The Travels of the Agnew Family

Today we were out touring the country side. As we dragged Victor along with us, I was sharing the backseat with Zaph. When we stopped at one of our destinations Zaph decided he was exiting the car and jumped over me. Unfortunately, I had the cell phone out on the seat beside me so it jumped out of the car as well. When I picked up the phone it looked fine but when you opened it up the screen was many pretty colours. Guess it's time for a new cell phone.

Another sure sign of fall is Pumpkinfest in Port Elgin. This year our friends Bob and Gwen joined Anne, Victor, Ed and myself on our outing to Pumpkinfest and the car show. When we arrived the "girls" headed over to pumpkinfest to see the crafts, pumpkin and vegetable weighing. Not sure how large this years vegetables are but last year the winning pumpkin weighed in at 1657.6 pounds and the winning squash was 1486.6 pounds. The contest also includes heaviest watermelons, tomatoes, gourds, cabbages, and tallest cornstalks and biggest sunflower face.





The "boys" went off to the see the cars and motorcycles. As the weather was good there were a lot of vehicles to see. The "girls" joined the "boys" after awhile and enjoyed a little shopping while we all looked at the cars.

Can't believe it's almost October and Zaph and I have only walked a few times with Maggie and Sue. Luckily today turned into a beautiful day for walking and picture taking.


Sure sign of fall. The milk weed has gone to seed.


Zaph, once again stole Maggie's stick --- good thing she loves him and lets him have her sticks.


Maggie enjoying her stick.

Been busy working on the "to do before we leave list" but have found some time to play with the camera. I'll give you one guess as to the main subject of the photos. I'm sure you've figured it out .... but here's some photos in case you didn't.






This is a photo of our backyard and somehow Ed managed to take it in Black and White --- the two photos taken before this one are of the backyard as well but are in colour. I'll have to get Ed to let me in on the secret as I really like the idea of being able to take black and white as well as colour photos.

It was late afternoon by time Zaph and I headed out for our walk. During the hour we were gone we saw some beautiful sunshine, rain while we enjoyed the sun some rain with clouds. Strange weather. All summer we were hoping for rain, now we're hoping the rain will stop.

The camera came on the walk with us. I'm using the automatic settings at the moment so it was pretty much like my old camera.




I tried to get the sun and rain to show in the photo. The little white streaks are the rain drops.


The Saugeen River (which runs through town) is a popular place to fly fish.


Not sure when this tree came down. This inside of the tree was rotting so I guess all it took was a good wind from the northwest.

Today was Doors Open. This is an event that takes place across Canada, maybe even the world. Places of significance (old homes, innovative businesses) open their doors and invite the public in to look around. Walkerton puts this event on every two years. This year the Old Jail (it was closed as an active Jail last fall), B&G; (a furniture manufacturer), Victoria Hall, the Clean Water Center, several churches and homes were included in the tour. Ed and I visited the Jail (definitely wouldn't want to live there), had a tour of B&G; (fascinating), had a tour of the Clean Water Center, and stopped at a couple of other places. A very good day.


Victoria Jubilee Hall.


Jail

The guide book indicated that photos were not be taken, so we only took photos at the public locations.

(On Monday I talked to one of the women doing the tours at B&G; .... they think they had over 600 people visit - twice as many as they were expecting).

A lot of today was spent processing the vegetables I bought yesterday .... cooked few batches of ratatouille (eggplant, zucchini, onions, peppers and tomatoes), a big batch of tomato sauce, roasted red peppers and froze some whole peppers for stuffed peppers.


Also managed to spend a few minutes with the new camera.

A typical September day... at least for this year. A bit of rain, a bit of sun, a bit of rain while it's sunny. We drove down to Kitchener Waterloo with Ellen and Rob to do a few errands and visit the St. Jacobs market. The market was wonderful as usual. Apple fritters, lunch, sausages, red peppers, purple peppers, tomatoes, eggplant and zucchini were the major purchases.

Henry's, a camera store, was having a sale so Ed wanted to stop there. Now this was an expensive stop .... Ed bought a new sling pack for his camera and a new camera for me. I really liked my old, faithful Rebel but it was starting to have a few problems and the new cameras have video built it which I really like. So now I'm a reluctant but proud owner of a 7D. I still have my old lens so I just need to figure out the new camera. I think partly to force me to use the new camera and to bring a friend into the digital age, my old rebel has gone to a new home.

It was also an expensive stop for Rob as he made a purchase as well. Not sure if Rob and Ellen will go back to Kitchener with us.

On Sunday, we drove to Burlington to have dinner with my mom, brother, a cousin and his wife (Bob and Wendy). It had been almost a year since we had seen Bob and Wendy so it was good to see them and have a nice visit.

Today, I was up early and on the road by 7am. It was my turn to take my mom to a doctors appointment. Happily this one was in Burlington. Once a year my mom sees her heart specialist and gets an ultrasound of her heart. The Technician allowed me to be in the room while the ultrasound was being done. Pretty fascinating --- you could see the heart chambers and the values opening and closing. The rest of the day consisted of errands ... my mom's dryer died on the weekend so finding a new one was a main objective of the day. A nice simple dryer was found and should be delivered on Saturday. Think I'm become a handy person as I cleaned the vent outlet, installed a new vent pipe, replaced a towel rack and I only made one phone call to Ed for advise.

The Weather was not so nice today, a little drizzle, a little rain and lots of clouds. As, we are booked on the three-fifty ferry we need to be at the ferry docks by two-thirty, so we decided to stick to the South Baymouth area of the island. Ed was happy as this means we have time to do some geocaching.

The first geocache took us a to a little park that had some wonderful views of the water. Lake Huron is definitely low as signs that are to be read from boats in the water are about 200 feet in from the current shoreline.






