Muskoka Geocaching Holiday

We have just come back from our holidays. This year we decided to go on a geocaching adventure so I picked an area that I thought would be nice to explore. Then I downloaded the maps and the geocaches within 5 km of our planned route onto my Garmin Dakota 20 GPS.  That gave me 500 caches to choose from when we hit the area.  The route I chose was between Huntsville and Orillia, Ontario but that doesn't mean we necessarily intended to cover all of it.

We stopped for breakfast at a place called The Cupboard, in Arnprior.  I highly recommend that place. The food was plentiful and tasty, and very reasonably priced. I'm sure we'll go back there again sometime.

We saw two deer on the road before we got to Algonquin Park, but no wildlife as we drove through. I had booked a room at the Comfort Inn at Huntsville before we left home, and it was definitely a good place to land when we finally arrived.  We had only ever  been to Huntsville once before and that had to be about 15 years ago.  It's a pretty little town with lots of hills and a river running through it.  After a bit of a rest, we turned on the GPS and checked to see where the nearest caches were, then off we went.  I wasn't so determined to pick up all the caches as I was to see the sites the listings brought us to, so it didn't bother me that we drove by some and didn't find some of the others.

One of the ones we didn't find was up at the Lion's Club lookout point.  Heck, it was hard enough to just find that!  We had been up there on our previous visit, but the road was much better marked at that time. This time we had to ask numerous people before we found someone who actually knew where we should turn off to get t here.  There was a lady from England up there reading. She was really enjoying our Canadian weather, she said. 

Geocaching helps you find all the interesting spots the locals want to point out that may not be in the tourist brochures. Huntsville  not only has a river, but it also has locks.  A pretty place, much like home.  But unlike at home, there were no boats as the locks had not been opened for the season yet. We found that strange as there are certainly a lot of boats on the Rideau at this time of year.

Then there was the boardwalk over the bay, creating a short cut for the waterside trail.  We never would have found this if it had not been for geocaching.

As we were driving to our next location along highway 11, I noticed there was a clump of geocaches off the main road, near some water. I mentioned that, and my hubby said that here was an exit coming up. I suggested he take that exit, and I'm so glad he did.  That's how we discovered Port Sydney.  Now, if I were to build a cottage somewhere, this would be the perfect spot.  We found caches along a roadside trail, at the beach, and on a woodland trail. We also found kids in a tree near the beach.  We had to be careful that they didn't see us looking for the cache nearby.

We went to the dam to look for another one, but there was too much metal and it kept screwing up the headings on the GPS.  That's okay as the site was the best treasure we found on the entire trip. 

Below the dam we saw some kids climb a pine tree, walk out along the branches while clinging to the branch above them and then plunging into the water below.  After they swam around in the deep water there, they went a bit downstream and used the rushing water to slide over the rocks.  I could have sat there all day and just watched them.

We went on to Gravenhurst for the night.  There we found the docks at one end of town and a beach with a bandstand at the other side of town.  The main problem with Gravenhurst is that it needs more decent places to eat. 

After visiting their farmer's market the next morning, we headed for for Bracebridge.  On our first trip to this area we managed to find a huge rocky lookout that I had seen in a brochure. We had to ask many people where that was, but finally found it. The trail across the rock back then was marked with painted arrows. We had to stand on one to see the next one. We were not sure if that "trail" made a loop, or how far it went. As it was late in the day and very difficult to see the arrows for a reverse trip, since some of them where on the downside of a dip, we decided it was not a good time to venture too far.  I doubt that it would be good to be caught up there at night, or in a storm.

This time I saw at least 4 mentions of Huckleberry Rock in the brochures. I was not sure if it was the same rock, but figured it would at least be similar. Think of the Group of Seven and the paintings or wind blown pines on a rocky surface done by Tom Thomson. I'm sure he sat up there and did those.

It was the same rock. We just came at it from a different angle. There is now a canyon cut through this rock, and you can walk up to the edge of that and look down if you like.  This rock is the oldest on the planet, and absolutely huge.  I'm so glad we were able to find it more easily this time. 

When we were finished walking around on the rock we went back to Bracebridge. There are a number of caches along trails leading to the waterfall in the middle of town.  I know we never saw that last time we were there, so once again, geocaching is a great way to find the local sites. 

