Stretched Thinly Along The Road
2006-08-24,

Ten hours in one day is a long time to be driving, I now remember. The trip back from Mazinaw Lake was uneventful for the most part, which is a good thing. Once again, for some reason, I ended up driving the entire way. Not to say that H never offered to drive - she did, five or six times. It was just that I was fine (for most of the way), and I drive faster than she does. I didn't really have a problem until the end of Pennsylvania, which seemed like it took forever to get through, even though it's only about a 48-mile stretch of road. That's when I told H, "I don't like miles - they take longer than kilometers." Maybe that's when we should have switched; but I just wanted to get home, and switching takes time. To heck with that.

The second leg of our trip out was a breeze, and featured an unplanned stop off at the exit for the World's Largest Apple, an object we'd passed many times and 'marveled' at from a distance. We got gas, and decided that, since we were already off the highway, we may as well stop and see it up close, assuming they didn't charge us for the privilege. And they didn't - we walked right up and took the obligatory photo with family in front. Inside it was some terrible art of apples with faces on them that shared with us some apple trivia, and a set of metal stairs that lead up to the 'viewing' area. From there you could take in the stunning vista of the near-featureless highway 401 to one side, and the cheesy 'theme' park to the other: mini golf, cheap-ass bumper cars and, apparently (we didn't go near it), a petting zoo. It was truly a fine example of a tourist trap. We went into the gift shop/snack area and got ourselves a little something (I got my now-required Canada experience of poutine out of the way), including some souvenir cups for the kids.

We stopped at the IGA to pick up a few things before actually getting to the cabin, and we got there around 6pm (I think). The place was as it has been always - held together by spit and duct tape - and we wouldn't change any of it. The main priority, after getting the groceries in the fridge or cabinets, was to get into the lake for a Welcome to Mazinaw dip. The water was typically cold, especially since the sun had gone behind the pines for the day. Only my feet got in the water that day.

Next day we wanted to get ourselves over to the beach, because Bob was saying that it would rain and cool off the next day, and that Monday would be sunny and warm. We realized later that Bob is not the best weather forecaster. We went to New Beach, which is the smallest beach in Bon Echo and therefore less crowded. Unfortunately, the provincial powers that be decided not to assure the sandiness of the beach, and it was very hard and very rocky, which is not very conducive to playing with sand toys with a toddler. We had some fun there nonetheless, although our lunch picnic sent me into a short-term tizzy. Turns out that we'd forgotten the utensils at the cabin, so I had to drive back to get them. Granted, it's a less-than-10-minute drive between. But then, almost the whole way there, I realized that I didn't have the key to the cabin, so I had to go back and get it from H. When I got there, she told me that it was in the car, in a place she never puts anything important. I had the key the whole time. Luckily, I managed to get all of my screaming rage out in the car, and by the time I finally got back to the beach with plastic knives in hand, I was feeling fine. Ack.

We spent the next few days building forts in the living room, playing games, eating blueberry pancakes (with just-picked blueberries), splashing around in the lake by the cabin, and taking the occasional nap.

The one major issue that we had to deal with over most of the week was Laurana. She was having some major trouble adjusting to being away from home for a whole week - the longest she's been away since we got home with her last July - and it reflected in her sleep habits. We'd get her ready and in bed, and then a few minutes later she'd be up and wanting to be anywhere but in the bed. And then the screaming would start, top-of-her-lungs, ear piercing, painful screaming for a good half hour, completely inconsolable. Then she'd exhaust herself, forget why she was screaming and fall asleep. What fun! It was really hard at first, either at nap time or bedtime. By Thursday, she (and I) realized that all she really needed was to be rocked to sleep like the old days, and suddenly it was a (relative) breeze to get her to sleep. I hope she's learned now that being away for a while is not the same as leaving forever. And boy does she seem happy to be in her bed at home now.

The rest of our beach trips in Bon Echo were to South Beach, which turned out to be in much better condition, with sand a plenty for baby and me. We also did a little hiking while there, on the short-but-pretty High Pines trail. And we also spent some time on the narrows, admiring the beauty of Bon Echo Rock. Our favorite time in Bon Echo, though, was when we went on the Mugwump boat for a tour of the petroglyphs along the base of the rock. All was well and pretty until the baby wanted something she couldn't have, and then the tired kicked in, and then the screaming kicked in. Twenty people on a boat, trying to listen to the guide share area history, and we have the loudest baby on earth sitting on the floor of the boat and wailing. Picking her up only got H a whap in the face from the flailing tot, nearly sending her glasses into the 300-foot depths of the lake. Wouldn't that have just made our week! Flames were shooting out of H's eyes by the time we got off the boat and into the car to head back to the cabin. We have but an adventurous beaver scurrying across the yard to thank for breaking H's fatalistic rage into bits and bringing her back to our vacation. At least it wasn't over a plastic knife.

Saturday brought us a true climactic finale to the week, as we took one of our signature ventures out to other areas of Ontario and headed north, to Renfrew (A Friendly, Affordable Place to Live!) and the pinnacle of theme parks, Storyland. Don't let the nice cover page of the website fool you - this is a place of horrors.

Being set in the middle of nowhere, I naturally assumed that it was going to be some sort of 'The Hills Have Eyes' tourist trap. I even invented a story about a salty sea captain (it was the first scent that came out of my mouth) who was the only survivor to escape the place, having lost a leg to the flesh-eating host rabbit. Luckily, it turned out not to be the case. It was, however, a realm of visual nightmares.

All the storybook characters, such as Mary Mary, the Old Lady in the Shoe, etc., all looked depressed and perhaps on the verge of suicide. The woodsman from Red Riding Hood we found slumped over with his head pressed to the windowsill, lost in mortal thoughts. Mary Mary, supposedly tending to her mystery garden, poured water from her watering can directly into a drain, perhaps as a visual treatise on the futility of existence. Hopefully the little children who frequent this place won't be subconsciously subdued by the collective ennui of its inhabitants, but for adults the place is downright spooky. I'll be adding some shots from there to my Flickr page (see link in the right pane) soon, so keep an eye out.

I spent Sunday morning scrambling around and making sure we didn't forget anything, leading everyone else to think I was in a bad mood. Really, I just had my 'get things done' game face on, which I was told is too similar to my 'I'm mad at the world' face. I'll have to work on that. I was just intent on getting us on the road at a decent hour so we could get home at a decent hour. We were planning on frequent stops (which never really happened) for the baby's sake, since ten hours is a long time in a car seat, even with lunch and dinner and bathroom breaks.

Speaking of lunch, we picked both the wrong and right place to stop - Oshawa, ON. Right, because we found a place to eat called Casey's (think: Canadian Applebee's) that had lots of unique food items, like red pepper soup and sweet potato fries and pad thai. Wrong, because the city of Oshawa is broken. H read in our AAA travel book that Oshawa is basically the Detroit of Canada, having major car companies headquartered there. It felt like a car union town, to be sure. Most of the men I saw had beer bellies and the blank stare of long term union employment. Their sons were tattooed and pierced, and all of them had shiny, souped-up cars. The girls spent their time text messaging and pretending to love their boyfriends that they know love them even though they hit sometimes. A friendly, affordable place to live!

The rest of the drive was, as I said, pretty uneventful, save for one near miss of carsickness for The Boy. Too much reading in the moving car. Except for that and a couple of storm cells, it was a breeze. Now we're home and, as H puts it, gradually returning to normal stress levels. Yay.

-- End Transmission --