Vacation Is Great, But Nothing Beats Coming Home

Today is the last day of my vacation and I am feeling blessed to have the extra day off with the long weekend to get my house organized.  I am feeling refreshed, organized and motivated to start a new work week.  

Mine and Tyler's vacation was really a perfect mix of everything we love.  We got away to a pretty spot on the water where we explored the lake, I cooked, we read, I stayed active, we shopped, we spent time with family and friends and we just enjoyed each others company.

We ended up coming home from the cottage a fews days earlier than we had planned.  The friends that we were staying with left half way through the week, so we were able to enjoy some alone time, but then we started to feel a little home sick.  So we decided, why fight it, we have enjoyed a great time at our cottage and now we are ready to head home.  We took our time on the way home stopping to do a little shopping at a mall we had never been to before.  When we got home, we were happy to have the extra days to unwind and spend with our friends and family.  

We had kind of forgotten that Captain Kid Days (a festival with activities for the kids in the community during the day and bands for adults in the evening) was on this weekend.  After spending some really fun nights out with our friends, we were reminded of something that vacation always reminds us of, it is wonderful to go away, but nothing beats coming home.

This is especially true when you are lucky enough to live in a town with such, loving, friendly and fun people as we do.  So it was great time off, well spent with people we love and we are feeling ready to head back to work. 

Our cottage was 30 minutes north of Huntsville in the Muskoka area.  I love being out on the lakes up in this area and can't get enough of the water and trees that surround you. 

Our cottage was so pretty and clean (you never know what you are going to end up with when renting a cottage) and the dock was a perfect place to catch up on some reading.

We rented a fishing boat and explored the lake, the boys fished and the girls read magazines and caught some rays.

We were so excited that we got to see one of our favourite bands Two Crown King because we came home early from our trip.  As usual, they killed it!

The Drive Is Half The Fun

Last Saturday morning we started our vacation.  If you are anything like me, the car trip to your holiday destination is half of the fun of the whole vacation.  I don't like having an agenda for these trips, so if you see something cool on the side of the road, you have time to stop and check it out.  The car is also a great place to get familiar with a new album, listen to some old favourites that remind you of vacations gone by, get a little work done, read a book or magazine, or just have some great conversations with your travelling partner.

Our first stop on our travels was a huge garage sale on the side of the Highway.  Tyler loves garage sales so there was no driving past the sign that said "Huge Garage Sale".  He not only garage sales all over Ontario, while he was in New Brunswick a few weeks ago, he hit up a garage sale and picked up a  hat, hoodie and some art work (I use the term "art work" loosely here).  This trip, he found some cassette tapes of some of his favourite bands - Blind Melon, Red Hot Chilli Peppers and Metallica.  Our cottage ended up having a tape player, this trip to Muskoka will forever sound like those three tapes.  

I wanted to stop at Webers for lunch, I had never been there and I have heard so much about their legendary burgers.  By the time we reached Webers it was prime lunch time, there was a huge line up and we were starving so we decided we were not feeling patient enough to brave this line.  This is still on my "Places I Have To Eat" list.

Luckily for us we found Bangers just a little while up the road.  It was a super small food truck that only had two things on the menu, Bangers and CocaCola.  They did not need anything else because the Banger was a smash hit and our chef made every detail of that lunch special.  The bread was fresh, slathered with butter and grilled on the flat top, we topped ours with meat sauce, onions, hot peppers, mustard and parmesan cheese.  The man that ran the truck had been doing this for something like 30 years.  The food was unexpectedly great and we were so glad we stumbled upon this culinary gem! 

We arrived at our cottage shortly after our Bangers, excited to continue our vacation.  I will be sharing more of our vacation with another post in a few days.  As always, thank you for stopping by and please feel free to leave a comment or share this story.