Last weekend was Thanksgiving long weekend here in Canada. Although as Australians we are no strangers to the idea of a long weekend for any reason, the whole idea of Thanksgiving was a bit new to us. Fortunately we had plenty of local guidance from our Canadian friends who made sure we took part in this significant holiday and saw that the celebrations kept on coming.

Firstly, we drove up to Georgian Bay on Saturday morning to spend the day and night with Randy and Cathy at their cottage. On Randy's advice we took the scenic route up there via Airport Road rather than the 400, because we wanted to see the autumn colours of the trees as they turn from greens to yellows, oranges and reds. The colours of the fall are just gorgeous, and so intense! The trees along the back roads were well and truly turning to their full glory, although by the time we got up to the lake (where I took photos) the colours were still not fully turned. I'm told it has something to do with the temperature around the lake that delays the lakeside trees for a few weeks. Still, it was quite stunning.

We spent the afternoon at the cottage just lazing around, although we did a quick bit of work carrying some timber up the hill for the start of the new bunky. That didn't take long and pretty soon we were back on the deck, beer in hand just soaking up the atmosphere. The kids kept themselves amused and the boys and the girls took turns in taking the tinny back to town to pick up supplies - important stuff like pizza, ice cream and candy.

As dusk rolled in we found ourselves sitting around the campfire on the beach, joined by the neighbours, with plenty of guitars and singing. It's amazing how good you can sound after enough beers! We stayed up well into the night before finally retiring to the bunky.

After a delicious breakfast the next morning we had to say our goodbyes, pack our bags and go back to the mainland to pick up the car for the drive back home. It was hard to say goodbye to the cottage and it would have been nice to stay another night, but we had committed to being in Kitchener for Thanksgiving dinner so we bid farewell, drove back down the 400 to home before setting out on part 2 of our Thanksgiving weekend.

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