We spent last weekend at Great Wolf Lodge in Niagara Falls with our friends the Scanlons and the Wadsworths. It’s only been open a year or two, and none of us had ever been there before, so we weren’t completely sure what to expect. Bottom line: it’s not the cheapest place around, but we had a lot of fun. It’s expensive for a reason though — there’s a ton to do, and they’ve spent a fair amount of time thinking about the convenience of their guests, which it seems not a lot of places have done. I don’t think there was a single time over the weekend when I wondered “why did they do it this way?” Of course, part of that is the fact that it’s brand new — they haven’t had “backwards compatibility” issues yet. By this I mean that they haven’t yet had to upgrade things or add new things overtop of existing things. I’m sure the people at Canada’s Wonderland or other parks would love to rearrange ride locations and stuff, but you can’t shut down four or five rides for several months to move them around just to make things more convenient.

OK, there’s one thing I did wonder about — the Lodge is built in a fairly run-down area of Niagara Falls. To get there, you take the 420 from the QEW but instead of turning right to go towards the falls and the touristy section of town, you turn left and drive for a few kilometers. A minute or two after you think “this can’t be right, I must have missed it”, there it is. Literally across the street from the lodge, there are some pretty old beat-up houses. I remember thinking that some of the people who got the expensive rooms with balconies paid upwards of $400 a night, and their view from the balcony includes houses that cost less than that per month in rent. However, given the size of the lodge and the amount of land they needed to build it, it makes sense. The cost of that much land closer to the middle of town would be unreal, so it was probably much cheaper to build out where they did. It’s only about a ten minute drive to Clifton Hill anyway, so it’s not like you’re all that far away, really.

Great Wolf Lodge, in case you’ve never heard of it, is an indoor waterpark and hotel. It does look inside and out like a lodge rather than a standard hotel, as if it were entirely made of logs. The rooms were pretty nice — we had the “Kid Cabin” style of room, which was basically a suite. The kids had their own little room with single bunk beds and a third single bed, a TV, and a wall mural covering the entire room that made it look like a little log cabin, complete with windows and friendly-looking animals peeking in. The rest of the room was a fairly standard hotel room with a fridge, microwave, coffee maker, fireplace, hair dryer, and safe. The waterpark area is huge, with a number of water slides (some using inner tubes, some not), a family slide (where up to four people could fit into one raft), a “roller coaster slide”, the “vortex” (which is like a water slide into a big toilet bowl), wave pool, hot tubs, and a big play structure with lots of water-spraying devices. The “roller coaster slide” was cool — three people sit one behind the other in a raft, and after each drop there is a conveyer belt that brings you back up again (fast!) to drop again. I only rode that one twice because (a) there was always a long line-up for it, and (b) Nicky was too small to go on it, so I had to find someone to look after him while Ryan and I went on it. This was because Gail was away for almost all of Saturday, but more on that later.

The thing that impressed me the most were the wristbands. Maybe they have these at other hotels or parks or whatever, but I’ve never seen them, and I thought they were the coolest thing ever. Each guest gets a wristband which you wear from the moment you check in. The wristband contains a little RFID (I’m guessing) tag that acts as a room key (hold your wrist up to the lock and it opens), locker key, and even credit card — you can use it at the snack bar or restaurants to charge stuff to your room (though you still have to give your name and sign a receipt). You can also get tokens at the arcade with your wristband, and if you forget which locker you locked, you can scan it at a little booth and it will tell you. We could also set up the kids’ wristbands so that they could unlock the doors and be used with lockers but they couldn’t be used to charge stuff to the room (I’m sure they call this feature “teenager protection”). The wristbands are (obviously) waterproof, so when you go to the waterpark area, you don’t need to bring anything. You automatically have your room key with you, and if you want lunch or snacks or drinks or anything, you don’t need to run back to the room to get cash, or worry about hiding your wallet under your towels while you swim. If they could only build a 10 MP digital camera in the wristband, we’d be all set.