If you are looking at a map you may notice we are backtracking. We had decided to go back to Huntsville for another night, before heading home.  While there a waiter asked if we had been up to the Dorset Lookout Tower. We hadn't heard about that, but it was not far off our route on the way home, so we did make the scenic side trip.  This tower is 100 feet tall, and because it stands on another rocky outcrop, it looms 365 feet above the Lake of the Bays.  Not everyone makes it to the very top.  You have to climb the stairs, and while the ones closer to the bottom go up the centre of the tower, the upper flights spiral around the outside of it, which can feel a little spooky. 

It was a long trip home but we did stop in Eganville for our final meal on the road.  It was a  nice trip and we certainly picked a great area to go exploring.

I Might As Well Bang My Head Against the Wall!

You know how sometimes when you are trying to do something by phone, and keep having to deal with a machine at the other end, you think, "If I could just get to talk to a real person, we could sort this out?"  Well don't be too sure about that.

Mind you, I wasn't on the phone, but was trying to sign up for something on the internet. It was one of those sites that don't let you put in a Post Office Box. You need to enter a street address.  I live in a small village and was having trouble because Canada Post does not recognize street addresses here. We have to have the proper box number on our mail or we  may never get it.  I finally wrote the company a message to tell them about this problem. 

I said, "I am trying to sign up, but your form requires a street address and your system sends me to canadapost.ca since it cannot verify my address. That's because we have Post Office Box numbers in this village, and Canada Post does not recognize our civic addresses. How can I sign up?"

I got a reply. "Unfortunately we do not accept PO Boxes as valid addresses for registration. This is for security reasons; we require civic addresses."

I tried again.  "But YOUR system will not accept my civic address!  I'm very disappointed."

I thought that must have worked as then she said, "Can you send me your civic address? I’ll see if it works on my end."  I figured she was going to override the system at her end and get me signed up, so I sent her my civic address.

I just got another message from her. It says, "I’m not finding your street listed; I’m sure it exists, but Canada Post does not recognize it because mail is send via PO Box.
I apologize for the inconvenience. "

Duh. That's what I was complaining about in the first place.  I thought I was dealing with a human being at the other end, but perhaps it's some sort of robot after all. 

At this point I can't remember what it was I was trying to sign up for anyway, and now I probably don't want to be bothered.

It's All in the Family

Today we finally made it to the new IKEA store, in Ottawa.  It's huge.  It's got one floor of display rooms and another floor where you might as well get yourself a cart because you ARE going to pick up items as you walk through. Then you go through the warehouse area, where you can locate some of the things you spotted in the displays, and get those there.  The tags on the items in the display areas tell you what isle and section to look in when you get to the warehouse.  We didn't see any of the order forms like they used to have in the old store, so we wrote the numbers down on a piece of paper we happened to have with us. Do come prepared! 

After many years of visiting the old IKEA, and never once being able to get into the restaurant there, we finally got to eat IKEA food.  It's cheap and plentiful.  Hubby said his meatballs and mashed potato meal wasn't as hot as he would have liked, but he said it was good.  I had a huge mandarin salad with a chicken breast. Marvelous meal for the price, but the chicken, which is proudly advertised on the table displays as being organic, was rather tasteless.  A good dose of salt helped that a bit. 

I found this machine when I entered the store that would issue a free IKEA Family Membership Card.  Being like most kids I know, I just had to push the buttons.  I ended up with a nice orange credit card sized card with a code that needed to be scanned in.  After that I was all set to enjoy the benefits of being a Family Member. One was that there are certain promotions that are just for Family Members.  I apparently didn't choose any of those items today.  Another benefit is that you get your coffee and tea for free if you present your card when paying for your meal.  We not only got our beverages for free, but found you could get refills too. We enjoyed this benefit both with our meals and again later when we went back for an afternoon snack.  At that time I had a slice of apple strudel cake, and hubby had a chocolate truffle bar.  Both came with whipped cream.  We're thinking this might just be a great place to go, even when we don't have any plans to shop the store.  Actually, nobody should ever have any trouble dragging their men to this store. They can sit and  drink a few cups of coffee while you shop, or even have beer with lunch if they want.  I can't think of another store where you can get a beer!

On the way out I checked out another food area.  It seems you can get hot dogs and cinnamon buns and coffee there too, but it's more of a grab and go place. There are lots of other packaged  foods available too.  They even had baskets with samples of bits of cookies.  I tasted one that had vanilla cream filling with an apple jelly glaze.  Ha.  As if I had not had enough to eat already, I had to bring some of those home. But hey, I certainly did get my exercise walking around that place, and quite honestly, I didn't see it all. 

We will be going back!

