So the first major long weekend of summer has come and gone. This past weekend we Canucks celebrated the birthday of Queen Victoria.
Firda and I spent the weekend with my parents at the family cottage in “Near North”, Ontario. I call it “Near North” since it’s not northern, but it’s still a 4 hours drive in the northern direction from Waterloo.
I took half of Friday off so we could attempt to beat the traffic, which I believe we were very successful. We arrived at the cottage around 5:30 (after making stops at a couple of garage sales and thrift stores along the way). After having dinner, which was mediocre Chinese Food we picked up in town (the takeout sucks – the eat in is pretty good though), Firda braved the black flies and mosquitoes to take some pictures during the magic hour (the hour before the sun sets and the lighting is fantastic). The bugs were pretty crazy but we sprayed ourselves down with bug repellent and Firda wore a bee keepers hat, so we minimized the bites we received. The rest of the night was spent talking, watching TV, playing cards etc. Oh yeah after the sun went all the way down Firda and I headed back outdoors with her camera to try our hand at some night sky long exposure shots. We didn’t have great luck with this, though we did take a couple of interesting ones.
On Saturday morning my dad, Firda and I headed out for the annual Victoria Day long weekend garage sale trip. In previous years the record number of garage sales visited was 27, this year we broke that record with around 31 garage sales. And the purchases this season were pretty good. We got a Canon T50 35mm SLR (with lens) for 1 dollar, we got a 120 film Brownie box camera for 1 dollar, we got a Coleco Frogger Table Top Arcade Game (like the one in this auction) for 1 dollar, a bunch of books, the Brothers Grimm DVD (I like the movie) and a bunch of other things I can’t remember. It was a pretty good morning. The worst part of the day were the bugs. There were massive swarms of them all over the place – mostly due to the warm weather. This meant we spent most of the day inside the cottage. We were all pretty tired out from the day so bedtime came early.
Sunday morning’s weather was cold and miserable. Thankfully the rain had stopped early in the morning. After brunch, Firda and I decided to go for a drive. We drove around South River (finally finding the bridge over the river – with the waterfalls) and then drove up to North Bay for some Dairy Queen (and to check out the Value Village). Along the way to North Bay the clouds moved aside and let the sun out. The rest of the day ended up being beautiful, with a little bit of a chilly breeze. Thanks to the breeze the bugs were not a problem that day.
Monday morning Firda whipped up a Frittata for breakfast. We then packed up and were on the road home by 11:30 (with hopes of beating the traffic home). We were pretty successful in beating the traffic, got home, showered, went out for dinner and then hung out until the season finale of Heroes.
And that was our exciting weekend. I hope yours was as good as ours.
Stay tuned to Firda’s photoblog and Flickr stream for pictures from our weekend.