Ontario Day Tripping - Weekend 1

After our trip to Iceland in the spring, a big summer road trip is not in the budget.  Instead, we will be exploring the sights around us in Ontario!

This weekend we celebrated Canada day in Riverside Park at home in Guelph.   On Friday afternoon Logan enjoyed the free petting zoo and bouncy castles! In the evening we watched the fireworks!!

Saturday Morning we packed the car and headed east on the 401.  Our first stop was Port Hope.

Port Hope is a charming little town!

We were glad to hear that they were still celebrating Canada Day, and headed down to their town hall. 

Every Saturday morning they have a small market behind town hall.  We strolled around a bit and made a couple of purchases.

Right next door to town hall is Memorial park.  The park was decked out for Canada Day weekend.  There was even a lively blue grass band in the band shell! 

After a picnic lunch in the park, we decided to hop on a horse and carriage ride! 

We also took a look at the antique tractor show!

After some serious play time in the bouncy castles, Logan fell asleep as we wandered the town.  

We grabbed a little treat at Sugar Dust Bakery before finding our way to the Fire Fighters Museum. 

There were lots of cool things that Logan would have enjoyed here, but he was sound asleep! 

Before getting back in the car, we couldn't resist stopping at Dreamer's Cafe! They are known for their trade mark Crazy Cookies! 

Heading down the road a little bit we stopped at a super cool Road Side attraction/store called Primitive their huge sculptures help it to stand out! 

This store had so much kitsch! I will not be surprised if we come back here one day!! 

By the time we had finished up at Primitive a Designes, it was almost 5:00.  We agreed that this would have been a great day trip, and well worth the 2 hour drive! With its "Back to the Future" esque town hall and old theatre, it definitely felt like a town stuck in the mid century!  Port hope is full of charm, and we weren't surprised to learn that Steven King is re shooting "It" here next week!   

We knew we would be making a weekend out of this trip, so we hopped back on the 401 east towards Cobourg.  As we zoomed down the 401 we caught a glimpse of the VW Spider on the south side of the highway. 

Making our way into Cobourg, the town was bustling with people enjoying the waterfront festival.  

We went to check out the midway set up on the pier, but decided there wasn't anything there that we wanted to ride on.  

We wandered the streets a bit and found a spot for dinner.

After dinner, we had decided to call it a day, and headed to our hotel for the night. 

Sunday, we went back into Cobourg  to spend the day on the beach! 

Cobourg beach was lovely! I'd definitely recommend it! With a great boardwalk lined with parks and splash pads, it was great fun for kids.  The water was also quite shallow and felt safe as it was monitored by lifeguards. 

We finished up at the beach and enjoyed some late lunch by the bandshell. 

 After a lovely day in the sunshine we decided to head back on the road. We stopped at Dragonfly park on our way home in Guelph for Logan to enjoy some play time! 

This was a fantastic long weekend, and we can't wait to explore more of Ontario! 

The Long and Winding Road - Day 10

Today we make our way back to Reykjavik!  We made our first stop at the Ingjaldsholl Church which was a super cute church up on a hill.  Apparently it's one of the oldest churches in Iceland and they claim maybe even the world!  There has been a church of some form standing on this site from at least they year 1211.  It claims to have had Christopher Columbus visit when he was discovering the world!

Our next stop was the Fishermen's Museum in the town of Rif.  It was closed because we're here on the off season, but the property has lots of great things to see!

There were pieces of old whale bone littering the lawn!

I love these turf houses! Who needs shingles anyway?!

Our next stop was a walk to see this Írskrabrunnur (Irish Well).  That is an ancient whale bone marking the top.

This area was also surrounded by lava flows! Angus wanted to know what if felt like to walk on, so he went out off the path to take a few steps!

After seeing so many black beaches, it was almost strange to see white sand here!

Our next stop was this light house Saxholsbarg in Ondverdarnes.  There are great cliffs for bird watching here!

Our next stop was this very busy tourist stop Djupalonssandur.  A pebble beach with a few great sights.

Scattered across the beach there are pieces of the Epine Trawler shipwreck.  They say that this beach is actually haunted!

There are also these old lifting stones used to test the strength of sailors in training.  The largest is called Fullsterkur and weighs 154 kg, the second is Halfsterkur and weighs 100 kg, third is Halfdraettingur weighing 54 kg and finally Amlodi meaning Weakling at 23 kg.

Our next stop was in Hellnar where we stopped for a coffee break and some play time.  We enjoyed coffee with a couple from Manhattan who were travelling with their little guy Everette! Everett's dad is a photographer and we had fun comparing our trips!  We have bumped into them a few times on this trip.

One of the things were were looking forward to in this area was seeing Snæfellsjökull - the mountain that inspired the story "Journey to the Centre of the Earth".  Unfortunately due to the weather, all we got to see was fog!

We finally made it to Reykjavik, and it was very rainy!! We felt that Logan deserved some play time, so we went puddle jumping!

Tomorrow we make our way back to the airport to head home!

**UPDATE:

Our flight ended up being delayed for 2 hours due to an air traffic controller strike, but the flight went great!

Logan was quite happy the entire flight and enjoyed playing with stickers (see them on his shirt).  He eventually fell asleep and slept until we got home!