All the world's a longboat...
And all the men and women merely vikings.
We didn't write last leek because we were out of town on Monday. This post will cover two weeks.
Tuesday the 26th Alison drove out to deliver the duckling to someone that wanted it. The drop off was successful, however we didn't actually deliver the duckling to the person that wanted it, but to the secretary of the office. Hopefully the guy got the duck and is now enjoying his new duck.
The whole rest of the week was pretty much consumed by getting ready for the trip, and processing the remainder of the apricots.
On Thursday we drove out of town to start our 21 hour drive to Lake Winnipeg. The kids were surprisingly good during the drive. Alison had a scheme wherein we stopped every three hours to let the kids play and then we gave the kids new and exciting toys at the end of each of these stops. The kids went through the entire trip there without nearly any screaming or fighting.
I didn't believe it was possible.
We also listened to a lot of audio books along the way. They were great for Rea and Sara, but Timmy didn't like them that much - he liked listening to Veggietales and animal songs.
Once we got there (friday evening), we went to the beach and played for a while before setting up our tent. We used the large "8 man" tent that my parent's gave to us when they moved. Once we had it set up, we realized it didn't have a rain fly, so we got creative and built one out of a tarp that Alison had bought. It worked pretty good. The original rain fly probably vented heat better, but it wasn't all that hot up in Manitoba, so it wasn't really a problem.
Saturday we went down to see the viking festival, and the kids played in a fountain for what must have been hours. We also got Canadian money (which is now made of plastic instead of cloth or paper like most countries) and bought perishable foodstuff.
While we were at the festival on Saturday we bought some poutine. We had never had this traditional canadian food before. It was very tasty and filling. Perhaps we will make it some time.
Sunday we went to the local ward, ate a picnic in a park and also went on a very mild hike. It rained a little on Sunday.
Monday we went back to the festival and saw all of the viking reenactors with their historically accurate shoes (and other such props). The girls loved the viking helmets and dressing up like vikings. It made Alison want to join a historical reenactment group as a family. It started to rain a bit, so we went into the New Icelandic Museum. The kids loved the dress-ups; the adults didn't get enough time to read about all the cool exhibits, but it had very interesting stuff. Then we watched a Viking battle, which got cut off due to thunder. It was about the right length for the kids. After it was all done, we went to a book store that we saw in Gimli and then back to the camp site.
Tuesday we went on a long hike (nearly 2 miles, which is long for the kids when you are walking along the beach). On the hike we found a small amount of wild raspberries, some birch bark, and we also did not even get close to going as far as we expected to go. After making it back home to the camp site at about 1:00, we had lunch and spent the rest of the day at the camp site beach.
Wednesday we went to Gimli to visit the beach in Gimli. We ended up visiting the visitor's center and using a lot of coloring pages and markers. We learned that the water was contaminated, so we weren't supposed to stay in very long or drink it or anything, so we swam a little, saw some of the big statues and monoliths and then stole lots of change from the fountain and bought ice cream with it.
Thursday we went on a much shorter hike on "Ravine Trail", and we found a whole slew of berry bearing plants. We gathered more birch bark and also gathered cat-tails (because the kids wanted to gather them, not because we had a use for them). Once the hike was over we went to the local library and tried to determine what all of the berries that we saw were. One that we were able to identify was choke-cherries, which are edible if you prepare them right. Another we identified was "Baneberry", which is poisonous. After we were done we went back to the camp ground. In the evening we were rained into our tent, so we read books together.
On Friday we had breakfast and packed up all of our stuff for the long ride home. We decided to pick all of the choke-cherries that we saw on Thursday's adventures, and we got a sizable amount of them. We plan on making choke-cherry jelly with them. We began our drive home at about lunch time, arriving home Saturday night at about 10:00 PM.
Pretty much the entire trip the kids liked to play wrestling games (which is unusual - they normally only like that type of game every so often). Their favorite one was "wrestle over a ball", where they all try to run away with a ball and then tackle each other until the ball changed hands.
Timmy was so tired after all of this that he put his bike helmet on and collapsed on the floor, asleep.