Any Port in a Storm

This posting is late, I know, but my internet hasn't been working since the storm last week.

My friend had to go to Brockville on Tuesday (May 29th), and she asked me if I wanted to go for the ride. I had not seen much of her lately so I thought it would be a great chance to catch up. The weatherman had been threatening us with storms since the previous Friday, but once again, we were sitting in sunshine, so off we went. Everything was fine until part way home when the sky to the west started to get dark.

It wasn’t long before we had a light mist of rain, but the sky was getting darker still, and there was lightning in the distance. Then these big splats of rain started to hit the windshield. They were far enough apart still, so, while it was a bit surprising to go from fine mist to big splats, seeing the approaching storm we knew something was coming. We weren’t too far from home by then, so we didn’t worry about it. But as the rain picked up, so did the wind. I noticed the trees really start to move, and said, "Look at the wind!" just as a gust hit the car and my friend grabbed the steering wheel tighter and let out a "Whoa!"

The rain started coming down in sheets, and with the driving force of the wind behind it, it became very difficult to see the road in front of us. But we were just on the edge of the village by then and so we crept forward through this curtain of water, ever so slowly, trying to see where to turn onto our street. There was another vehicle coming out of there, so we waited for it to get out of the way as we were not sure if it was in the middle of the road or not. As we crept down the first block, my friend looked warily at a big tree by the side of the road and said she didn’t trust it. Our silly solution was to zoom under it as fast as we could, just to get clear of it.

We had been discussing whether we would have tea at her house or mine, but the weather decided that for us. There was no way to get from the car to her front door without getting totally soaked, but I have a large overhanging roof by my side door, so we could pull up under that and have tea at my house. Ya sure.

It seems my hubby left the garbage can in just the wrong spot for us to just drive straight in, so my friend angled her vehicle in such a way as to miss that can. She asked if I would be able to get out, and we both looked to the right, and saw a waterfall coming off the roof, just outside the car window. Nope. If I even tried to open the door that water would come right into the car with the next gust of wind. So she tried again, and though I knew I could make it to the door I decided to make sure I had the right key in hand and wait for a lull in the gusting wind. It came. I went. I got to the door, I got the key in, and just as I was turning it, another gust came up and blew the wall of water in such a way that I got soaked from head to foot, all down my back. I shrieked. I’m sure I did, as the rain was colder than expected. I looked back at my friend who I thought would still be safely in the car, laughing at me. but she was already out of the vehicle, and discovering that she had pulled up so close to the garage that it was very difficult to get by the car. I think she shrieked too. By the time we got inside, we were both wet, and giggling.

It didn’t take long to discover that the power was out, and there would be no tea for us that day.
My driveway was full of water, which isn’t too unusual, since my house is the low spot on the street, but then my sidewalk acquired several inches of water too. With the power off, my sump pump wouldn’t be working, so this was not a good thing. I have not only the usual (for our area) indoor sump pump, but also an outside one. There’s an underground river that flows under my garage, but worse than that, the tile drainage also flows into that hole.

I called my son, who lives in another town, to get him to check the internet so he could tell me when the power might come back on. He said 6:45pm. It wasn’t yet 4pm. My hubby called at 4:45pm and when he found out the power wasn’t on, he decided he better come home and look after any possible water situation that might arise. As it turned out, our power was not restored until 1:30am the following morning, while others in our area were not expecting power until at least noon.

I quickly discovered that I had neither cable nor internet, but it was Drop In day at one of the local churches, so I went there for the company after taking a ride around town on my bike to survey the damage from the storm.

There were lots of big branches down, and other trees that had been either uprooted or snapped off. It was reported that we had a tornado, but it turned out that we didn’t. We did have winds or 110km/hr though, and I’ve never seen that much water come down all at once before.

We likely should have been in the basement, but with no power we didn’t get the weather alerts and felt so much safer once we were in the house we were content to sit in the kitchen and watch the storm.

The cable company fixed their problem and we had TV the afternoon after the storm, but I still had no internet. I use Sympatico, so I checked with a few friends who use that too, and theirs was fine. That meant the problem was just mine. So I tried rebooting the modem a couple of times, unplugging and restarting and everything, but nothing worked. My hubby called Bell and they had him check the filter and do a few other things before they decide that the problem had to be at their end after all. They said they would fix it within 24 hours. My hubby asked me the second night if I was suffering from internet withdrawal yet, but apparently I wasn’t as I actually turned down a chance to use a neighbour’s machine earlier in the day. I just knew the e-mail would be piled up to an almost unmanageable amount by the time I got to it again.