The rest of the weekend in a nutshell:

• “Cub Club” was a club for kids where they could make crafts, play, and watch TV, and they also had “story time” every evening, where a story teller came out and read a couple of books (the night we went, it was “Green Eggs and Ham” and Robert Munsch’s “Mortimer”). The kids really enjoyed that.
• The food was good and not overpriced for the most part. The food at the snack bar was pretty good, and the dinner buffet was excellent. The breakfast buffet was also very good but expensive, so I wouldn’t do that again, especially considering that there were more reasonably priced alternatives. There were a couple of little cafés in the hotel that had muffins and doughnuts and even bowls of cereal.
• There was an arcade as well, with both standard video games as well as games where you win tickets which can be cashed in for prizes. The tokens were not as expensive as at other arcades I’ve been to. Of course, we paid $60 in tokens all told, and ended up with maybe $15 worth of prizes, but that’s to be expected.
• One night, Ryan wandered into the arcade accidentally (we asked him to go find one of our friends in front of the arcade, but he misunderstood). He saw a light flashing on a game, hit a button, and won 150 tickets. Another time, he put a token in a “Wheel of Fortune” type game, hit the button at exactly the right time, and won 250 tickets. Those two wins constituted about one third of the whole family’s total winnings all weekend.
• We had dinner at the Rainforest Cafe right at the base of Clifton Hill on Saturday night. Afterwards, we went for a ride on the Niagara Skywheel further up the hill, where we had a great view of the falls and the rest of the city, though I spent half the time fumbling with the new camera, trying to take a picture that actually looked good. Because it was at night, the camera wanted to use the flash and it ended up bouncing off the glass. Turning the flash off didn’t help either, because it then kept the shutter open longer, and so everything was blurry. I’m quite sure the real problem was user error, but I’ll figure it out, eventually.
• After the giant wheel, we drove out to see the Winter Festival of Lights, which was very cool, as always. We try to get out there every year.
• In the waterpark, chlorine smell was surprisingly minimal, considering the amount of water and the fact that it was indoors. By Sunday afternoon, however, it was starting to get to me. By the time we left, I was coughing almost uncontrollably, but the coughing stopped minutes after we left the water park area.

Gail had to miss Saturday entirely because of a funeral. Her great uncle James passed away on New Years Day, and the funeral was on Saturday in Ingersoll, so she had to drive two hours each way. This was the second vacation in the last year that was interrupted by a death in the family — our trip north last July was cut short after Gail’s aunt passed away unexpectedly. You hate to say this about any death, but Uncle James’s passing wasn’t quite as tragic as Aunt Barbie’s — she was only 57 and her death was unexpected, while Uncle James was 85 and hadn’t been in great health for a while. Over Christmas, we had discussed the idea of having a little “reunion” some time soon, as James and his sister Helen (Gail’s grandfather’s brother and sister) and their spouses (Gail’s dad jokingly refers to the four of them as the Matthews “elders”) were getting up there in age. Unfortunately the idea came too late.

I’ve put some pictures from the weekend up at my family web site.

Last week was our (seventh?) annual trip to Fern Resort, and I think it was our best ever. I think I gained about 50 pounds, or at least it feels like it. I haven’t weighed myself yet, but I’m not optimistic. The diet starts… soon.

I won’t give a day-by-day summary or anything, but here are some of the highlights and (one) lowlight:

Good Stuff

• The kids were awesome. They didn’t sit still when eating most of the time, and Ryan had a little bit of a tantrum once but that was short-lived, and the rest of the time they were great.
• Four-way beach volleyball. I look forward to this all year
• Golf with Ryan on Fern’s 5-hole course. Ryan hit pretty well, I shot two pars and missed an eagle putt by an inch
• Golf with Jeff, Mike, and Jerry at Hawk Ridge. I came in last, but not by much, and I played reasonably well
• The food was phenomenal, as always
• I was the co-winner of the men’s singles tennis tournament! Well, this was only because I was one of only three people who showed up, and it started to rain just as we got there, so the tennis pro cancelled it and gave us each points for showing up
• I won at bingo twice – $5 once time and a t-shirt the other time
• Nicky got on stage during the magic show. The magician “pulled” lots of coins out of his ear, his nose, from under his arms, etc. Nicky told us later that the magician was just hiding the coins in his hand and then dropping them in the bucket, but he played along the whole time and was hilarious
• Rachel and Sarah won the “Fern’s Got Talent” competition with their routine from High School Musical
• Ryan and I saw a blue heron while riding pedal carts through the woods

