Hi again! This post is about a few trips I made this autumn! A trip to my friend's cottage, a trip to Algonquin Park over the Thanksgiving long weekend, and a trip to Dundas Peak/Niagara Falls/Niagara-on-the-Lake right after!

Cottage

I'm lucky to have friends with cottages who invite me up with them, one of my friends has a cottage up in Haliburton that I've been to a few times. It's really nice being out in the wilderness and just hanging out with friends and relaxing, and also a great opportunity to shoot some more stars and enjoy some pretty sunsets!

Algonquin Park

Over the Thanksgiving long weekend, we drove up to Algonquin Park for a couple nights as my boyfriend's mom was visiting and we wanted to show her some beautiful Ontario nature! Although, Thanksgiving is a very busy weekend at Algonquin, I guess everyone wants to go see the fall foliage over the long weekend. We stopped at Dorset Lookout Tower on the way to Algonquin, but boy was it busy. We were smart to park across the street and then walk up the hill to the lookout, rather than wait in a really long car line-up to drive up to the lookout, as parking was limited at the top. Unfortunately, the line up to the lookout tower was really long, and we didn't really want to bother standing in it as the view was pretty nice from the top of the hill already.

Afterwards, we went straight to the Lookout Trail inside Algonquin Park, which was also very crowded. It was a bit of a struggle to find parking close to the trailhead, but eventually we found one and walked up to the end of the Lookout Trail, where there was a nice view of the fall foliage. It wasn't actually that colourful yet, I think we were a bit early for the peak fall colours, but pretty nonetheless, and with lots of colourful leaves on the hike!

If you've ever been to Algonquin, you'll know that there's just one road that goes through the park, and it's only one lane each direction. On our way out of the park, there was an accident on the single road up ahead, a car had flipped so both lanes were blocked, and traffic was completely at a standstill for about 3 hours, so we were just stuck on the roads then. Nothing we could do but wait, but eventually traffic started moving again and we grabbed some food before heading to our hotel.

Our hotel was right by a lake, as you can see in the picture above! We wanted to do another short hike in Algonquin before heading back home, but unfortunately it started raining pretty hard as we were driving to the park, so we decided to just turn back and start driving back home. Algonquin is definitely beautiful in the fall, but I would recommend visiting on a week day if possible, just to avoid the crowds.

Dundas Peak

Another stop on our sightseeing tour was Niagara Falls, and on our way there we stopped briefly in Dundas to check out Dundas Peak, which is a very easy and short hike to get some gorgeous views. I had been here previously on a weekend, and it was insanely crowded, but on a week day there were barely any people, so it was nice to have the trail mostly to ourselves, and just a few people at the top.

Niagara Falls

I think that I must have been at Niagara Falls at least 15 times in my lifetime... but it's still cool to see, the falls are pretty magnificent! And it's always a nice day trip when there are visitors from out of town :)

At night, there are usually colourful lights and a lightshow at Niagara Falls (and often fireworks as well, on weekends in the summertime), so that's nice to check out.

The next day we checked out a couple wineries in Niagara-on-the-lake! We went to Two Sisters Vineyards, and Pellar Estates, which is where we had lunch as well. Even though it was raining, it was nice to check out the vineyards because the grapes were super ripe on the vines, which I have never seen before, so it was really cool!

The nice thing about living in Ontario is that there really is a lot of nature and hiking trails, so it's really lovely in the summertime and fall when the leaves are pretty. It's not too hard to drive out of the city and find some beautiful nature to enjoy!