Home Again, Home Again

I'm really tired.

I'm writing this post less than 24 hours after returning from a 12-day vacation that took us up to Lake Superior, Manitoulin Island, and the Bruce Peninsula, where we saw both Lake Huron and Georgian Bay. Over these 12 days, we paddled our kayaks and hiked all sorts of trails.

On Friday, DW and I awoke in the Bruce Peninsula National Park after a restless night, where black bears kept the entire campground awake—visitors and park rangers sounding horns and yelling all night long. After a quick breakfast of blueberry pancakes, we broke camp, loaded up our car, and headed south, looking to make our way home.

Lion's Head.

Instead of driving straight home, DW and I decided to have one last paddle, so we stopped at Lion's Head, located on the shore of Georgian Bay near a provincial nature reserve, high up on the Niagara Escarpment. For those of you who may not know, the Niagara Escarpment starts in Tobermory and runs along the Bruce Peninsula and extends more than 800 kilometres, where it ends at Niagara Falls.

I won't give details about this paddle: I'll reserve that for a future blog post. But we spent about two-and-a-half hours on Georgian Bay before returning to our car and continuing our journey home.

We stopped in Wiarton for a late lunch. It was about 3:30 when we were back on the road, and DW wondered if it might be best to stop somewhere for the night, reckoning that it would be after 11 when we reached home and she didn't like being on the road after dark.

So we decided to head to Orillia and see how we felt then. We could find a cheap motel to stop for the night, if need be.

When we reached Orillia, I felt alert. We had been listening to podcasts to keep awake: Conan O'Brian Needs a Friend (great interview with Mick Jagger); Good Hang with Amy Poehler; and Smartless, with Will Arnett, Jason Bateman, and Sean Hayes. After we made a brief stop at the Mariposa Market, I suggested we continue toward Peterborough and see how I felt at that point.

As we reached Peterborough, the sun had set and we were into blue hour. Surprisingly, I still felt wide awake so I told DW that I just wanted to continue home. I wanted to sleep in my own bed and no hotel would do.

We took Highway 7 all the way to Ottawa and pulled into our driveway at 11:11.

It wasn't until I turned onto our street that the fatigue hit me like a ton of bricks. "I don't want to unpack the car tonight," I said to DW.

She didn't either but we did remove the kayaks from the roof of our car and hang them in their spot in the garage, so that we wouldn't have to leave the car in our driveway.

As soon as we came through the door, we only had enough energy to greet the cats, get changed into pajamas, and get ready for bed. Kid 1 was already asleep by the time we arrived, so we wouldn't get to greet her until Saturday morning.

Emptying the car took longer than we expected. It's not just a matter of removing things from the vehicle and putting them away: clothes needed to be sorted and put in the laundry; our tents, ground sheet, mattresses, and sleeping bags needed to be aired out and dried (the tents were taken down with morning dew still on them); even though we always washed our dishes at the campsites, they needed a thorough run through a dishwasher; the cooler, which still had ice water and food, needed to be emptied and cleaned; the car, which had accumulated sand and dirt, needed to be vacuumed thoroughly.

It took us most of the day to put the majority of our things away. There was still the kayaks to wash off and odds and ends to put away. But we were tired by dinner and called it a day.

That's when I started writing this post.

Next comes the daunting task of editing and organizing video footage. I have so much work ahead of me that I've decided to break up our adventures much like I'll break it up in blog posts. But I needed a bit of buffer, so this post will hopefully suffice until I get my energy back up and my thoughts straight.

Tomorrow, I'll start sharing this wonderful vacation. Sound good?

Stay tuned.