Home again, Home again, jiggety jig

Nancy snuck away for a week, with her friend Sue, to clear out cobwebs and recharge batteries and, as it transpired, to take far too many photographs of birds...

Longboat Key, Florida has a lot of memories for us -- it was where we used to go as kids with our parents, and it was the first place we saw an ocean... so much more than our lake, so different.

Driving down the day after the huge blizzard hit Bracebridge and Gravenhurst, closing all the roads, was an adventure. Not as much as an adventure as David had, driving home from Barrie on Friday evening. With Hwy 11 closed, he took the scenic route through Minden, Norland and Carnaervon, where snowbanks were higher than his car. His secret weapon was to follow closely behind the blue flashing light of a passing snowplow, and he came home without incident.

It took Nancy a day to just unclench her knuckles after the drive, but after that it was time to relax. Everybody needs a vacation. This current trend of cutting down to 2 or 3 days just isn't going to cut the mustard, folks. I can tell you that even one week is just not long enough.

It was great to go. It was also great to come home again. Everything up here is clean and white, the air is sharp and lacks the faint smell of gasoline that seems to vie with the smell of the ocean as soon as you leave the beach down south.

These are perhaps my favourite pictures from the trip...