Camping in Tobermory, Ontario, Canada

For a little while that afternoon Dad pretended that this was his boat. He claimed to have servants and all manner of people to wait on him.

This photo of part of the harbour in Tobermory, Ontario, Canada reminds me a little of a few harbours I visited while travelling by yaht in Australia. There are indeed a few well off people in this world who can afford these expensive boats.... we're just not those people.

Instead, we camp. But we're older now so we don't tent it any more where we're on the ground. We use a tent trailer and enjoy the comforts of soft mattresses and, forgive us, electricity. (We even have a small microwave that we use).

Hey, if you're thinking this isn't real camping, you might be right, but I must tell you I've paid my dues by camping in all kinds of weather and in different countries. I've lived outside for weeks on end and have numerous times given up the soggy tent in the rain to sleep in the car. Today though tents are much better made than in my day. We also used to cook all our meals on the camp fire (if it rained it got really interesting - cold beans from the can). Often we'd use a coalman stove set up outside on the picnic table as well.

Our camp site just outside Tobermory called Happy Hearts came with flush toilets, showers and even a Karoke Night.

For meals, each family member gets part of a grocery list that when complete, ensures we have healthy meals all week long... although the Chili on the second night might not have been such a good idea. There were 8 of us after all and that's a lot of 'music' after the meal, if you get my drift.

Oh and we had a "Chippy" too. A chipmunk found us on day 2. We noticed he was already trained to come up on the picnic table and beg for food. We happened to have a bag of peanuts so we kept him happy.

Every year I usually spend some time each day painting watercolours. A few years ago this generated a lot of interest among the family members at the camp site. They wanted to try painting too. What happened then was that everyone was busy painting except for me.

This year I didn't get to paint either. I had new students to teach, my niece's friend who accompanied us and a young girl from the next camp site.

I save all kinds of photos of wildlife and insects and flowers which are the inspiration for these budding young artists.

We take it easy for the most part and don't make too many plans ahead. Our focus is to have some down time and to relax.

My nephew Codie and I scuba dive so we had planned a few dives on some shipwrecks just off shore. I have an underwater camera but it uses film so once I get the film developed I'll post those photos.

The best treat of all this trip was the weather. There was this blue stuff up in the firmament called 'sky'. We hadn't seen it for so long that many of us couldn't recall what it was called ;)