The 3 hour tour

I have decided that I am Gilligan. Although I am the wrong sex, we do dress similarly, and we both have the habit of doing stupid things. In my books, that is a close enough match.

I wanted to go for a walk on the weekend. It was a beautiful sunny day on Sunday, and I thought I would go to the sanctuary in Oshawa and take some pictures of birds, flowers, etc. Dale offered to come with me, so it was the best case scenario.

So off we went, coffees in hand. We followed the marked paths for a bit, but that was dull. Where's the adventure if you know whats coming? And so we strayed.

There were birds everywhere, plants and flowers in bloom, so I was happy as a pig in you-know-what. And Dale was a great help in pointing out things of interest that he thought I might like.

In the distance we could see the lake, and thought it would be great to head up that way and wander the beach. The noise of the water was remarkable due to the wind, and the waves were beautiful as they crashed up against the shoreline. I was in heaven.

Interestingly enough, we found a number of items on the shoreline that we couldn't account for, but which made for interesting discussion:

Multiple shotgun shells: no blood, just the shell casings.
Cloth monkey: like the one in Jenn's spaghetti sauce.
A pre-radial tire.: they don't float, and the thing was ancient. I now understand the concern to the environment.
A tampon case: Ewwww.
Single shoes: explain that to your parents, kids.
Underwear: Ewwww.

But enough of that. You get the gist of it. So anyway, along the beach we went, through swarms of bugs. They were in our hair, up our noses, in our teeth. It was gross.

And then I saw it in the distance...an old looking building. Well, that just begs exploration doesn't it? So we headed further down the beach. We came across some kids swimming!, some kids huddled around a picnic table-wonder why-, and saw the building in the near distance. It was an old log cabin, set up in Darlington Provincial Park.

Yes, Darlington Provincial Park. Somehow we had made our way from Oshawa to Courtice, and now we had to make our way back.

We decided to skirt the marsh as we knew it would eventually lead us back to our starting point, but we were getting tired. On we marched, and I must say, Dale was a really good sport about it all. I love walking, and will spend hours wandering about, but he is not all that big on it. So when we finally made our way around the marsh and found the car, I asked the dreaded question: how long have we been out here?

The answer? 3 1/2 hours...the same amount of time it took Gilligan to strand a boatload of tourists.

Needless to say we had a nice long nap after we got home.