20 February, 2016 7 comments Leave a comment

We have had an exceptionally mild winter in central Ontario this year, with green grass on our lawn in early February, but we managed to find great snow conditions for our annual couple's snowmobile safari.

Our route took us and our friends around the eastern end of Algonquin Park, from Barry's Bay to Pembroke to Mattawa and back. The photo above is the Petawawa River.

Here are my husband and I with our Ski-Doo. During our trip, John and I celebrated our 39th anniversary, on Valentine's Day.

We saw lots of animal tracks in the snow and I managed to photograph a few of the deer we saw.

We snowmobiled for four days, hauling our gear with us and staying in a different motel or lodge each night. The trails were in excellent condition, mostly smooth and not too busy.

If you have never seen the equipment that keeps snowmobile trails in good condition, here are some photos of a groomer. It's a big tractor with a plow on the front, and tows a heavy frame behind it. In the photos the frame is raised up on wheels for road transport; once on the trail the frame will be lowered to drag along the snow surface and flatten it out.

We drove through lovely panoramic scenery, with hillsides made silver with a hoar frost.

The fresh snow clung to tree branches to make a 'winter wonderland'.

When the sun shone, the shadow-play was marvelous.

Now I have lots of ideas for paintings of winter scenes!

Stay tuned for our next snowy adventure, in the wilds of Labrador.

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