A few months back, we decided we should book of one weekend. Just one weekend where no one would be working, and we could hang out the whole time as a little family. After looking at the calendar, we decided on the July 25th weekend. We’d take a road trip to Toronto for my brother in law’s birthday!
So we did.
I had these grand ideas of taking the entire day and making lots of stops, checking out all the funny sounding places you see on the road signs along the way, but I ran out of time to research. So we just stopped at one, for lunch – a little place quite far off the beaten track called Hell Hole Nature trail. Intriguing, right?
When we got there, we found out it was just a quiet picnic area with a playground, mini-golf, and a view. You could pay $7 each to walk down the trails, but it sounded too difficult and dangerous for a 2 year old. So we had lunch and a good long play at the park and around the golf holes.
Then we headed back towards the 401. It’s funny, before the trip one of the things I was looking forward to most was time in the car to actually talk and relax, but as the cars turned into a crawl, we realized something was wrong and it took us hours to find out what it was. We finally got off in Port Hope to find that the highway was closed, and we all had a good long stretch and some water. We got back on a ways down, and the normally 4 hour drive took us closer to 8 hours, maybe 9. Brutal!
But we made it, and it was great to see Ali and Justin and their new puppy Rupert! Baby J loves their cuddly cat, Fenton, and was obsessed with petting him all weekend.
Saturday was a day for playing at the park, for eating freshly baked cheese and chocolate croissants, for shopping on Yonge street, and walking and napping. We also took Baby J on the subway for the first time (he hated it and asked to get off at each stop) and then a barbecue. We made some new friends and celebrated the birthdays with cupcakes and a kiddie pool full of drinks. There was another 2 year old there to play with, a dinosaur hiding in the garden, dancing to do, and hot dogs to eat.
Sunday morning we decided to head over the Sherwood park and enjoy the weather. It’s got a great off-leash are for dogs who love to climb (steps and boardwalks) as well as a massive playground area, picnic tables, and water park with shower-like spray. Of course, all my little guy wanted to do was climb up and down these bars outside the washroom while softly singing “Spiderman” to himself. He did get on the teeter totter for awhile too, and check out the water briefly.
We had a quick lunch from Burger Priest before packing up to say goodbye. Toronto isn’t so far but it feels far when the time there flies by in an instant, when the tickles and barks and funny moments get tucked away again until the next time we can see each other in person.
The drive home was much more textbook, 4 hours of napping and talking, of watching a movie and thinking about the days and weeks ahead while also just feeling the warm breeze rush in through the windows on the open road.