Family Vacation 2011

A few weeks ago we spent 30 hours in the van. To describe our trip I would say... New York and Canada, relatives and friends, young and old, Canada Day and American Independence Day, cows and moose, trees and lakes, ice cream, ice cream, ice cream!

In New York we joined our grandfather and visited the dairy farm in the Catskills where he was born and raised. He took us around some of the beautiful rolling hills where he used to walk as a boy, and told us many stories of life on the farm. The farm is now run by Grandpa's brother and nephew who we have never met, so we got to know them a little over pizza that evening.

Passing through NY we also met our mom's cousin who she hasn't seen since age seven and many friends of our grandparents in a little town called Walton where both sets of our mom's grandparents used to live.

The next day we spent most of the drive through NY and then Canada looking for pork BBQ, only to find that Canadian "BBQ" is really just rotisserie chicken! Anyway, we arrived in Canada on Canada Day, so we joined a crowd to watch fireworks and attempt to sing the Canadian national anthem. As Joanna pointed out, "It's pretty sad when you only know two words to a song and one of them is 'O'!" The next few days we spent at a lovely cottage near Barry's Bay, Ontario. We hiked at nearby Algonquin Park, read, swam, boated, contra danced, and ate ice cream. Some of our highlights included: -seeing a moose - water trampoline - canoe bouncing (an activity involving balancing on the back edge of a canoe, then carefully bouncing up and down to propel the boat along in the water).

After the cottage we spent a couple of days with our cousins who moved up to Canada last year. We had fun playing games, visiting, and going to the beach.

Here is a slide show of our trip:

~Janelle