Don't think I'd have the patience to carve my fence posts.

Another cache took us to 10 mile look out. I bet the views are amazing on a clear sunny day. There's a store here that sells moccasins, local preserves including Hawberry jelly, paintings by local artists and much more.


The view.


Yup, site of another geocache. Ed just loved the Manitoulin Internet.


The lighthouse at South Baymouth Harbour. The ferry company likes vehicles to arrive at least an hour before the ferry but you are able to leave your vehicle and wander around town as long as you are back to your vehicle 20 minutes before scheduled departure.


The ferry has docked and is unloading. It takes less than 30 minutes to unload and load.


Zaph made a new friend, a seven month old mix breed name Eddie. Definitely, different amounts of energy.

By nine o'clock we were home and unpacked. The end of a very nice mini vacation.

One fairly local place that Ed and I have not made it to is Manitoulin Island. A two hour car ride to Tobermory and a less than two hour ferry ride brings you to Manitoulin Island, so it's pretty close to home. From Colin and Margaret's home, it is a two and a half hour car ride. So Ed and I decided to make the trip into a loop and finally visit Manitoulin Island.

Manitoulin Island is the largest island in a freshwater lake in the world and has evidence of Paleo-Indianc and Archaic cultures dating from 10,000 BCE to 2000 BCE according to Wikipedia. The island has an area of 2,766 km2 (1068 sq mi) which makes it a little large to explore in a day. Given it was another near perfect day, we explored as much as we could in the time we had.


Between Espanola and Little Current we found this waterfalls.


Some of the scenery we passed on our way to Manitoulin Island.


More amazing scenery.


The harbour at Little Current. In the background you can see the single lane swing bridge that links the island to the mainland.


Bridal Veil Falls. While we were there we watch a couple of women go swimming ---- somebody really wanted to join them.


Lighthouse at Kagawong


The beach at Providence Bay is very large and very beautiful, unfortunately dogs, horses and motorized vehicles are not allowed on the beach, fortunately there is a boardwalk that parallels a large portion of the beach. Zaph did turn at every walkway that led from the boardwalk to the beach.


Our motel room in the Buckhorn Motel. I had trouble finding motels/hotels/inns that would let a dog stay and eventually found the Buckhorn Motel and it wasn't very expensive. Sort of wondered what we getting and was pleasantly surprised. There's only eight units and they're not fancy but the rooms are clean. What more can you ask for after a day of traveling. Would definitely recommend this motel.

The owners of the motel moved to Manitoulin Island from Hamilton Ontario.... not far from where Ed and I use to live. Had some interesting conversations with Ameal.

About a kilometer down the road from the motel is Cathy and Earl's Restaurant. Another place I would recommend. Amazing home cooked food and very interesting people. As we were the last to leave after dinner (had something to do with last to arrive) Earl had a few minutes to chat with us. Earl figured there was no sleep for him this night as he had 22 bushels of tomatoes from his garden that needed canning. The man is amazing, he has a garden, processes the vegetables from the garden, cuts his own meat (Cathy's family raises the meat), cures his own peamail bacon, cooks and bakes.

What a beautiful day, the sun is shining and the temperature is perfect. Couldn't have picked a better day for a boat ride. But, First a few photos of Colin and Margaret's log home. The house isn't quite finished because it takes a little longer to build when you are doing it all yourself. Yup, Colin and Margaret built a foundation, stacked the logs, stained, chinked, installed electrical, plumbing, windows, cupboards plus a lot of other things. They've done an amazing job.


Zaph's good buddy Splash.


Mexi, the dictator. It's hard to imagine this sleepy little dog telling Zaph what to do but she does and he listens.


The living room.


The view from the living room.


The deck.


Zaph waiting somewhat patiently while Colin and Margaret get the boat ready.

Colin and Margaret's home is on a bay that is part of the west arm of Lake Nipissing. That said, you can drive the boat for a long, long time. We went out for a couple of hours and saw some beautiful scenery and some amazing cottages.




When this tree fell over it created an earthen cave.


Somebody had a good time on his boat ride.

Tomorrow's weather sounds better than todays so we've decided to put off the boat ride till then making today a lazy day.

Margaret and I drove into Noelville to pick up a few things including a part for the boat, which they guys then fiddled with when we returned.

Zaph tried to keep busy. There was a lot of swimming and rolling in the dirt to be done.

Dinner was ronco chicken .... yum! Lost badly at Mexican Train tonight.


Zaph did a lot of talking trying to get someone, anyone down to the water to throw sticks for him.

Left this morning for a mini vacation. We drove to Monetville, about an hour south and slightly east of Sudbury to visit our friends Colin and Margaret and their two dogs Splash and Mexi. Splash was happy to see Zaph but Mexi announced her disapproval and for a little dog the announcement was very loud. After a few minutes Mexi accepted the fact that Zaph was staying, but she did keep Zaph in line during the visit --- no wandering into the master bedroom, no getting too close to Margaret when Mexi was nearby.

Had a wonderful steak dinner and that's quite a compliment coming from me as I'm not a big fan of steak. Played Mexican Train (a dominoes game) and had a lot of fun especially as I won.

Today is our 3rd annual street party. This years organizers were a bit disappointed as only about 1/2 of the people who live on the two streets attended, but I thought the turn out was pretty good considering it is the last long weekend of the summer. As usual we had a really good time. It's funny you can live on the same street but never see each other so it's really nice when you have the opportunity to meet each other and catch up on what's happened over the last year and what people have planned for the next year. One couple is going on a bicycle tour in Italy later this month and another couple are leaving tomorrow on their trip to Newfoundland in their new to them class C motor home.




Zaph missed most of the party but I brought him over when the party started breaking up. Still managed to get enough attention.