Eight days in Southern California with Jakob for March Break!

We started with three nights in Los Angeles at the Magic Castle, a boutique hotel in downtown Hollywood. The first night, Jakob went on his own to The Troubador Club to see one of his faves "Chris Webby", while Jennifer and I explored Griffith Park Observatory (top picture, above. Link to more photos below).

There is definitely a theme happening this year. Go ahead and click on them to see who the carvers are.

The Pinery Provincial Park is an interesting and unique spot located on Lake Huron about 50 km north-west of London and 9 km south of Grand Bend. Jennifer -- the family Social Director and Marvelous Matriarch -- organized a three-night camp out for the last weekend in August, and it was fabulous.

The description on The Pinery's website starts with "towering oak trees, sun flecks on a golden carpet of leaves, shrubs & wildflowers and a rich abundance of unique and rare organisms" and it does live up to that. The landscape is undulating sand dunes (up to 30+ m high) with most of the surviving oak savanna in North America. All of this along a 10 km stretch of sand beach with water that is actually warm enough to swim in.

For the Victoria Day weekend, we travelled by train to Montreal with Grandma and Grandpa S. and Jocelyn. The 4.5 hour train ride was quite comfortable, getting us to downtown Montreal -- and about 3 blocks from our hotel -- around 9:00pm on Friday evening.

Don't be frightened! Go ahead and click on them to see who the carvers are.

Our latest excursion was a four day camping trip at Bruce Peninsula National Park, near the tip of the Bruce Peninsula.

The camping at the Cyprus Lake campground could be described as "rugged", however, it was quite luxurious compared to canoe camping. We arrived on Tuesday afternoon with a van load of kayaks, bikes, tents, and camera gear.