camping in tobermory...

one of my favourite weekends this summer was a short camping trip up to tobermory. we left friday morning and arrived just in time to check in to our site. we stayed in the cyprus lake campground in bruce peninsula national park putting us about a 5 minute walk to the water and about a 25 minute walk to the famous grotto. 

let's go!

 there's that 10 person tent again.

queen size mattress for scale.

relaxation. just what i needed.

so peaceful.

we took a walk over to indian head cove once we set up, but we only stayed a short bit before turning back to make dinner.

saturday started with pouring rain which led to a late start, but it ended up clearing up nicely.

the most beautiful water.

he just had to have the snorkel gear.

moving along to boulder beach.

working on my tan, but it didn't really happen.

sadly, this was the last of our summer plans. we've got a couple weddings coming up, but other than that, all of our weekend road trips are done! which is probably a good thing considering dylan is basically stuck in the house the next few weeks. all in all, i think we kept busy with weekends away most of the summer and i have no complaints about that! 

toronto islands...

i've lived in this city for just over 6 years now, and yet i've never made my way over to toronto islands. i really didn't know what was over there, but with the help of google, i found out that it's made up of multiple islands, there are beaches, a few restaurants, a mini theme park for kids, a few bed and breakfasts, and even some houses! a small group of people (i think there is about 280 small cottage-like homes on the island) actually live over there. when i saw how nice the weather was supposed to be, we decided to spend saturday over on the islands.

we left our place around 2:30pm or so just after dylan got in from work (he got a call from work friday evening asking him if he could go in for overtime for 6am, and so he did) and got himself ready. i expected the ferry to be busy, but holy cow, was it ever. we were in line to buy tickets for probably 45 minutes, and then waited about another 15 minutes for the next ferry to arrive. adult return tickets are only $7; i was surprised at how cheap. we chose to get off a centre island and made a bee-line for the kayak rentals because we weren't sure what time they let the last rentals out at. we went with a tandem kayak (because neither of us had done this before) and for 1 hour, it was $34. we found that to be a pretty good amount of time to kayak around and get ourselves into the rhythm.

here we go!

what a view.

if someone would have stopped rocking the kayak, i could have gotten a straight picture!

i must say, i'm surprised how much i actually liked kayaking; i think it's the only sport i've ever really liked and felt that i could potentially do. now, whether i would be able to get myself around in my own single kayak is a different story, but we did pretty good! and hey, it's quite the arm workout!

as for the island(s), let me just say that i grossly underestimated the size of it. all of the islands combined are about 570 acres. we decided to walk from centre island over to hanlan point (all are connected by bridges and walkways) to catch the ferry home at that dock and little did we know, it was a good 5km away. we just kept walking and walking and by the time we got there, we were beat. then, as luck would have it, we couldn't fit on the first ferry and had to wait another half hour for the next one.

we'll definitley be planning another day trip out there, this time for more beach time and to check out some of the homes.

info from wikipedia

bobcaygeon..

to make use of the long weekend, we decided to take a little day trip up to bobcaygeon. it's a place that dylan's been mentioning for a while as a possible cottage location, so we figured we would check it out. it's just over 2 hours from toronto and is a small little town where it seems everyone knows one another. there isn't really any public access to water unless you own property or a boat, which i think is a bonus for those people because it keeps the riffraff out.

early morning drives.

a small beach area.

lock 32 - the boats going through.

the best homemade freezies. 

it was pushing 40 degrees with the humidex and i wanted like, 12 freezies. 

there's plenty of property for sale and most have lake access. it's fun to check out the listings and think about what we could have. rent in the city and buy a cottage for summer getaways? we can dream.

buskerfest...

another weekend, another something going on in toronto. this past weekend it was buskerfest; acrobats, street performers, artists, food, the works. granted, i'm 5'2", so when i walked up to already formed crowds to "see" what was going on, i couldn't see anything. but, i took a quick spin around and from what i was able to see, there was some neat things. what also caught my eye was a western style set-up booth selling something i thought could only be bought in disney at the harry potter world; butterbeer! however, i passed on it because it was being sold in a (tiny) old fashioned style stainless steel coffee/soup mug for $8.

these moving dinosaurs were very creepy.

talent.

"the silent violinist."

the crowds were too much, as expected from most things in toronto, and i hightailed it outta there after about 20 minutes.