Summer Wine.

Have you noticed a distinct lack of activity recently? It isn’t just because I’m a lazy git, though that is part of the explanation. I was actually on a mini-holiday with my family. We had five days (Sunday - Thursday) to venture up to northern Ontario and visit with family. The five days we had overlapped with the camping dates of the family members we were visiting, so we decided to spend two of our days at Pancake Bay with them before taking off the rest of the way up to Wawa just to be able to spend some time in our grandparents’ old house.

It was a delightfully short visit, and I took pictures. Lots of pictures. So I thought that I would use this blog as a little online travel journal, at least just this once. That’s a lie. I’ll probably use it as a travel journal every time I go somewhere and take pictures. Luckily, that doesn’t happen often.

This holiday was so short mainly due to the fact that Fan Expo started on Friday, and Ashley had already booked a posh hotel for us to spend a weekend stocking Stan Lee. The upside to such a short holiday is that it doesn’t give my back the opportunity to create massive amounts of pain in protest, and it doesn’t give my aunt the chance to get judgemental and preachy. Or at least not unbearingly judgemental and preachy. We shall come to that. But first, let us talk about camping!

A week ago Saturday I headed up to Pancake Bay with my family. The plan was really quite simple – we were going to meet up with my aunt and her family, and spend a couple of days camping with them before heading up to Wawa for a couple of days. It really was a whirlwind holiday which commenced with a 12 hour journey in a red pickup truck.

The campsite was very pretty and fairly close to the lake, which was a calm and pristine blue when we arrived. After setting up the campsite, which was as easy as pi, I wandered off to the beach so that I could dig my feet into the sand and work on my thesis proposal. Which I did. For two hours. Actually, writing out my thesis took a full twenty minutes, the rest of the time was spent watching the water. When I finally decided to join the family I helped my baby cousin cook a hotdog in the bonfire for dinner, then took the kids swimming after dinner.

The next day I hiked up to the lookout to enjoyed the breath-taking view of Lake Superior for a while. It was a solid 11km hike that I decided to go on, and it was worth every step, even the wobbly ones near the end. Of course, after getting back to civilisation I have been informed that I was very silly for doing this and shot my knee to all hell. I do this often, however, so it doesn’t really bother me.

On our last day Lake Superior had a little rumble and was creating some nice sized waves so Heidi and I decided to take the kids and the dogs down to the dog beach for a little swim. Only one kid decided to come, and after 45 minutes of walking, we managed to go for a little bit of a swim. Felix didn’t have a good time, seeing as the waves rolling onto the shore were at least thrice his size, but Zeus and Annika loved it. Annika loved it so much, in fact, that I had to swim out to get her at least four times. After all, I wasn’t willing to go back to camp and say “sorry, I lost your youngest to Superior’s undertow.” Everyone had a good time, and it was a nice way to end the camping segment of our holiday.

Up in Wawa life was nice and relaxed. We didn’t get in until about 8, so that first day didn’t really amount to much. But the next day, which was also our only full day there, was chalk full of fun. The morning consisted of bumming around reading journal articles, but the afternoon was comprised of a trip out to camp, a walk around the old family lodge, a trip to the High Falls, and a visit with my grandparents. The evening brought wine and my brother’s fabulous cooking, a really rather tasty treat. It also brought my aunt raving about altmeds. I should get a medal for keeping my mouth shut.

The holiday was capped by another twelve hour stretch in the truck, which was only broken up by stops at trading posts (at one of which I bought myself a new pair of moccasins!) and refuelling. By the time we got home, I was in hurry mode to do laundry, have dinner, and do a wee bit of packing so that the three hours I had to get ready Friday morning could be spent doing the running around that had to be done. Which it was.

FanExpo was a great cap to my holidays, as Ashley and I stayed in the Royal York and got to live the life of posh geeks for the weekend. It was a geeky heaven that was highlighted by a Dalek, Stan Lee, William Shatner, and awesome commissions in need of framing.