Tom's Brain

vacation 2012: part 3

By TWD

I woke up at 6:15 this morning, and blinked.

When I next awoke, it was 8:30.
Yesterday was a lazy day for the most part.  In the morning, I made plans to go to Huntsville to pick up, among other things, a micro SD card for my GPS unit.  I believe I mentioned earlier that I needed to load maps of Canada on the thing.  After purchasing the maps, however, I learned that I didn’t have enough space on the device to load them.  Hence the need for the SD card.
I wrote a blog entry two or three years ago in which I confessed to having a mental block when it comes to Huntsville, Ontario.  Somewhere in the darkest recesses of my brain, I have stored away a vital piece of information about that city; and that piece of information is wrong.  Huntsville, you see, is SOUTH of Magnetawan, but I seem to be convinced that it lies to the NORTH.  For that reason, I will turn in the wrong direction, either going to or coming from Huntsville, about 75% of the time.  Yesterday, therefore, I started up a mantra, which I repeated to myself all the way along the road between Magnetawan and Burk’s Falls.  This is a trip of probably 10 miles, and it is the easiest way to get to Canada 11, which is the highway between Burk’s Falls and Huntsville.  The phrase that I kept repeating to myself during this trip was as follows:

When you get to Burk’s Falls, head south on Highway 11.

 It should, therefore, come as no surprise to to anyone that I got to Burk’s Falls and promptly turned north on highway 11.

Once again, I’m sharing the boathouse with a nest
full of soon-to-be baby birds!

To my credit, I realized my mistake almost immediately (like, within a mile or two), but there are very few places on 11 where one can turn around; so I decided that I’d just go to North Bay, Ontario (about 60 miles north), which – like Huntsville – has a Wal-Mart (and therefore would have a micro SD card).  So I drove to North Bay, which is a nice little city and used to be one of the main stops on the road between Montreal and Vancouver.  It lies on the shores of Lake Nippissing and is a great vacation destination should you ever wish to travel north in Ontario.

It also appeared to be closed yesterday.  The whole town had taken the day off as far as I could tell.  And the Wal-Mart looked as if it had been closed for a month.

So I got turned around and headed south on highway 11 – all the way back to Burk’s Falls and then another 40 miles or so to Huntsville, where I went to the Wal-Mart as originally envisioned and picked up my SD card.

Canada maps have now been loaded onto the GPS….and I only had to go 120 miles out of my way to get it done.

After getting back to the camp, I sweet-talked Cy into playing a few games of tennis with me.  As it was rather warm on the court (temps were in the mid-80’s yesterday), we only played 7 games and gave up when I had a 4-3 lead.  We finished the set this morning (I took it, 7-5), but Cy got her revenge and won a second set (also 7-5).  I guess we’ll go for the tie-breaker tomorrow.

Got back to my boathouse after this morning’s tennis and fell in the lake for a few minutes before practicing the tuba for 40 minutes or so.  After that, Don and I capped the chimneys on the main cabin.

Most of the clan sat on the dock for quiet time today.  I checked my work email and uploaded a bunch of photos to both Facebook and the SmugMug gallery mentioned a few days ago.

Think I’m going to go take a walk and then fall in the lake.

Dinner last night, cooked by Don Peddy, consisted of cheeseburgers and some potato salad (made by Julie Peddy).  As always, the food is great.

Karl and Diane Neuse are scheduled to arrive sometime tonight.  Looking forward to catching up with them!

TWD