I'm back!

I know, no posts in forever! Your lives were not the same!

What can I say, sometimes I just don't feel like writing.

But now I do feel like it and plus I just got back from one of the best vacations of my life, so there is lots to share!

Jake's sister and her family live in Nova Scotia, so we decided to make the most of a trip out east and see and do a ton of things along the way there and home. It worked out fabulously.

There is really no other way to sum up a month on the road other than to hit the highlights, so that's what you're gonna get. Might still be kind a long - there were a lot of highlights.

1. The ULTRA SMOOTH rocks at our first campsite. Like, seriously, they were smoother than our counter.

2. Exploring Lake Superior Provincial Park on the north shore. It is BEAUTIFUL.

Some Proof:

The dark stripe is the result of an under water volcano erupting up and splitting the granite. The lava gets worn away faster than granite (what doesn't?), so it creates some very interesting holes and passageways through the huge rocks of the Canadian Shield. Also, doesn't that water look inviting?

 Jaker, enjoying some shade and some views

 I am for sure going to get the name of these drawings which were all along the rocks where we were wrong - petroglyphs? I think?

 

We were supposed to camp in this park for two nights, but see those clouds swirling in from the right of the picture? They were the response to my foolish wondering earlier in the day: 'It must be amazing to see Superior really whipped up in a storm.'. We got a storm my friends, the same storm that caused flooding in Toronto, and felled 100year old trees in Kitchener. Yup, we weathered that in a TENT. A tent that held up VERY well, despite the fact that one corner of it was submerged in water for a few hours. Like, really. It was like a water bed. Worst storm I have ever camped in, and I have camped in some storms. However, we made the best of it with a bottle of wine, 4 kinds of cheese and crackers. The tent stayed dry and everything was ok.

#3. 4 glorious days with Frank and Sue in Port Elgin - especially after our camping fiasco. We were VERY grateful to be at a dry cabin with 10 kinds of cheese. No joke. That's how many there were. We ate, laughed, lolled, read, and ate and laughed some more. Glorious.

 

#4. MONTREAL! We had 3 nights in this amazing city and had an amazing time. We even bought some art that will hopefully arrive tomorrow or the next day. 

 We strolled around Old Montreal, and ate A LOT of good food (although neither of us ate a smoked meat sandwich - surprising).

 We rented Bixi bikes and biked around (SO FUN!)

And, of course, we bought wine at the convenience store and brought it to our restaurant. Montreal has some things FIGURED OUT!

#5. Camping on PEI with the Daya-Wolfe clan. It was really great to see them all, and especially spending time with C and A, who we miss very very much.

There are a BAJILLION pictures from our time with them, so I had to narrow it down SEVERELY so you wouldn't give up and stop looking ;)

A. let me know how much he had missed me by gnawing on my knee.

Then he wore all our hats at once.

We all jumped into a canal and let the tide push us upstream. The first jump I did was with C (she's 8), off the sides of the canal (not the bridge) and as I stood there holding her hand I thought 'DO NOT CHICKEN OUT, DO NOT CHICKEN OUT' because I knew she wouldn't and what's more, I didn't want to teach her that fear. We jumped hand in hand and the drop was long enough that I had time to think 'WHAT AM I DOING?!' It was VERY FUN!

We ate great food and had a great time on the beach, building dams and sand monsters.

Then we headed back to the ranch, as they say, which is Jainin and Roger's GORGEOUS home in the forest on a lake and did more fun things, like tipping and tailing a HUGE bucket of beans from the garden while sitting in the paddle boat. Every so often we would jump in the lake. 

 C. showed us joy embodied in jump after jump into the lake. This one is my absolute favourite, though.

We also read, cooked, painted our nails, went for many paddle boat rides (including one in the dark to watch some fireworks), swam, watched shows performed by C and A, complete with commercial breaks, and generally enjoyed ourselves. Seriously, their house is incredible. Sometimes I want to launch a 'move to Winnipeg' campaign so they will be closer to us, but really, we should be the ones moving out there. LIVING AT THE LAKE! What could be better?

Then we said good bye very early in the morning (See what I mean about a gorgeous house? The lake is about 15 meters from the house)

and began our journey west.

#6. Winging it and going with the flow. We didn't have a huge plan for our way home, except a rough idea of when we wanted to be there. We ended up spending a night each in Chicago and Minneapolis, both of which were INCREDIBLE.

We hotwired hotels in both cities, and in Chicago ended up in the Westin, where the bottle of flat water in the room was SIX dollars. We did not belong there for many reasons. 

 It just so happened that the Tall Ships festival was in town! How convenient! Jake and I are both nutso about boats of all kinds, despite having both been raised in land-locked prairie cities.

 Can't really complain about the Chicago skyline at night, can you?

In Minneapolis we got the bikes (called Nice Ride there) again and went touring around. Found the Old Mill Ruins, ate incredible guacamole at a mexican restaurant and may or may not have done a tequila shot.

And then, the next day after some shopping, we headed home! In order our route took us through Manitoba, Northern Ontario, Southern Ontario, Quebec (including the Gaspe!), New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, PEI, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Maine, New Hampshire (whose license plate motto is 'Live Free or Die', which seems a bit extreme for such a tiny, WASPY state, no?), Vermont, Upstate New York, Pennsylvania (didn't see any buggies, though), Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota and Manitoba.

We saw other vehicles from every province of Canada, except BC (but one of the groups of cross-canada cyclists we met was from BC), and American plates from New Mexico, Texas, and Alaska, as well as everywhere inbetween.

It was an incredible trip. This is but the briefest of highlights, believe me. I am now continuously plotting different versions of the same route for the next time we go out east to visit. There are A LOT of options. Can't wait for the next one!