700km, an off-roading PT Cruiser and the faint sound of banjos., part 1

Greetings, y'all.

So computator seems to be pooched again, which means I am back to blogging via iPad. Which is ALL SORTS OF FUN what with the typing by touchscreen, having to manually enter all HTML formatting and complete inability to add pictures unless I go into work early and upload pictures after the fact.

Have I mentioned the meddefluerking auto-correct? ALL SORTS OF FUN

So the lack of pictures means this post about weekend road trip that Guy For Whom I Have Not Come Up With A Good Blog Alias™ (yeah, about that.. I really should come up with something because that takes way too long to type) embarked upon is going to be a "use your imagination" type thing.

at least until I can add some pictures.

Basically, the agenda consisted of leaving early morning with a tank of gas, a tent and a cooler of road-snacks and heading east towards the haliburton highlands, exploring various trails and towns, and looping back next day with a stop in Peterborough for breakfast. Easy peasy. The tent was actually a backup plan since the actual plan was to sleep in the car, something I've found convenient on past long trips. I'm pretty sure he might have preferred the ground.

(aside from a stop in Orillia for groceries and gas) our first stop was Bancroft, a town I spent a lot of time in as a kid when my maternal grandparents had there house there. I had two goals here.. Buy Chelsea Buns from the local bakery, because ohmigord YUM, and seek out the Musky Bay Resort, a seasonal trailer camp that had been owned by my aunt Shirley and Uncle Stan years ago, and where I would spend two weeks with my grandparents every summer, fishing and boating and hanging out with my cousin Jaime, the only cousin my age I ever got to see with any regularity. The campground had been sold years ago, after Stan passed away. We had looked the place up and between some sketchy satellite imagery and my own fuzzy memories were able to find the place, not without overshooting the entrance at least once. I wandered in and introduced myself to a lovely Eastern European woman named Yvonna, one of the new owners who had just recently taken over. I got the impression that the previous owner had let the place go quite a bit. The grass grew wild around a number of empty trailers and around the main house. The store where Stan and Shirley sold bait and penny candy was empty. But here and there were signs of improvement... Two new docks sat at the shoreline, and Yvonna showed where they were renovating the three old rental cabins that sat at the shore adding bathrooms where previously there was only one communal shower/toilet for all three cabins.

As we walked, i pointed out where my grandparents trailer sat and where we held horseshoe tournaments and family reunions at the front of the main building. As bittersweet as it was to see the place in a state of disrepair, I felt a good deal of gratitude towards this quiet polite woman and her family for keeping the place open, and their efforts in reviving it. It's funny though. Musky Bay had the distinction of being one of the last old-fashioned, mom-and-pop run family campgrounds and as much as it pained me to see the place deteriorated, it would have pained me as much, if not more, to see it turned into some kind of posh yuppie resort.

at any rate, I thanked Yvonna for showing me around and pledge to return and see how they were coming along with the place. We got back into the car and headed back toward Bancroft and onto our next destination, Egan Chutes Provincial Park.