Margot and Dada in the Canadian Shield

Guess what? I'm a single dad!

Well, sorta.

Glosette Girl has been (and still is) taking in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival with one of her best friends this past week. Lucky girl! She is still over there. I'm sure she is getting up to all sorts of  geeky-yet-funky-drama-related trouble. That scamp, we miss her!

8 nights sans enfants did you say? Which way to customs?!!

So it's just been Margot and I touring Ontario, visiting my family, and generally having a province-cation.* That's OK as its given Margot and I a lot of time to get to know each other better. I am proud to say that it has pretty much been smooth sailing ('Course it doesn't hurt that I let her go to bed much later than usual and eat lots of ice cream).

One of the things Margot and I got to do this past week was go camping in Killbear provincial park. It's located in the "near north" of Ontario, a.k.a. "cottage country". That's a part of Canada that many people think of as quintessentially Canadian (along with the Rockies, Beavers and lots of snow). Much of the landscape is rugged Canadian Shield, which consists of Precambrian and high-grade metamorphic rocks that are millions of years old. Translation for non-geologists: there are a lot of pretty and hard rocks up there.

The trip to Killbear almost didn't happen because the weather forecast right up to our departure was pretty grim. In the end though we decided to play the odds and enjoyed two nice days of hiking and swimming with my sis' and her gang before some thunderstorms rolled in.

Margot and her cousin swimming the crystal clear waters of Georgian Bay

Before the storms hit we spotted some of the local wildlife including deer and the Massasauga Rattlesnake. Rattlesnakes are very rare in this part of the world and the Massasauga has almost a legendary reputation in these parts ("I once saw one twenty feet long with eyes like the fires of Hades itself..."). Very cool.

The sighting!

Of course, we did other classic camp stuff including eating marshmallows, enjoying some cold brewskis by the fire, and putting ourselves through the torture of sleeping in tents.

Ahh the lazy, hazy days of summer!

*vacation where you stay in your home province. Copyright me 2017.