Our residence room being less awesome than the night before
(although I’m splitting hairs… they were both nice – if we’d been travelling in
the other direction, we might not have even noticed the difference. Adam even
said he had a better sleep on the bed at Humber), you might think that we would
have been up and at ‘em bright and early. We’d even wanted to go check out a
little beach-type area before we headed out. But not so much. We got up at the
last possible moment, and had to get moving if we were going to make our “lunch
date” with Linda, Shannon, and the boys (Leeson and Ellis). Shannon had told us
that she had to get to a doctor’s appointment later in the afternoon, so the
timing was really pretty tight.
We plugged her address into the GPS and were on our way. It
was a pleasant drive – they live on a beautiful acreage in Schomberg, ON (which
is about an hour north of Toronto, and about a 45 minute drive from where we
were staying – probably due to the fact that we weren’t driving through traffic
really at all.
We got to Shannon’s in good time and were met by her and
Linda, as well as two adorable dervishes who were thrilled to show us their
bikes (and how fast they could ride around the circular (racetrack) driveway)
and the pond beside the house, and their swingset, and their new construction
truck toys and especially their new “big brother” red bunkbeds. (Shannon is
expecting another baby any day now – in a particularly charming moment she
admitted that “we were without power for four days this winter… which led to this” (pointing to her belly).
One of the most awesome and bizarre parts of her beautiful
property is the fact that it is populated by a flock (?) of wild peacocks. Yes, peacocks. They’d mostly
moulted off their big tail feathers, but they were everywhere, wandering around
the yard. No one really knows how they came to be there either, but there they
are! It was kind of surreal, and absolutely delightful. Shannon also told us
that a couple of days before she’d seen a turtle 18” across sunning itself on
the dock at the pond. Gorgeous!
We had a delicious lunch, featuring some fantastic
wheat-free dishes (they’re following what Shannon describes as a “crazy diet” –
for someone from Vancouver, it didn’t really seem all that strange) like a
zucchini lasagna with pine nut paste instead of ricotta and some bread made
from almond flour. It was great!
The boys are adorable and it was so nice to see all of them!
After lunch, we were on the road again, avoiding the toll
portion of the highway by cutting across through Orangeville (where my cousin
John and his wife Sheryl had their wedding) -
we picked up a few things at the Walmart but decided to wait until we
got back across the border to finish restocking ourselves (after the loss of
our bag).
Then we carried on to Sarnia, which is just across the
Bluewater Bridge from Michigan. (It’s called that because the water there is
ridiculously blue.) We found a hotel (we had to go a little bit out of the main
part of town, as it seems there’s some kind of sport tournament going on this
weekend) and then headed back into downtown, where we found a cute
restaurant/pub where Adam had a nice local beer and I had a martini. We were
hoping for another delicious charcuterie platter or something, but this
restaurant didn’t seem to have very much in the way of appetizers, so we had a
hotel room picnic when we got back.
We decided once and for all that the nominal added time to
our drive through the US this time by taking the route through the upper
peninsula of Michigan was more than outweighed by the scenery and the fact that
we wouldn’t have to go back through Indiana. So we booked hotels for the next
few nights, set our route, and started getting in touch with people in Winnipeg
and stops further west, to let them know when we will likely arrive.
Tomorrow, back to Americaland!
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