Bad Stuff

• Walking with Nicky across the volleyball court, I bent down to duck under the net, while he thought it would be fun to jump and brush his head on the net, and our heads collided. He rubbed his head and said “Ow” and that was it, while I fell to the ground (“you dropped like you’d been shot” said the guy walking behind me) and ended up with a black eye and a nasty abrasion right below my eyebrow

We started our second week of “vacation” on Saturday (though we’re working this week), when we dropped Ryan off at Gail’s dad’s place and Nicky off at my parents’
place and came home alone. I love my kids more than anything, and I will certainly miss them this week, but I’ll also enjoy not making lunches, not dropping anyone off in the morning or picking anyone up in the evening, not worrying about whether they’ll eat what we make for dinner, going to see movies without arranging for (or paying for) babysitters, etc. We went to the CNE yesterday, saw Harry Potter (again) on Saturday and Stardust yesterday, and we might try to see The Bourne Ultimatum on Wednesday. Thursday night we’re going to Canada’s Wonderland (where we won’t even go near Kidsville), and Friday we’re going for dinner and then to see We Will Rock You in Toronto. We pick the boys up on Saturday.

This past weekend was our annual camping trip to Balsam Lake. While last year’s trip was a lot of fun, this year wasn’t so much. First off, our numbers were down from 9 campsites and 33 people last year to 6 campsites and 22 people. Unavailable were three families that have been camping with us for many years, so they were missed. Problem number one. Friday night was fine; we arrived in the late afternoon and got set up, then had dinner. Not long after we got there, one of the other kids, Dominik, fell in the forest and cut his leg on a branch. It turned out that the branch had actually punctured his leg, and there was a large hole. His mom Jenny took him to the hospital in nearby Lindsay. After a few hours in the ER, she returned with Dominik, who was very proud of his six stitches. Problem number two.

The rest of the night was less eventful. We sat around the campfire, got the kids to bed, then sat around the campfire some more, drank some frosty beverages, and ate chips and marshmallows. It got pretty cold that night, so Gail and I shivered in our sleeping bags for a while before getting to sleep. We had made sure that we had enough warm things (blankets and warm PJs and stuff) for the kids, so they were fine, but we were freezing. Problem number three.

The next morning was great. Gail got up with the boys, as I got a bit of a lie-in. We had breakfast and the boys rode their bikes for a while, though Dominik and his brother Anton crashed into each other on their bikes, and though Dominik was fine, Anton scraped his arm and leg up pretty good. No ER visit required for that one, but I’d call that problem number four.

Later in the morning, we got together with the other families and had a communal brunch. One of our camping traditions is that we get everyone together one morning and make egg McMuffins. I was on egg duty while Jeff did ham slices, Liisa did cheese, Faisal toasted the English muffins, and Steve sort of supervised and helped out as necessary. Every year the assembly line is different, and it’s a lot of fun. After the cooking and eating was done, the adults who weren’t cooking helped clean up… and that’s when the rain began. Problem number five.

Tarps were quickly whipped out, and Steve and Richard climbed trees and worked tirelessly in the rain to keep Lynda’s site dry (which was where our communal campfire was). The rest of the morning and the whole afternoon were spent hiding from the rain. I sat in our dining tent and taught Ryan and Dominik how to play cribbage, others played euchre by the campfire, Nicholas and Jake watched DVDs in Jeff and Kerri’s camper, some people read books, and others napped. By late afternoon, we were all quite tired of the rain. Gail had found a couple of small leaks in our tent, so she rearranged the beds so that none of them got wet. We had figured by that time that our beach towels were not likely to get used for anything else, so we started using them to mop up the tent. Problem number… what am I at now? Five? Six?

Paul and Jenny’s tent was leaking worse than ours and given that, plus problems number two and four (their kids both getting hurt), they decided to cut their losses, and packed up in the rain and headed home. At dinnertime, we all decided that we just wanted to be dry for a while, so as we had done one previous year, we all drove into town and went to a restaurant for dinner. For an hour or so, we didn’t care that it was still raining, and when we got back from dinner, it had stopped. Gail grabbed our damp sleeping bags and ran for the comfort station, where there were washers and (more importantly) dryers. A couple of hours and a few dollars later, our sleeping bags were warm and dry again. Campfire was fun that night, as we roasted marshmallows and enjoyed the lack of rain… until about 10:00, when the thunderstorm hit. Problem number… oh, I don’t know. Look it up.

