and learned a few things. Despite the name of the weekend, it was actually quite a tame and relaxing weekend.

Standing out on the lake was somewhat reminiscent of some of the scenes in the movie “Fargo.” And no, we were not saying “ja” over and over as the characters in “Fargo” did !!

The pics were taken by Mike and shows a frozen lake covered by snow, the cottage and other scenery.