We are going north to go south!

The first stop in our south-bound journey, ironically enough, happened to be Emsdale, ON. There, our new friends Mark and Rachel and their dog Scout greeted us with warmth of their wood stove and a few shots of vodka and a pickle. Good stuff!!!
We went on a three day, two night canoe trip with them. It was great. Experienced campers themselves, Mark and Rachel picked a great lake to camp on - miles away from any dwelling, smack on in the middle of a crown land patch. This is the view from the campsite in the morning, temperature around -6 C. We were all very excited to build a sweat lodge and have a sweat on the first night we were there. It was a cold night, maybe -6C and it was so nice inside a warm wickiup with several hot rocks inside a small stone stove. Learning a few tricks from the night before we have all decided to repeat the procedure the next day! In this warm, well insulated shelter with no drafts, sitting on a nice mat of cedar branches , pouring hot tea made with pine, sweet fern and cedar twigs on a dozen of glowing red stones we have discovered something else!!! Of course jumping in the lake that was nearby was an obvious thing to do! Oh, it was a good sweat, thank you guys for making it happen! The framework behind us is the sweatlodge.
After we parted with Mark and Rachel, we stopped in North Bay for the weekend, at Jeremy and Lucy's place. Here, we rested well, went to the waterfront and hiked in the nearby forest. The sunset was magestic that evening!
We saw a year-old buck there, it was so big and so close to us! Jeremy and Lucy, thank you so much for hosting us on these cold nights!!!