The 24 hours passed and still no internet. After calling Sympatico again, they decided to send us a new modem. I doubted that would solve the problem, since I had the computer and the modem unplugged when the storm came through. The new modem didn't help, so another call and a few more tests and they decided they would send a technician Sunday morning.  The techie found a bad port at the switching station and assigned us a new one, but wasn't sure if anyone at Bell worked on that sort of thing on Sundays so said it could be Monday before we got back online. We spent the day away from home on Sunday and when we got back we discovered we were finally reconnected to the world. 

I'd say, considering all the uprooted and damaged trees around here, we got off lucky here.

The Art of Progression

I seem to be a bit more serious about my art this year. Instead of working on it for a couple of hours once a week, I'm doing something at least 3 times a week now...sometimes more.  I have some good newsletters, and bloggers to follow, and I discovered a site that inspires me to try new things.

Though I have been attending art classes for a number of years, I wasn't progressing very fast. I guess I don't have any natural talent, but I do enjoy playing with the paint so I just keep going.  Last year a couple of things happened. First a friend asked me to bring some of my stuff to a church hall where it would be displayed along with hers over the winter months. Then I was asked to sit and paint in a garden that was part of a tour.  I don't know where I found the nerve, but I did it, and greatly enjoyed the experience.  The resulting paintings  were among the best I'd ever produced to that point, so that boosted my confidence. 

More than one of the blogs I follow mentioned art journals, so I went and bought myself a multimedia journal, and have been enjoying having that space where I can create and experiment without fear of failure. Sometimes I can't seem to leave that little book alone!

This year I found the Art House Co Op online and took part in a couple of their projects. First I did the 4x6 exchange project. We were instructed to create a piece of art just 4x6 inches in size, and mail it, along with a self addressed stamped envelope to the Art House Co Op by a certain deadline. They sent the artwork on to someone else who participated.  I created  a painting of a local church, and got back a card with a little motorcycle riding along a thin red line.  Another friend got back a truly beautiful card with a leaf pattern on it.

The second, and most recent project I got involved in was called Mystery Project. Everyone who signed up was sent a Prismacolor Pen and an little card with a theme on it.  The idea was to create something with whatever colour arrived to match the theme presented.  I got a Red Prismacolor pen, which has a thin nib at one end and a truly thick one at the other.  My theme was The Future of the Year.  Well, that instantly made me think of two things. The first was about being In the Red, and the other was more to do with fire. We are told there will be some major sunspots later this year and the long range weather forecast also tells us we will have hotter and dryer conditions than usual.  Either way, there will be flares or flames.  I decided to go with that one. 

The second part of that project was to leave it anonymously, in a public place, for someone else to find. I've just left it in the perfect spot. I can't tell you where  it is though I did leave mention of the Art House Co Op Mystery Project on it so the finder might be able to look that up and discover what it's all about. 

It was a fun project and I do hope they offer some more of these little creativity kick starters real soon.  Right now they are busy with the annual Sketchbook Project. I'm not involved in that , but am actually thinking about it for next year. I think that would be another major step forward.

In Memory Of.....

Over the past few years a few friends and relatives have passed away, but their names are still on my e-mail list.  I keep thinking I should delete them, but I never do it. Though those dear people are gone, and I know it, somehow I just can't seem to get myself to hit that delete button in my address book. It just doesn't feel right yet for some reason.

Today I was reading an article about the Slave Lake fire in Reader's Digest. At the end of the article they mention marks made on a white board during the fire. The marks show where the bulldozers saved houses and where the fire reached town and raged on through until it reached the lake before dying out.  The article mentioned that six months after the fire those ink marks on the board remained untouched.  The fire chief said he just couldn't bring himself to erase it. 

I guess I'm not so strange after all.

I'm Now a Collector

Every year our little village holds a yard sale. I don't mean we gather at one location. Everyone puts their unwanted stuff out on their own property and other people come from far and wide, or just down the block, to see what they can find. Mind you, if there is a vacant lot somewhere, several sellers will set up shop there too.

Last year I picked up lots of little treasures. This year, I only came home with 4 little salt dishes. 

I didn't need them, but I brought home two several years back from a big yard sale the animal shelter was having to raise funds.  A couple of years ago I spotted a couple more at one of our village yard sales and passed them up... and hated myself later. So this time I brought them home.  I likely only would have chosen one, but the price was too high for one, and just fine for all four, so it seems I  now have a collection.