Mini-vaca Day 1 - Amazing park experience before ever entering the park!

Dinner view :)

I am currently writing this to the sound of frogs croaking near by, after having dinner on a patio w a view of black bears and an arctic fox.   Not my usual Monday.

Let me back up….  We left the house a little before 8am.  For some reason I had in my head it was supposed to be 5.5h drive.   So I figured we’d get there between 2 and 3.  Theoretically.  😂   Suffice to say it was not.

We detoured the first time - very briefly - to drop Sasha off at my parents’ house since they’re kindly dog sitting while we’re away.

Classic road stop decoration ;)

When we left there, Google was saying arrival time of 3:00.  Okay, fair enough - maybe my original calculations were from my parents' house, not ours ;)  Adding in traffic, that math almost works.   Started on 407 and got redirected down to 401 - no real traffic issues thankfully.  2 short gas and bio break stops on the way.  The 2nd of which was in Kemptville - which turns out was about half an hour from somewhere C had wanted to stop on the way home.  So I did some googling and decided that since the park closed at 5 we may as well take the detour and not pay the park fee for the day; instead we’d spend the whole day there tomorrow and bump the waterpark to the next day.  All good.

Random but entertaining combination

So the detour C was after was to Gather Brewery - a shop that has the unique distinction of being the only glass blowing studio and brewery in the country 😂.  I’m not really sure how it came to be, but we each picked up some glass and C stocked up on some different beers.

The town of Merrickville was super cute and we drove around there for a bit before Google gave us a random but pretty route back to the highway.  We ended up going through Ottawa (somewhat unexpectedly) before crossing into Quebec (where we learned it is now legal to turn right on red as long as you’re not in Montreal or is otherwise signed ;).  Shortly after crossing into Hull we stopped for last gas refill and good to go.

The drive from there was fairly stunning scenery although some sections not safe to pass resulting in trucks w long lines of cars stuck behind them.   Eventually, about 4:30 after leaving shortly before 8am, we arrived at Parc Omega.   

I didn’t really know what to expect tbh.  I knew there was an info session about bears at 5:30 and that we were staying in a teepee w beds.  Beyond that?  🤷‍♀️ 

Signage was a little overwhelming on first entrance but we got sorted pretty quickly and found our way to reception - where we were redirected to another reception just for checkin lol.  All good.   

Only watched a few seconds of this, partially cause we wanted to find our way around
and partially cause the presentation was in French ;)

All the staff seem to be fluently bilingual (win! - for those not from Canada who may be reading this, Quebec is French.  Dramatically so.  And the more rural you go, the less likely you are to find English.  Even road signs are all in French).   And since starting to learn Spanish, all my minimal public-school French has vanished entirely.  So we got checked in, got directions to our teepee and to where the various info sessions were (birds of prey was going on as we were doing this just outside that building).  We also learned there are showers and washrooms - win!  I really wasn’t sure given the whole teepee situation.

Our home for the night - much nicer than I'd expected!

So we find the teepee and then the bear boardwalk - which doesn’t take more than a min or two to walk from one end to the other.  Sat for a few mins waiting for the bear talk to begin - everyone around us was speaking French, so I was thrilled when the guide’s first question was “anybody here prefer English?” ;).  

The Bear Boardwalk
Bears can normally go on both sides of it, but we learned later
the staff can lock them in one section or another if needed

So - it turns out this wasn’t just a conversation- he led us down about half way through the boardwalk and then called the bears!   He also handed out carrots (despite the please don’t feed the bears signs and multiple warnings about getting kicked out if you do lol).   He was giving us lots of info - in both languages - when he realized a tree had fallen onto the boardwalk - providing a handy escape route for the bears should they choose to take it.     

My day was completely made taking pics of the bears.

I was impressed by how he handled it.  He called for backup and then distracted the bears from the opportunity by throwing carrots the opposite direction.   When his backup came, they tried to get the branch down and couldn’t, so they lured the bears into a different area and closed off the section w the escape tree.   All done smoothly and w very little obvious concern.   

Mama Bear and Teenager hanging out

Although the down side is, we never did get the rest of the speech, which I was really enjoying (including that they had black bears and cinnamon bears - black bears with limited melanin).  And the little bear was a “teenager” at two years old - and definitely behaving like one ;).  We did, however, have lots of time to take pics.  I had started w only my phone, but ran back to the car to get my big camera, which took me longer than I like to remember how to use, but then was awesome.   The baby bear swimming w his whole head under water was funnier than I’d expected. 

AND - Chris noticed wolves in an adjacent area.  A mom and her three babies.   Got some good shots there too but also just really enjoyed watching them play.   Extra win.

Not bad for a park we got to after closing time!   We had dinner reservations for 6:45 so we made our way over there - chose to sit on the patio (of course!).  Well the patio was raised over an area that black bears and arctic foxes had access to.  I watched a couple bears, only saw one fox - who appeared older and a little scruffy and who was definitely keeping an eye on the bears.  But still very cool.  Food was pricy (not shocking) but good.

On the way back we stopped by the showers.  lol better than I was afraid they might be but still a bit of an adventure.  The shower didn’t have any temperature controls and only gave short bursts of water at a time.  And, at least the one I was in, the temp varied wildly on those bursts 😂.   But it was well stocked, clean, and efficient so deemed that another win.

Shared shower and toilet space but clean and functional

Heading back to the teepee we met 3 deer, who are clearly very used to collecting carrots from humans (signs everywhere that it’s permissible to feed them carrots) - and then a bit further, one that appeared to be albino of some sort.  That one was alone and not as eager to come visit but def accustomed to people as it didn’t run away and we weren’t being super quiet.

Definitely accustomed to humans

Our teepee setup is lovely but alas while the temp is lovely outside, it is a furnace inside.  So that’s less lovely.  But other than that it’s all good.   We have a “before the park opens” guided tour tomorrow am that I’m really looking forward to.  More tomorrow :)

The teepee came with two beds, a table, and a wood stove