The rain was pretty hard, and the thunder was loud. I love thunderstorms, so once I realized that our tent was no longer leaking (or at least was leaking in places we already had covered), I actually enjoyed it, and slept better that night than the previous one.

Sunday morning, the rain had stopped, but everything was still wet. We had no choice, though, but to pack all the wet stuff up into the van. Judicious use of towels, tablecloths, and blankets kept most of the dirt and mud contained, and we were on the road by 11:30 or so. It was nice and sunny at home, so we put the tents up again in the backyard to dry, and then all of us had the nicest, warmest, and most welcome showers / baths we’d had in recent memory.

Day Four: North of Superior
It’s about a five hour drive from the Sault to Manitouwadge, but we were in no big hurry. We packed up in the morning and headed out. Hwy 17 north of the Sault goes through Lake Superior Provincial Park, which is absolutely beautiful. There were lots of hiking trails and beaches, and one place where you could walk out onto a ledge under a cliff where several-hundred-year-old native-drawn pictographs are visible. (Aside: on the ledge, there is a plaque dedicated to a Canadian author and artist named Selwyn Dewdney, who studied and wrote about native pictographs for many years. One of his sons, Kee Dewdney is a professor at Western, where I did my Masters.)

On the drive, John was leading the way, and for whatever reason, didn’t want to stop anywhere along the way, so we passed by a number of photo opportunities on the way up. Gail was a little disappointed, but we figured we were coming back the same way anyway, so we’d get the pictures then. Unfortunately, when we did come back, it was very foggy, so some of the pictures we missed on the way up were impossible on the way down. We stopped at Wawa for the obligatory picture with the big goose, and also to grab lunch and fill up. A couple of hours later, we were in Manitouwadge, enjoying a beer on the back patio in the sweltering heat. Since it was Canada Day, we wandered down to the beach, where the town was having a BBQ, and there was some entertainment for the kids. On our walk back to Rolly’s place, he pointed out a barely-visible footprint in some dust, casually mentioning that it was from a bear. Bears are a big problem in this area. Rolly has seen some bear footprints in his back yard, and the town dump is no longer open to the public because of the number of bears that hang around there. If you have a load of stuff you want to take there, you have to contact the town who will arrange an escort for you, and the basic rule is “get in, dump your stuff, and get the hell out”. Anyway, a little while later, the black flies and no-see-ums came out, and we went inside.

One thing I found interesting about being that far north was that it stays lighter later. Around here during the summer, sunset is about 9:00, but up there, sunset didn’t happen until almost 10:00. Rolly was saying that it never really gets fully dark during the summer; even in the middle of the night, there’s still a bit of a glow on the horizon. In the winter, it’s the other way around — sunrise doesn’t happen until 8:30, sunset is shortly after 5:00, and the middle of the night is pitch black.

Something I was hoping for on this trip was a glimpse of the Northern Lights, but they are more common during the winter, and we never managed to see any. Rolly wants us to come up during the winter sometime, so maybe then.

Day Five: Manitouwadge
Monday was our first full day in Manitouwadge. In the morning, we went over to the police station. When you visit a police officer, it’s almost required that he give you a tour of the police station and put you in a jail cell. He put the boys in a cell and closed the door, and they had lots of fun trying to get out. After a while, he simply pulled the door open again, and we all had a good laugh at the fact that he never actually locked it, it was just heavy.

Rolly has a little sailboat that he keeps behind the police station, so after our tour he took the boys (and me) out for some spins around the lake. I’ve never been on a sailboat (other than a big-ass catamaran in Jamaica), so I never think about sailboats as being able to turn suddenly, but this one was small enough that one yank on the rudder and we’d turn 90° on a dime. It was very cool, and the boys loved it as well.

