The Practical Dilettante

I have reached the “avoiding the heat in southern Ontario” stage of the trip. It’s not yet nine o’clock, and it is already too hot to do anything outside. The trailer is fairly cool, but the house we are visiting is not air conditioned, so we are sitting in front of the fan and wilting. Ideal conditions for writing, I say!

It has been an action packed two/three weeks. We’ve been to my parents house in New Brunswick, during which we made a flying stop in St. Andrew’s. The aquarium was closed, but the playground was spectacular.

We drove a tractor:

and played on the beach with a cornucopia of cousins.

We had a decent run from NB to Ontario, me and my three kids stuffed into a Honda Civic. There may have been bribery with ice cream.

We broke the 1600 km (1000 mile) drive into three parts, of 4 hours, 9 hours, and 4 hours, with two nights on the road. Having finally obtained inflatable air mattresses, we declared the accommodations palatial:

And we had solar electric lighting!

In Bas St. Laurent (at the tourist stop at Pocaterie), we discovered an exhibit on the saltwater marsh.

so we took the time to smell the roses:

and look at flat worms under the microscope.

My son took pictures from the car, and we crossed bridges. (This one is the main way into Quebec city.)

We spent the night at Charleston Lake provincial park, which I can recommend for the fabulous beach (sandy, shallow water, warm) but caution you that it is full of poison ivy. On the plus side, we went on a nature walk with park interpreters that included a field guide to avoiding poison ivy. We also saw frogs

Does anybody know what kind of frog this is?

And snakes. Well, snake.

I'm pretty sure this is a northern water snake, since the only other water snake listed on the guide was endangered. My youngest son disagrees.

We ended that day in Toronto, but the photos were all taken from the car and none of them turned out. So Toronto doesn’t exist. Hah! (Whee! Hugely-bad logic R Us! (Also, terrible grammar. My blog, my rules.))

Tomorrow, my busy week in Toronto. Suffice it to say that I used the alarm clock almost every morning. On vacation. I might be missing the point.

Filed under: Day-to-Day | Tagged: kids, photo, travel, vacation | 4 Comments »