Woman in Real Life

Generally we try to go away on one longer road trip per summer - often it has been to Nova Scotia, once it was to Cape Cod and, last year, it was to New York City. This year we decided that our main vacation would take place right here in Ontario. There are many beautiful spots in this province and it makes sense now and then to put the money into accommodations and save on travel expenses.

We rented a cottage for a week on Lower Buckhorn Lake with my husband's cousin and her family. Just a couple of hours away, it was a pleasant drive to the cottage, mainly along rural roads. We didn't exactly pack light. In fact, we pretty much stuffed the van to the gills. I decided to buy all of our groceries at home and pack them in coolers and boxes, because I'm sort of picky about which products I like and you never know what you'll find in smaller town grocery stores. We left the dogs at home with a dog sitter so we didn't have to pack any of their stuff. But we managed to fill up every crevice anyhow.


Posting these pictures is bittersweet because they remind me of what a beautiful time we had, but, on the other hand, they make me want to be back there right now. As you can see by the canoe, pedal boat and all the stuff strewn about the dock, a good time was had by all.


There were several rounds of bocce played too. I really want to get a bocce set now, because it's lots of fun! I just need a set that has two very different colours for each team. These ones were close in colour and I'm afraid the old eyes had trouble distinguishing.


The cottage was lovely inside - "cottage-y" enough but also with all the comforts of home, if you know what I mean.


While we tried to get the kids outside as much as possible, we enjoyed playing a few board games indoors too.


And we did quite a bit of cooking and baking, along with indulging in a few beverages. Because you want to treat yourself at the cottage. As you can see, some of my fave vegan cookbooks came with. There are posts about what we ate here and here.


I think we all enjoyed preparing meals together as a group while listening to some playlists prepared just for the cottage visit.





We were blessed with amazing weather for our cottage week. There were a couple of days with rain, but we had enough sunny warm days to keep us busy. And we played mini golf in the rain.




How cute is this shed/playhouse?


It is used to store life jackets and all kinds of sports and water equipment. And there is an upstairs loft for the kids. (I confess I wanted to grab a sleeping bag and hang out there, but I resisted.)



Here we are on our last day at the cottage. Sad to leave but happy we had such a great week. (And just a little bit tired from cleaning the cottage and packing up all our stuff!) We tried to eat as much as possible so we wouldn't have much food to pack, but that never seems to work, and everything is packed in messier fashion on the way home, isn't it?

Have you done any travels this season?