The rest of the day was spent kicking the soccer ball around, riding bikes (I took Nicky’s training wheels off and did the whole running-alongside-the-bike thing for a little while until he got tired of it), and watching the boys splash around in the little pool that Rolly had filled up for them. Once again (and I think this is pretty standard up north), the outside part of the day ended when the bugs came out.

Day Six: Moving Day
Rolly lives with his girlfriend Candyce, who grew up in Manitouwadge. Her mother was moving from a house in town to an apartment on Tuesday, and John, Jackie, and I offered to help with the move while Gail hung out with the boys. The move took part of the morning and an hour or so in the afternoon, since there wasn’t all that much stuff. It was overcast all morning, but luckily the rain held off until after we were done. Once the rain started, we hung out in the house playing cards, and the boys drew pictures. They also decided (entirely on their own) to write thank-you cards to Rolly and Candyce for inviting us to stay, and Nicky even wrote one to Gail and I for bringing him to Manitouwadge. We also borrowed Rolly’s computer and internet connection (high speed, thank goodness, I don’t know if I could handle a modem connection again) to book a trip on the Agawa Canyon Tour Train for Thursday, a trip we were really looking forward to, but as fate would have it, we would not be making.

Day Seven: Some Endings Come Too Soon
Wednesday we left Manitouwadge for Sault Ste. Marie, where we were going to camp for two nights. Shortly before we left in the morning, Gail realized that we had never retrieved the email that the Agawa canyon people had sent us with our confirmation number, so she asked me to go and get it. I logged onto Gail’s webmail account to get the number, and saw an email from Gail’s aunt Jeanne with the subject line “Sad news”. Gail’s aunt Barbie had passed away on Sunday, and was found by her daughter on Monday. At the young age of only 57, she had suffered a heart attack. The funeral was going to be in London (Ontario) on Friday. I broke the news to Gail, and we decided to cancel the train trip and simply head home. We figured we should be able to make it to (or near) Sudbury that day, and then it was about five hours home from there on the Thursday, giving us lots of time to get to London on Friday.

The drive to the Sault was broken up by a couple of photo-stops (though we did have to skip a few, as I mentioned before, because of the fogginess). We stopped at Old Woman’s Bay, and all four of us had a great time climbing around on the huge rocks on the beach. We also stopped to see the aforementioned pictographs, which was also very cool. We decided at that point that Lake Superior Provincial Park would be a great place to go camping for a week. We had a picnic lunch at the pictograph place before continuing on to Sault Ste. Marie. John and Jackie set up their trailer and we grabbed the rest of our stuff from them, and continued on our way. The drive to Sudbury was uneventful, other than the torrential rain that we hit just outside of Sudbury. We stopped at a hotel just off the highway around 9:00, went for a quick swim to relax (very nice after sitting in the van for most of the past 12 hours), and went to bed.

Thursday we drove home from Sudbury, arriving home shortly after lunch. Gail immediately packed yet another bag, and was picked up by her mother and aunt on their way to London. I arranged for a sitter for the boys for Friday, and drove out to London on Friday for the funeral.

Afterword
This was one of my favourite family vacations ever, though it obviously could have used a different ending. I love visiting new places, and the scenery through Lake Superior Provincial Park was some of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen, rivalling the Blue Mountains in Jamaica and the mountain vistas of Whistler and Jasper. (It’s hard to call the rocky desert landscape of the Grand Canyon “beautiful”, though it was certainly awe-inspiring.)

Gail turns the big four-oh next year, and decided a few years ago that she wanted to go to Paris for her 40th, so that’s in the plans for next summer. I turn forty the year after that, and I’m still trying to decide where I want to go then. After paying for Paris, I’m not sure we’ll be able to afford Hawaii or Australia the next year (two places I really want to go), and up until a couple of weeks ago, the thought of spending two weeks camping in Northern Ontario would not have appealed to me in the least, but after last week, maybe….

Note: this entry was written on Thursday evening, but I never got around to posting it until today, so in the article, “today” means Thursday (July 5) and “tomorrow” means Friday (July 6). I haven’t even written the second part of it yet.

