It's a long weekend and I'm going camping!

Yay!!! My husband and I love to camp. LOVE LOVE LOVE to camp. We have done lots of campground camping but mostly we love wilderness/back country camping. We usually choose canoe/portage over backpacking but whatever, we just love back country camping.

Anyway, we have not gone camping in 3 years, since we moved to Ontario. Partly because we have been ttc and never wanted to go away if I was in the middle of a cycle or possibly pregnant and partly because we spend our vacation time going to Newfoundland and it is hard to camp for just a long weekend and partly because Ontario has predatory bears. I am not joking. Predatory bears is no laughing matter. Now anytime you go into the back country you take your chances of running into a bear. As outdoors people you know what you should do. There is always the chance that you will somehow run into a bear and make it feel cornered, or run into it with cubs and that would be dangerous. But for the most part, bears are as scared of us as we are of them and they just turn and run the other way as soon as they hear us coming or as soon as we give them the opportunity. Rick and I have actually seen bears while camping but never had an "encounter". We've seen them on the shore from our canoe or we've seen them swimming while we are canoing. Once we saw one at 10:00 am leaving the very island we had slept on the night before. However, none of these sightings scared us. In fact it only validated my theory that they are as scared of us as we are of them. In my experience, bears always go the other way. So as long as you don't leave food, or the smell of food, around your campsite you should have no problems with bears.

BUT.... big, big but. When bears make predatory attacks, it means they have lost their fear of humans. It is not that they were cornered or felt threatened. But that they hunted the humans. That they picked up their scent, circled around, followed them for a while and then attacked, for no good reason. This is common in grisly bears but we don't have grisly bears in Ontario. What we have had is a handful (and only a handful) of black bears who have made predatory attacks in the last 10 years. BUT PEOPLE. I mean really. I am not going into the back country to have a 600 lb animal stalk and try to hunt me. I have to draw my line in the sand somewhere and I draw it at camping with predatory bears.

My brother is also an avid camper (My Dad was a teacher and later with the School Board and had the summer off, we would camp the entire summer, from end of June until late August - ever year). However, my brother's girlfriend has never, ever camped. She was born in India and immigrated to Ireland when she was 11 and then to Canada when she was 15. She is the most wonderful person and I can't wait to take her camping. So we all agreed that our first trip should be campground camping. Ease her in gradually and then we will try a short canoe camping trip (with only 1 or 2 portages).

So we are going here http://nysparks.state.ny.us/parks/info.asp?parkID=105 and I am amazed by how excited I am. Hiking and swimming and exploring and campfires and smores (OMG SMORES!) I just cannot wait.

I'll tell you all about it when I get back.