Smith Falls and Parry Sound, Ontario are two of our favorite small towns in Canada. The first photo was taken from our campsite in Smith Falls, right on the Rideau Canal. Parry Sound has a cruise ship which takes passengers around the 10,000 islands (give or take a few) in Georgian Bay. We took that cruise some years ago and were amazed by the number of little islands that had just one or two houses on them, pretty interesting houses at that. Note the black squirrel. We saw several around this area although we had never seen them anywhere else. These compost bins were in Algonquin Provincial Park, our next destination. The Ontario park system takes composting very seriously. The last photo is of our traveling kitty cats. They've been traveling with us for the past ... read more

This Butterfly Conservatory is a delightful place. Located at the Niagara Parks Botanical Gardens, it has three levels, a huge assortment of plants and flowers in a lush, tropical setting, and contains between 2 and 3 thousand butterflies depending on the time of the year. At present, the Conservatory has around 45 species of butterflies, mostly non-native according to my cousin, Lyn Atherton, a well known "butterfly person" who looked at my photos. (Lyn is also a "bird-spider-and-other-unusual-bugs person.") These photos are nothing like as sharp as Lyn's photos. But they're the best I could take considering that I didn't have a tripod or a macro lens. It's the colors and designs that I find so wonderful, particularly how the butterflys' colors so often match the flowers they favor. Look at #9 and how that butterfly ... read more

Hi, All -- Quebec City is an amazing place -- historic, picturesque, charming, beautiful, fascinating, full of life, a city of Old Europe in North America and very, very French. Wikipedia calls it "the cradle of French civilization in North America." This fall we stayed in the same campground as we did in the fall of 2005, located in the little town of Levis right on the St. Lawrence looking across at Quebec City. Both days we took the ferry from Levis to QC and back, $12 round trip for senior citizens. This is a very old city by New World standards. Samuel de Champlain first established a fur-trading post on the St. Lawrence River in the location that became QC in 1608. In its 400 year history, QC has almost always been the capital of ... read more

These are photos of our last day at this beautiful area of North America. Next: Camden, Maine. These are out of order -- but doesn it matter? Paula... read more

Hello, again – We’re now in Algonquin Provencial Park, Ontario, and it’s cold, and the leaves are spectacular. We got here three days ago (Thursday evening, Oct. 4) right at the peak of leaf color. Since then we’ve had a front move in and blow a lot of the leaves off the trees. But they’re still lucious with an amazing variety of scarlets and golds and plums. Last night it got below freezing and today it's in the 40's. Tonight it will be even colder. I know that's not a big deal from some of you, but considering that we've come from four months of weather in the 90's, it takes some getting used to. When we packed for this trip four weeks ago, it was still in the 90’s so we didn’t do a good ... read more