We got home early this afternoon from a 2484 km trip around Ontario. The sheer size of this province astounds me — from our place to Manitouwadge was almost 1300 km and took us a day and a half, and Manitouwadge is still a full day’s drive from the Manitoba border, and the far north of Ontario is unreachable by roads. The trip was a lot of fun, and we saw some amazing things, but unfortunately we had to cut the trip short. On Wednesday morning, we found out that Gail’s aunt Barbie had passed away on Sunday. We were planning on leaving that morning anyway, but we missed out on an extra day in the Sault, plus a day in Sudbury as well. The funeral is tomorrow in London.

I’m going to break the trip in half, just so that I don’t have one huge blog entry; rather, two semi-huge blog entries. A google map of the whole trip is here.

Day One: Heading Out
Gail had the day off, and I left work around 2:00. We picked the boys up after their last day of school, and headed out. We stopped near Canada’s Wonderland, about an hour away, and went to Chuck E. Cheese’s for dinner. This is a family tradition — we go there for dinner on (or near) the first and last days of school. We continued on to Gail’s dad’s place in Sundridge, where we stayed the night.

Day Two: The Road to the Sault
Friday morning, we had a quick breakfast and headed out on the road. Gail’s dad John, his wife Jackie (Gail’s stepmother, though because they got married when Gail was in university, she never uses that term, she’s just “Jackie”), and their Jack Russell terrier Patches in their truck pulling their camper trailer, and the four of us following in our van. We went through North Bay and Sudbury, then stopped at a rest stop at Spanish River for lunch. Shortly after Spanish River, the traffic stopped dead. The next six kilometres took about an hour, until we got to an intersection that was being blocked by some native protestors holding signs saying things like “Honour our treaties”. There were several OPP officers there as well, directing traffic. I don’t get it. Do these protestors honestly think that they’re going to get what they want, or even gain any public support by inconveniencing hundreds of people who aren’t involved in their dispute?

Anyway, once we got through that, it was clear sailing through Sault Ste. Marie to Pancake Bay, where we were going to camp for the next two nights. Shortly before getting there, though, the traffic stopped again. We thought it might be another protest, but it turned out that there was a serious car accident ahead. After about 20 minutes, they cleared enough space so that we could get through, and the campsite was only about 2 km after that. The boys played soccer and rode their bikes while we got the camper set up, then a quick dinner and campfire, and it was off to bed.

Day Three: Pancake Bay
On Saturday, we went on a two hour hike on a beautiful trail around the campsite. There were a number of completely different ecosystems on this trail, mainly forests, but some parts were more rocky, and then
it opened up into a “fen”, which is apparently the same as a bog except that fresh water flows through it, so you get different kinds of plant and animal life. The boys walked the whole way (they’re too heavy to carry, and I can only piggyback them for short distances now), and took turns walking Patches, which they seemed very excited about. We never managed to get to the beach, though it looked pretty nice. After dinner, John crafted a perfect marshmallow-toasting campfire, and we were all asleep by 10:30.

To be continued….

We went to Fern last week, and as
expected, we had a great time. The weather co-operated, for the most part; we only
had rain on one day, and only for a couple of hours. We went to the indoor pool
during that time, so we had fun anyway. The guys went golfing (9 holes) on Tuesday
morning. I got one par, and missed chipping in for birdie (would have been my
first one) by a fraction of an
inch. I got to try my new driver out for the first time — the ball went
left a lot, but it went a lot further than with my old driver. Obviously
going further into the trees is less than ideal, but once I figure out
how to hit it properly, it’ll be very cool. I’m hopefully going to the driving
range tomorrow evening with my neighbour (the guy who made the driver), so he
can give me some tips on how to straighten out my swing.

Back to Fern; a summary of things we did:

• pedal carts and bikes — Nicholas was big enough this year to get the
  carts going
• Gail and I each tried archery (Gail did it two or three times; I think she’s
  getting addicted)
• I played 4-way volleyball twice (I think I’m getting addicted)
• I had casino (blackjack, roulette) and Texas Hold-’em lessons
• Gail went for a walk (2.5 to 3 km) every morning at 6:30 (I was very
  impressed)
• Ryan and I played golf — Ryan did really well, for his second time
  ever on a (non-mini) golf course (his first time was last year), and I got two
  pars in five holes!
• I made it to the top of the “vertical playground”, which is a sort of obstacle
  course that you climb, consisting of rope ladders, poles with wooden spikes that
  you climb, and some tires as well.
• Ryan went fishing and caught a minnow and a catfish

The vertical playground was actually easier than the rock climbing wall that I
climbed last year. Next year, maybe I’ll try the teeter-totter, which is just
your basic see-saw, except that it’s mounted at the top of a 40-foot telephone
pole.

