Monday, August 31, 2009

August (err. July?) Part II

When we left off, we were in Montreal with really tall people, much taller than myself. Following Montreal, Mom and I headed to rural Eastern Ontario to visit my aunt and uncle.
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I thought I'd already blogged about this, but apparently the internet ate my blog post. So this is their house. I would like to state for the record that screened porches ARE AWESOME. Particularly in buggy parts of the world. Even more particularly when the bugs like to eat you. (When you is, in fact, an unveiled reference to me.) Yes. I love screened porches. They are not screened in this picture, but were in real life.

We had a lovely 22 hours or so in the pictured house with my aunt and uncle eating lovely food and catching up. Then we were off on the road again.

My grandparents have two homes. A winter home, a condo in the city, and a summer home, a hobby farm or cottage in the country. Seeing as how it was summer, we headed to the farm, which is in the middle of no where. We drove up there and were greeted by my grandparents and a lovely warm dinner.

The next day we did more crazy road tripping as my grandparents needed to go to a funeral and an anniversary party, so we drove about five hours round trip to their condo and then another town. No pictures of that, sorry.

My grandfather loves the farm and maintains two hiking trails on the property. The first is a section of the Bruce Trail, Ontario's version of the Appalachian Trail. The second is a trail that's just on the property called "On Yonder Hill." On day two at the farm, mom and I hiked most of it. Here we are in mosquito protective gear.
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Off for a family history tour in the evening. In which Grandma decides to wear the Obama/Biden button I gave her,
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we see the house she grew up in,
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I decide to buy a house overlooking Georgian Bay
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and we see a rainbow during our picnic.
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The next day was basically taken up by mom doing yard work, then falling off a ladder, and then dealing with the after effects of her falling off a ladder. (And I got to ride an electric commuter bike.) Then we drove home over the next few days.

But that's boring, so I'll end here with delicious wild black raspberries.
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2 comments:

Anne said...

FIRST!!!! (Did I use enough exclamation points? Does that even matter?)

Just for the record, I thought that Simon and Ivan in particular might be interested to note that the "other town" we visited in Ontario, while driving my parents first to a funeral and then friend's 50th wedding anniversary party, was the city of Stratford, Ontario, home of the famous Shakespeare Festival. We did not get to see a play, given that we had an unknown amount of time, hadn't planned ahead, etc., but we had a delightful walk along the Avon River on a beautiful day, and listened to a community band concert at the bandstand.
Katie, I'm sorry to hear that you're planning to buy that house overlooking Georgian Bay. Your father had been really counting on your first major real estate purchase of a ranch for him overlooking a world-famous trout stream. We're disappointed that he will have to wait another year or two for you to fill up the coffers again! Lots of love.

Simon said...

I have always wanted to go to the Shakespeare Feastival. I hope I'll get there in the next few years!

This sounds like quite an eventful trip, what with the falling off of ladders and purchasing of real estate and the screened-in porches. (I love those too!)