Catching up, and getting ready for a trip

 

Pat, Nancy and Cathie with a Pioneer Park Lake Huron sunset

Back on Apr 12 it was just too nice to stay home, so we decided to get the van out for the first time this year and take the bikes to Rondeau Provincial Park for the day. Our annual day pass is still good, so no admission fee. We didn't see much migratory bird life yet, but spring was well along.

Taking some sun - Rondeau IS south of us :))

  

A few harmless snakes were enjoying the sun too

Loading the bikes to head home

Hard to tell, but it's a nesting swan

A cruising swan guarding the nearby nest

May has been pretty nice, but it became clear this month that the Bald Eagles we have been watching will not have a successful nesting this year. After seeing brooding activity in March, there has been no activity around the nest at all for several weeks. Nestlings heads should be getting visible by now, but no sign of that or of the parents.

On a happier note, Cathie's sister Nancy and her hubby Pat came to Ontario last week, for some family visits. Three sisters and two daughters/nieces got together for a traditional pedicure session, getting ready for sandal season:

All ready to go now!

Pat and Nancy got to our Bayfield place to stay for a couple of days, the first time in the 2 1/2 years we've lived here. They flew from Charlottetown PEI to Hamilton Ont via Swoop Air, for a price that was cheaper than driving their car. Great to see and visit with them as usual!

This past Saturday was a bit of adventure. We used our van to carry a couch from our place to our daughter's in Cambridge Ont. A nice countryside drive on a pleasant morning got us there in less than 2 hours, and unloaded. 

On the way in to their place we noticed a mobile vaccination bus parked in the nearby City Hall lot. We've been trying to get our 4th antivirus shot and we had a booking for June 2. When we checked at the bus, they had the Pfizer shots we wanted, and no line at all. So we took advantage of that, and cancelled the June 2 appointments.

Then the wind came up incredibly fast and severe. A large limb came off a tree behind our daughter's porch, crashed on some steps, and missed our van in the driveway by about 6 feet. Whew, that would have put a kink in our plans! An even larger tree/branch came down in their back yard too, crunching a patio fence, along with a couple of broken windows. We were all very lucky, especially compared to some other areas of Southern Ontario. Ottawa is still dealing with the after-effects of the severe windstorm.

The combination of the good luck with vaccinations, and the good luck of that branch missing our  van, let us move up our departure date a week or more, so we're getting ready to head west to BC Thursday morning! 

It's taken a while to decide to do a trip like this now. There are more than the usual reasons to not do it now but "wait til later". Well, our "laters" are shrinking, so we're going to head across Canada once again, in spite of the reasons not to. 

We're not sure exactly where we're going or how long we'll be gone, there's a lot of "it depends" involved. We have a couple of visits sort-of planned. The main plan is to stay flexible and enjoy the trip, and see where we get. That's kind of what we usually do, so hopefully things will work out once again.