We didn't write last leek because we were out of town on Monday. This post will cover two weeks.
Tuesday the 26th Alison drove out to deliver the duckling to someone that wanted it. The drop off was successful, however we didn't actually deliver the duckling to the person that wanted it, but to the secretary of the office. Hopefully the guy got the duck and is now enjoying his new duck.
The whole rest of the week was pretty much consumed by getting ready for the trip, and processing the remainder of the apricots.
On Thursday we drove out of town to start our 21 hour drive to Lake Winnipeg. The kids were surprisingly good during the drive. Alison had a scheme wherein we stopped every three hours to let the kids play and then we gave the kids new and exciting toys at the end of each of these stops. The kids went through the entire trip there without nearly any screaming or fighting.
I didn't believe it was possible.
We also listened to a lot of audio books along the way. They were great for Rea and Sara, but Timmy didn't like them that much - he liked listening to Veggietales and animal songs.
Once we got there (friday evening), we went to the beach and played for a while before setting up our tent. We used the large "8 man" tent that my parent's gave to us when they moved. Once we had it set up, we realized it didn't have a rain fly, so we got creative and built one out of a tarp that Alison had bought. It worked pretty good. The original rain fly probably vented heat better, but it wasn't all that hot up in Manitoba, so it wasn't really a problem.
Saturday we went down to see the viking festival, and the kids played in a fountain for what must have been hours. We also got Canadian money (which is now made of plastic instead of cloth or paper like most countries) and bought perishable foodstuff.
While we were at the festival on Saturday we bought some poutine. We had never had this traditional canadian food before. It was very tasty and filling. Perhaps we will make it some time.Sunday we went to the local ward, ate a picnic in a park and also went on a very mild hike. It rained a little on Sunday.
Monday we went back to the festival and saw all of the viking reenactors with their historically accurate shoes (and other such props). The girls loved the viking helmets and dressing up like vikings. It made Alison want to join a historical reenactment group as a family. It started to rain a bit, so we went into the New Icelandic Museum. The kids loved the dress-ups; the adults didn't get enough time to read about all the cool exhibits, but it had very interesting stuff. Then we watched a Viking battle, which got cut off due to thunder. It was about the right length for the kids. After it was all done, we went to a book store that we saw in Gimli and then back to the camp site.
Tuesday we went on a long hike (nearly 2 miles, which is long for the kids when you are walking along the beach). On the hike we found a small amount of wild raspberries, some birch bark, and we also did not even get close to going as far as we expected to go. After making it back home to the camp site at about 1:00, we had lunch and spent the rest of the day at the camp site beach.
Wednesday we went to Gimli to visit the beach in Gimli. We ended up visiting the visitor's center and using a lot of coloring pages and markers. We learned that the water was contaminated, so we weren't supposed to stay in very long or drink it or anything, so we swam a little, saw some of the big statues and monoliths and then stole lots of change from the fountain and bought ice cream with it.
Thursday we went on a much shorter hike on "Ravine Trail", and we found a whole slew of berry bearing plants. We gathered more birch bark and also gathered cat-tails (because the kids wanted to gather them, not because we had a use for them). Once the hike was over we went to the local library and tried to determine what all of the berries that we saw were. One that we were able to identify was choke-cherries, which are edible if you prepare them right. Another we identified was "Baneberry", which is poisonous. After we were done we went back to the camp ground. In the evening we were rained into our tent, so we read books together.
Pretty much the entire trip the kids liked to play wrestling games (which is unusual - they normally only like that type of game every so often). Their favorite one was "wrestle over a ball", where they all try to run away with a ball and then tackle each other until the ball changed hands.
Another thing that was surprising was that there were an insane amount of flies up there. House flies specifically. If we opened the car door for about 30 seconds we would get at least 15 flies in the car. We ended up buying fly paper and swatters just to try to keep our tent and van clean. It didn't work really well, but we probably only ended up illegally importing one or two flies to the US.
Timmy was so tired after all of this that he put his bike helmet on and collapsed on the floor, asleep.
Comments
Post a Comment