Sunday, July 30, 2006

Weekend at the cottage

We went up to a friend's cottage near Sauble Beach, ON this weekend. It was very relaxing. There were nine of us there who all went to university together. I haven't seen some of them in a few years, so it was great to catch up with everyone again. This weekend was also the first time in a very long while that we were completely without internet access. We also didn't watch any tv or anything, so it we were pretty well cut off from the outside world.

Aside from talking and catching up, we spent a lot of time wandering around the fen. Or bog. Whichever :) There were two kinds of insect-eating plants (the bladderwort and pitcher plant), a kabillion frogs, a smaller number of snakes, tons of minnows, and two crawfish. Fortunately, there weren't too many bugs :)

One of the distinctive features of the Sauble Beach area is the beach itself. It's very wide and very long - you can walk almost a half a mile out before the water goes over my head (this after walking about half a mile to get to the water). The water is very warm, and the beach is very sandy without rocks and stuff. There were almost no people where we were, which made it even nicer. An interesting feature of the bog/fen between the road and the beach is that the tracks made by ATVs are covered in plants. It's very strange to see these perfectly straight rows of plants growing all over the place.

Apparently the Bruce Peninsula (on which Sauble Beach is located) is a designated dark skies community. "Dark skies community" has a very technical meaning, but really it means that you can see a whole lot of stars and the Milky Way without even trying. I really enjoyed looking at the night sky both Friday and Saturday - I haven't seen that many stars at one time since the 2003 blackout :)

PS - thanks for the compliments on my sewing :) I really like the red and black dresses as well - it wasn't until I looked at the pictures that I realized that perhaps that kind of silhouette is much more flattering to me :)

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