Iron Butt

The Iron Butt is something of a tradition at the RA Photo Club. Organized by the Urban Group, it's a day-long outing that invites exploration of back roads and places you've never been. Participants organize themselves into carpool groups and leave Ottawa more or less at the same time in the morning, with a defined destination which is usually dinner at a restaurant in another town or city. The objective is to take a roundabout way to get to the destination and to have fun discovering photographic opportunities along the way. This year's destination was the Chez Piggy restaurant in Kingston, Ontario, and I travelled with three passengers in my car. In total there were about 30 people participating and about 10 cars in all. Over the course of the day, we only saw one other group, who happened to be in Lanark and stopped at the same restaurant that we did for lunch. Other than that, we were on our own, until all the groups miraculously converged on Chez Piggy within minutes of one another, and we shared dinner and stories of what we each did during the day. After dinner we all returned to Ottawa via the fast highways, arriving back just after dark. I have to say that I found it a bit difficult to get back into the groove of photography since I was coming off a long dry spell where I was too preoccupied with renovations at home and hadn't done any fun photography for a few months. However, once we got to Lanark and I started seeing some interesting landscapes, the old enthusiasm started to kick in, and the day just got better and better, with the highlights being the ice-covered​ water and beautiful light at Silver Lake and Sharbot Lake. It was a great day out with good friends.