It’s been a while between weekends away by J&J standards but you can’t keep us in one place for too long. Rik & Sanne gave us the perfect excuse to head away to experience the Canadian cottage lifestyle. It’s huge here. Over the summer months people head off to cottages on the weekends to escape the cities and soak up the great outdoors. And clearly Canada has some of the greatest great outdoors in the world! Given that they were Dutch guests, I left all the organizing up to Joep and he did a great job! We left Ottawa on Friday afternoon after another busy working week and hit the road for the Georgian Bay in Muskoka. The drive took us through Algonquin Park (we visited there last year, check out the ‘Where are all the moose?’ blog) and the sites were as breathtaking as we remembered them being.
What was forecast to be a 7 hour drive somehow turned into a 5 hour drive and we arrived at the cottage just before 9pm. Rik & Sanne met us there and had taken on the task of getting all food and drinks for the weekend. They clearly took this task seriously. There were food and drinks in abundance!!
Arrival at the cottage showed that it had everything we needed it to have … OK I’ll be honest. It was not the world’s most luxurious cottage but seriously Joep did a great job and was far too hard on himself when he saw some of the other cottages in the area. Granted there were a few things about the cottage that left something to be desired …
1. We had no heating. This was the first weekend since May that temperatures have dropped below the 20 degree mark and in the night times it was cold out there. Sanne in particular found it very cold. I was proud to realize that I appear to have acclimatized and stayed that way because I didn’t feel the need to complain constantly about the cold myself. Who would’ve thunk it!
2. The water smelled really bad because the property is on a septic tank system. When the owner sent us instructions re what to do at the cottage he actually wrote in his instructions ‘If its yellow let it mellow, if its brown flush it down’. You can’t make this stuff up! It did cause me some concern before we got there but hey, we were with friends!
3. The appliances in the apartment were aged to the point of being hazardous. The 1 heater in the house made a LOT of noise and appeared to be on the brink of exploding at any point in time. This didn’t stop Joep from turning it on constantly.
4. The beds … ok this was a down side for sure. One bedroom had two teeny bunk beds. Rik & Sanne were sweet enough to insist that we take the other room because Joep literally would not fit into the beds. So we took the room with the double bed. When Joep went to get into the bed he pulled back the linen and noticed a stain on the bed. It wasn’t hard to notice. It was huge. When we described it to friends someone noted that it could be from a decomposing body. After hearing that I am convinced that must be it. There is no other explanation. Thankfully Rik & Sanne had serious camping supplies with them including linen and sleeping bags so not a single part of my skin touched the bed over the weekend. I still shudder at the thought.
BUT enough about the problems. The GREAT things about the house are that it was right on the Georgian Bay and there was an awesome fire pit outside for us to sit around.
So after arriving on Friday night we sat around drinking beers and catching up on life in front of the self destructing heater. Joep was in his element entertaining old friends and the beers were free flowing. Lots of mellow yellows.
We had a reasonably late night and, as a result, we all ended up sleeping in the following morning which none of us expected given the afore mentioned bed situation. After having a delicious breakfast we headed down to check out the bay and kick the footy. We then hit the road for Midland, a nearby town where there was boat cruises to check out the 30,000 islands.
The day was GLORIOUS. Sunshine in abundance and pretty high temperatures. Being out on the water was heavenly and, even though there were nowhere near 30,000 islands, we had a lovely afternoon. Afterwards we headed back to the cottage to get started on the evening’s entertainment.
Upon arrival at home I set about starting the fire outside while the boys started on the barbeque and Sanne worked on the salads. I have to boast here. I am awesome at starting fires. This is a true story. I could definitely go on that survivor man show. I would rock at it. OK maybe not that good. But I did manage to get a rip roaring fire going that burned right through the night.
Dinner was served shortly after consisting of a total meat fest before we settled in around the fire to chat. We’re so Canadian. Sitting around at the cottage chatting.
Sadly, at the night wore on the weather stopped cooperating and we were forced inside. But not so sadly, Joep had remembered to pack Yahtzee and so began the greatest tournament of all time. I lost. Every single game. Dismally. But everyone else was throwing down Yahtzee after Yahtzee. In fact, Sanne threw 9 Yahtzee’s! Seriously. I am witness to this.
It was fitting though because as we played the game the clock ticked over and we celebrated her birthday! That is awesome birthday luck. I could’ve used just a bit of it. I’m not going to lie to you. There was one point in the game where I was losing so badly that I started to think about getting cranky. I realized that I had 2 choices. Either get annoyed at my misfortune. Or make jokes about myself. I chose the latter. It was the best choice. No one likes a party pooper. Fact.
The following morning, after finishing the bulk of the beers, we set about cooking up the rest of the food for breakfast. Rik & Joep managed to work their way through numerous steaks and hamburgers. This is no word of a lie. It was really impressive.
And after devouring everything is sight (FYI Sanne’s breakfast was chocolate birthday cake … not a slice of it. The entire cake and a spoon. This was also impressive.) we cleaned up and hit the road. It was a LOVELY weekend! It’s always so nice to see familiar faces!
The drive home however, provided even further excitement … remember last year when Joep and I went to Algonquin in search of moose and Joep spent a whole day shouting ‘Yak! Yak!’ but even Joep’s moose mating call couldn’t attract the moose? Well that was a disappointing trip. As we drove through Algonquin this time around Joep suddenly ground to a halt on the side of the road shouting ‘Moose! Moose!’ He was totally right. There were 2 moose in the forest near the road having a feed. One of them was hiding and only popped up every now and then but the other was in plain sight! We didn’t have a proper camera just blackberry camera but we managed to get a few shots and we were EXCITED!
We can now rest easy with the knowledge that we have seen a moose in the wild. Wonderful! So there you have it. A lovely relaxing weekend in the Muskoka’s!
