The Travels of the Agnew Family

Did you get a summer cold this year? I brought one but lucky for me it only lasted a couple of days. Unfortunately, Ed decided to share the germs and he's having trouble shaking it. Luckily he's feeling a bit better today as we're going out for lunch to celebrate my mother's 94th birthday

This year we chose the Aberfolye Mill in Aberfoyle. The restaurant has been serving great food since 1966. I think you've figured out given it's name the restaurant is in an old mill.


The restaurant is decorated with artifacts from the old mill. The atmosphere was comfortable and the food amazing. My mother has already chosen this restaurant for next year's birthday lunch.

After lunch we went for a walk. Yvonne noticed 2 horses across a field and decided to try entincing them to come for a visit.


Surprisingly, waving a couple of pieces of grass around convinced one of the horses to come to the fence.


My mother, brother and I talking to the horse.


Yvonne found a bit more grass.

Another beautiful day for a drive in the sport cars. This time we headed north from Sauble Beach.

After finding several geocaches we drove to Lion's Head to enjoy lunch at the the Lion's Head Inn.


One of the beautiful views at Lion's Head.


The clue for this geocache included comments regarding bad cell phone service.


Ed and Rob waded across to this small island to find a cache.


The flat rocks at Whiskey Harbour. Ellen use to visit these flat rocks with her step-father when she was a kid.


Ellen relaxing and enjoy the view.


The beach in Sauble Beach is usually deserted in September so we were surprised to see all the people and cars especially at close to 7pm. After a cool summer people were more than willing to make the drive to Sauble Beach in September to enjoy the unseasonably warm weather.

Victor, Anne, Ed and I were going to go to the plowing match on Wednesday but it was not to be. Rain the previous couple of days created a great deal of mud closing the plowing match for the day. Today Anne has an appointment and I have a mountain for vegetables and fruit to deal with so just Ed and Victor went to the IPM.




I was impressed that Ed and Victor checked out the quilts and took some photos for me.

This morning Ellen and I made our annual trip to St. Jacobs market. I bought eggplant, summer squash, red peppers, apples, carrots and more. Lots of work ahead of me.

In the afternoon Ed joined a group of engineers for a tour of the Walkerton Clean Water Centre.


A cute sign Ed saw at the water centre.

Today Ed will be shooting the rest of the photographs for the VON calendar. I get to be his assistant.

The people working at the VON and the people attending the day program were wonderful. Everyone was willing to help and happily put up with Ed and all of his equipment invading their space. The girls were fantastic to work with. I think they brought most of their waredrobes with them as they needed to wear different clothes in each photo. Now if only the weather had co-operated. A few photos taken outside and the photographer's assistant was required to hold a umbrella over the photographer for a couple of the photos. Lucky girls were standing under the building overhangs.





Here's three photos that ended up in the calendar.






The woman at the VON that worked with us was able to obtain a few old VON uniforms. We were all pleasantly surprised when the girls put the uniforms on and they fit. Interesting story behind this house. Yesterday we drove around town looking for an old house with a large porch that could be used for "the vintage photograph". We found this, knocked on the door and asked if we could use the porch. As we talked with the house owner we found out that her granddaughter is this years Mount Forest Fall Fair queen. Allison, the Ontario Mid-West Queen, was last years Mount Forest Fall Fair queen. So, yes we could use her porch. The doctor's bag that Allison is holding is an old doctor's bag from another one of our neighbours. RJ retired from his medical practice after 58 years.

Today Ed get's to find the ATVs under the mud.


Hmmm.... he cleaned his ATV first.

Every fall the South Bruce Pennisula ATV Club invites all of it's members to come out for a ride. This year is the first year that Ed and Rob were around to go on the ride. Ellen and I decided to hang out at the beach and enjoy the beautiful weather.


Some of the 240 ATVs that rode in the Good-Bye Summer Ride put on by the South Bruce Pennisula ATV Club. Six groups of 40 ATVs set out to ride the trail.


Ed and Rob's group stopped for lunch. The machines are dirty --- guess they are having fun.


The route took them to an overlook yielding a beautiful view.


Ed and Rob ate some dust on the trail today.

Today we are going to arrive in Southampton by kayak --- yup we are finally doing the last section of the Saugeen River.


We saw a number of birds along the river today including several large flocks of geese beginning their journey south.


Rob joined us today.


Rough water. When the river starts getting choppy you start looking for big rocks.


Just outside of Southampton is Denny's dam where we got to drag the kayaks up a steep hill and down the other side. Along the way we passed this backhoe. Not sure what they were doing but it looked like they were taking soil samples.


Made it to Lake Huron.


A view of the lighthouse from the lake --- first time we've seen this view of the lighthouse.

In the summer Ed took photos for our neighbour Barb who owns the Mid West Pagent. The girl who won the pagent chose the VON as her charity. One of her fund raisers is a calendar and Barb asked Ed to take the photos for the calendar. We attended the VON volunteer dinner so Ed could take a photo for the calendar.


The girls were having a little fun.


Meghan and Allison.

Trying to pack in the last bits of summer, Rob and Ellen climb into the TR6 and Ed and I climb into the miata and head for the town of Blyth home of the Cowbell Brewing Co. Cowbell Brewing Co. is a craft brewery that started selling beer in May 2016.


The brewery building was completed in August 2017 (the beer has been brewed offsite awaiting the completion of the building). The building includes a state of the art brewing facility, a restaurant with indoor and outdoor seating, a retail store and entertainments spaces.


Viewing areas allow visitors to see the beer being brewed and beer being canned.


Looking down on the restaurant.


The lunch special today was pizza and a pint. Ed and Rob both ordered the meatlovers pizza, Ellen and I shared a prosciutto & arugula and a mushroom 'n cheese. The mushroom 'n cheese pizza was the most unique .... bear cheese sauce, local mushrooms, mozzarella, matchstick potatoes and rosemary sea salt.


A group of people moving tractors to the Internation Plowing Match (IPM) stopped for lunch.


Tractors driving to the plowing match.

Our friend Victor is not very good with birthdays. As he doesn't like to celebrate his birthday he tends to forget everyone elses as well including his wife's (Anne). As I knew that was the case I invited Anne, Victor, Rob and Ellen to dinner --- Victor couldn't figure out why I was inviting them on a Monday but Anne knew.


Anne's not big on sweets but she does like blueberries, so she got a birthday blueberry pie.

The local chapter of the Canadian Owners and Pilots Association runs an event call COPA for Kids twice a year. Pilots volunteer their time and fuel to take children ages 8 to 17 for 20 minute airplane rides in hopes to build an interest in aviation.


Before the kids can fly they go through basic plane information and safety instruction.

A stunt pilot named Gord Price flew at the airshow in July. Ed sent Gord a video of Gord's airshow preformance and Gord asked Ed about shooting some more video, so they came to an agreement that Gord would do a practice session at the Saugeen airport on the COPA for kids day. It would be a pilots and kids alike.








Gord parked his plane so the kids could see it up close and he signed the kids flight logs. By the way Gord is 75 years young.

Hard to believe a week and a half has gone by and there are no photos but we've been busy just not doing a lot of fun things. We've managed a bit of geocaching and a couple of bike rides and a lot of chores. Every year in the spring I start thinking about washing windows, cleaning the freezer out and doing a major house cleaning. Well the thinking has finally stopped and the doing started. It really helped the the weather has also been rather iffy. It helped that every day seemed to have a bit of sun, a bit of cloud, a bit of rain and cool temperatures. I still have a bit to do but the majority is done. The weather is suppose to improve so maybe summer isn't over yet.