I didn’t manage to get a ride on Jeff’s jet-ski; whenever he had it out, I
was busy doing other stuff. I also wanted to play tennis but never got a chance,
and we didn’t get the lacrosse sticks out either.

We then dropped Nicholas off at Gail’s dad’s place and Ryan off at my
parents’ place on Saturday, and drove home, stopping to see Pirates of the Carribbean in Barrie
on the way. We also stopped at the Colisseum at the 400
and 407 to see Superman Returns,
but the timing didn’t work out, so
we went home. Sunday we saw Superman Returns at the Imax theatre in Mississauga,
and Monday we tried to go and see X-Men: The Final Stand, but the
theatre had technical difficulties and had cancelled the movie, so we went
to see that tonight. Since Saturday, we’ve also rented a bunch of movies, painted the bathroom and replaced the light fixture, installed a new cover on the
bathroom vent (to keep birds from making nests in there like they did this past
spring), and we’re going to order a new garage door this week as well.

I’ll post mini-reviews of all the movies we’ve seen this week a little later.

Gail got me quite a cool present for my birthday this year: a
custom-made driver. Our neighbour makes golf clubs, so one day last week, Gail
told me that he had called, and wanted me to come over and give him a hand with
his wireless router, which was giving him problems. So I went over, and he
informed me that I was not there to fix his router, but to have a fitting for a
custom driver. He measured my arm length and swing speed (85-90 mph), and we
chose which type of head, shaft, and grip to use. (Well, OK, he pretty
much chose all that stuff — he gave me some options, then told me what he
would choose, and I gave him a lot of “sure, that sounds great”.) He came by
Tuesday night with the final product. I wasn’t allowed to swing it, since the
grip adhesive hadn’t finished drying yet, but he said it should be OK by
Wednesday evening. I may have a chance to go out to the range with it tonight
(Thursday), but more than likely, I’ll have to wait until next Tuesday morning
when we go golfing at Fern (see below).
I used to
hate my driver because I simply couldn’t hit anything with it. I entered a
“longest drive” competition at Fern one year, and brought my three iron because
I knew I could hit it farther than my driver (though I was completely smoked by
others who could hit their drivers). I took some golf lessons
last summer, and since then, I’ve had better luck with my driver, When I went out
with my dad a couple of weeks ago, it was actually the best club I hit all day.
But it’s 11-year-old technology now (and that’s assuming it was the latest
technology when we bought our clubs 11 years ago, which it wasn’t), so I’m really
looking forward to trying this new one out.

We go to Fern for a week in August every year — this year it goes from
this coming Sunday (the 13th) to Friday the 18th. We’ve been looking forward to
this year’s trip since, well, since last
year’s trip ended. Fern has a ton
of stuff to do for the kids as well as for us. The kids love the
Playvillage, where they have activities all day, as well as free time to just
play. (Note that the kids don’t stay in Playvillage all day, but there are always
things for them to do.) There are also shows, where they bring in magicians and
musicians as well
as a group from the local wildlife center, and they have a hay ride every night,
as well as a zip line,
a couple of big climbing structures, trampolines, and
mini-golf. For kids and adults, there are tennis and
basketball courts,
three pools (two outdoor, one indoor) and a beach, bikes,
pedal carts,
canoes and pedal boats, a 5-hole golf course, batting cages, a 4-way
beach volleyball court (which is a lot of fun), a rock climbing wall
(yes, that’s me in the white shirt), and a few other extreme sports. You can
borrow all kinds of sports equipment, and they have other sports-related
activities; Gail really enjoyed archery last year.
There are other programs as well, like a cooking demonstration with the head chef,
a woodworking class with the head carpenter, mixology, scrapbooking, and
blackjack lessons, an internet cafe (and apparently the pool area is a wireless
hotspot now, though we don’t plan on bringing our laptops anyway) and other stuff
like that. Oh yeah, and all your food is
included, and is excellent. Another advantage is that dinner time for the kids
starts at 5:30, and for everyone else at 6:00, at which time Playvillage opens,
so you can feed the kids at 5:30, then take them over to Playvillage, then come
back and have a nice leisurely grown-ups-only dinner.

