vacation 2010

I'd been waiting all year for my vacation, and even more so in the last few months. I flew to Montreal to meet up with db, (who had already been there for a week with his family), my sis, and my mother. We drove the next day to NB where my brother lives. He was ready to go with coolers filled with food & drink and two trucks to drive the 15-20 kilometers into the woods where he has a camp that we visit every two years. It's fairly remote, accessible only by logging roads, and there really is very few people out there. My brother's land also has some lakefront. It's pretty much an ideal spot.

The only downside is Irving. Irving owns New Brunswick (I'm not kidding -- the newspaper, t.v. stations etc), and the crown land around my brother's land is being clearcut. This year we could hear some machinery in the far far distance when we were in our tent at night. One of the roads into his camp was ruined as the company put in another road to access a new area. While these roads do provide access to my brother's camp, and once they are no longer needed they do grow up and fill in with greenery restoring the damaged landscape, there is the price of large areas of forest being flattened. The company will come in to plant more spruce ("toilet paper trees" as my brother calls them), but the mixture of hardwood and softwood of the natural forest is forever changed.

I didn't really expect to get into the clearcut side of the vacation, but I don't think I can really ignore what is right in front of me and as a person who cares about the environment. I'm thinking about doing further research into this topic because when I look at a map of NB there seems to be few protected areas of any size, but I won't say for sure until I find out  more.

Anywho...onto the vacation photos from our first day there. There may not be a lot of photos, but that's because I generally don't include pictures with people in them since I try to keep some anonymity to this blog (I know most of you already know me, but I'm sticking with my original decision here).

We saw two spruce grouse on our drive out to get some firewood. One was smaller than the other. They weren't too quick to move so I was able to get quite close for a photo. 

 Cedar waxwings seem to be everywhere. I kept seeing them, but they are hard to photograph because they never seem to sit still for long. I feel lucky to have gotten these two photos. I thought they were waxwings, but did a definite ID when I got home.

 Beaver lodge. These are abundant, but not always active. 

The old clearcut areas provide firewood for the campfire.

Sunset towards the end of our evening drives to look for Moose. db has a great interest in Moose so we're always going out to look for them. It is Moose country afterall so the chances are good.