The Blog from the Bog!

While sitting at the local “Timmy’s” (aka Tim Horton’s) -- where you can get a nice café mocha for $1 – we checked our email, making use of their free wi-fi yet again.  We were excited to see an email from a lovely young woman named Sonia that read, “I'm not sure what you have planned for the next few days, but my parents and I are having a small Thanksgiving dinner at our house in Callander on Sunday night, and we would love if you joined us! There is a cranberry marsh a few minutes away and we always go picking while the turkey's in the oven, rain or shine, so we can enjoy home made cranberry sauce for the feast!"  Being travelers, we know that reaching out to meet locals and saying “yes” to pretty much any opportunities that come our way will always enrich our lives, not to mention make for a great story!

We had met Sonia on Friday afternoon on Sunset Beach on the shores of Lake Nipissing.  We had just packed up a picnic lunch and headed for the shore so that we could sit and eat somewhere with a pretty view.   After many years of scarfing down lunch at our desks while plowing through the 60+ email we received while we were away at our morning meetings, we quickly set this as a priority.  Across the street from our campground is public beach access, so we headed to the sand to have our lunch.   When we reached the water, we spotted a group of kite surfers playing in the wind and the waves across the bay.   Intrigued, we decided to walk a bit further in order to find the place from which they had launched.  After about 15 minutes of navigating our way through the neighborhoods by the water, we came upon a beach with about 8 kite surfers having the time of their lives out in the surf and wind.  It was a gorgeous, yet somewhat chilly, autumn day – color all around us, fascinating cloud formations in the sky, and perfect wind conditions.  

Hutch was “pee his pants” excited about the opportunity to learn more about kite surfing, being as though sailing and snow boarding are two of his favorite sports.   He immediately struck up a conversation with a lovely young woman, Sonia, who looked as if she had just come out of the water, as she was all bundled up in wet neoprene and shivering.   Hutch asked, “Can I trade kayak lessons for kite surfing lessons?”  Sonia laughed and then immediately noticed my Avon Walk for Breast Cancer shirt and said, “Wow, we were just talking about Avon!”  Strangely enough, my shirt had nothing to do with the Avon, NC she was talking about, which evidently is the kite surfing spot on the Outer Banks of our home state.  Who knew?  A good reminder of what a small, small world it really is!

After about 2 hours of cheerful conversation with Sonia and some great photo opportunities of kite surfing on a picture perfect autumn day, we gave her Hutch’s email and our blog address and finally went to have our lunch.   As we left the beach, we were so uplifted by talking with this “poster child of kite surfing” that we had nearly forgotten about the incident with our truck the previous day.   She reminded us both of the students Hutch worked with at Appalachian, with a true passion for really living life by taking on the challenges and opportunities provided by the great outdoors. 

So, when we got her email, we immediately said YES!   And, we are so, so glad we did.  Sonia’s parents, Daniel and Andree, are just as fun and full of life as she is.   We spent the morning finding some rubber boots (which we had planned to purchase anyway, as we knew we’d need them for WWOOFing soon), and Sonia and her sweet dog, Millie, picked us up from our campground in the early afternoon.  We met her parents at the parking area that led out to the cranberry bog.  Delightful folks her parents -- Andree is French Canadian and Daniel is Venezuelan -- so in addition to enjoying their company, we enjoyed their beautiful accents.   After about 45 minutes of tromping around in our new boots in the ice cold bog water, we had collected enough wild cranberries to make about 10 loaves of cranberry bread, cranberry relish for an army, and enough to freeze for the winter!  We returned to their house, to be greeted with the wonderful smells of Thanksgiving dinner being prepared in the kitchen.  Andree asked, “It is our tradition to have spiced apple cider with rum after we get home from cranberry picking, are you interested?”  Hutch immediately responded with, “Now that is a tradition that I can get into!”

 

After a great dinner, in which Andree also prepared a fabulous stuffed zucchini for the visiting vegetarians,  we spent another few hours sharing stories, including how we came to this point of our lives, as well as some fun (and somewhat scary) outdoor adventure stories.   Sonia doesn’t know it yet, but she’s going to end up in grad school at App State – she’s absolutely perfect for the COPA track in CSD!  : )  

So many thanks to our new friends for making us feel so welcome in North Bay!  You served as a great diversion from the waiting game we were playing while anticipating information from our insurance company about the fate of our truck.