In previous years, we’ve rented jet-skis, but Fern doesn’t rent those anymore.
Luckily, my friend Jeff recently bought one (as I mentioned in in the camping
entry), so we’ll have that to play with next week as well. It’s not terribly
cheap, but it’s not ridiculous either, and we have a great time every year. I
can’t wait.

The week after Fern will also be fun. We leave Fern
on the Friday morning, and head north to Gail’s dad’s place in Sundridge. We stay
Friday night there, and leave Saturday morning sans Nicholas, who’s
staying with John and Jackie for a week. On the way home, we stop in at my
parents’ place, where we drop Ryan off. So from Saturday afternoon until the next
Friday, no kids. Now don’t get me wrong, I love my kids, but the idea of
going out to a movie without paying more for a babysitter than for the movie
itself certainly has appeal, not to mention not making kids lunches
every day, not fighting with bedtime every night, not worrying
about making a dinner that the kids will actually eat, and so on. Gail and I will
get lots done around the house, see a couple of movies, sleep in on Sunday and maybe
play a round of golf. It’ll be nice.

Technorati tags:
Vacation

Starting in the late 80’s, a few friends of mine went camping every Canada Day
weekend, and I joined them starting in about 1990. Gail started in 1992 when we
started dating, and we’ve gone every year since (though Gail took a year off in
1999 when she was 8 months pregnant). The numbers of people that went on these
trips kept growing, until we had over 30 people and 8-10 camp sites. A few years
ago, we decided to move the weekend from July 1st to the August long weekend,
which was less busy, and easier to get camp sites. It’s not like interior camping
or anything; one family had a tent trailer, while the rest of us were in big tents
(our tent is big enough for me to stand up in the middle). Just about everyone had
air mattresses to sleep on, and Coleman stoves and barbecues, and some sites even
had electricity, so we’re not exactly “roughing it”.

However, in 2004, we found camping very challenging — Nicholas was only
2 so he had to be supervised every minute, and it also rained a fair bit. We’ve
had a number of rainy camping weekends, and those are just no fun at all:

• At one point in 2004 we had DVD players going in at least three different
  mini-vans to keep the kids occupied
• In 1996, Gail and I left a day early because our tent leaked, so everything
  we had brought (particularly clothes and sleeping bags) got wet. That was also
  the weekend my old 1988 Cavalier died, so we had to borrow someone else’s
  car just to get there.
• Another year, everyone drove into the nearest town and we all went to a
  restaurant for dinner. A completely non-camping-like move, but it had rained most
  of the weekend, and we all just wanted to be dry for an hour or so.

2004 seemed far more work than fun, and so we really had no desire to go the
next year. Some other families felt the same way, and so last year, the camping
weekend was officially cancelled; a few of us rented a chalet up in Collingwood
for a weekend instead.

This year, we decided to try it again, but for a non-long weekend, and so
last weekend, the tradition was resurrected, up at Balsam Lake Provincial
Park.
I’m very glad it was, because everyone had a great time. The weather co-operated
(no rain, not too hot, not too cold), the beach was nice, the lake was warm,
the kids behaved themselves as much as we could have expected them to, everything
went off without a hitch. We had 9 campsites and 33 people — the kids ranged
in ages from a little over a year to 10.

My buddy Jeff bought a Jet-Ski a couple
of weeks ago, so we all had a ride either on it or being pulled behind it on a
tube, so that was a lot of fun. One of the tubes was shaped like a hot dog, and
you’re not supposed to sit on it, you kneel (especially when you’re in
the back). I was behind Ryan, and so kneeling the whole time (it was all of about
10 minutes) just killed my legs — three days later, my legs are still stiff
and sore. Playing baseball last night didn’t help much; they loosened up during
the game, and felt pretty good afterwards, but today they’re as bad as yesterday.
I just hope they’re better before my next ball game on Thursday night. In the
words of one Mick Jagger, what a drag it is getting old.