3 months in, 1/4 way through...

Hello friends,

Well, we've been living the Sabbatical dream for over 3 months now. There's been a whole lot of awesome mixed with 'adjustments' to our new, temporary, life. Meaning, we've done a lot of very cool stuff and had a lot of fun, but we've had to put sad kids to bed at night on occasion too. Missing friends, missing Charlie, missing routine. But let's rewind a little bit.

The last half of our journey across the country (from Ottawa to Nova Scotia) we packed up the camping gear and stayed with friends and family enroute. We spent 2 nights with my Aunt and Uncle in Ottawa, and took one day to walk around the city to take in the sights. Parliament Hill was busy and hot, and tours were unavailable, so we split up and took refuge in places of interest to the kids. Celia and Tim took in the National Gallery of Canada, and Edie and I went to the Royal Canadian Mint. It was a great way to beat the heat, and I think we all learned something. Ottawa is a lovely place.

Note mother's hand...

Sweating it out on Parliament Hill.

National Gallery

Parliament Hill was HOT!

She was actually thrilled to be there...

Edie's coin collecting dream- the Royal Canadian Mint! 

Following Ottawa, we drove to Quebec City via the north side of the St. Lawrence River, and stayed  in Quebec City for a night. It just happened to be during their Festival D'ete, which is a huge music festival where they shut down Vielle Quebec to traffic, and party, party, party. It was super fun. Lots of fabulous music, food and entertainment.

The girls order popcorn in french, on their own.

Rue Des Jardins!

Chateau Frontenac

Monkey bars were in high demand on this trip.

From Quebec City through to Nova Scotia, we drove longer distances, and stayed with family and friends for longer intervals. We spent time in Fredericton, and then Rose Bay (near Lunnenburg) catching up with my side of the family. We were fortunate enough to be able to get all of our families together to spend some time relaxing after what has been a pretty brutal year with the loss of my sister. It was good for us, although it's really hard to get used to Heather not being with us in person. We're all adjusting, I guess. It's not easy.

Art with the lovely Cheryl.

Water park with Ingrid.

Sand Dollar Bay, Lunnenburg NS, with cousins.

Hurtle Beach, Lunnenburg NS

Ghostbusters was a huge hit this summer.

All of my nieces and nephews, from my side of the family.

Grand Pre NS, with the cousins.

And Edie got her hair cut off- looking so sharp these days!

Tim set off on his first visit to South America mid-July. He spent time in Ecuador and Chile teaching and attending a conference. He gave a "thank you" speech in honor of Brian Fry (amazing scientist, amazing person) who was being recognized for his contribution as a scientist in his career. We (the girls and I) had hoped to join Tim in order to witness this ceremony, as Brian has been a very good friend to our family over the years (check back in the Australia posts...he's the old guy playing hula hoop with 2 year old Edie). Alas, we did not make it. In reading the speech, I can see that Tim was able to use his magical word abilities to convey Brian's character as a human and a professional. I expect that there was way more emotion in the room during that ceremony than anyone there was comfortable with, given the nature of the stable isotope crowd.

Upon Tim's return, we threw in a whirlwind trip to Miramichi and PEI in order to visit with friends and family from his side, and to explore. And a whirlwind it was! We got in our visits with friends/family and the requisite senior baseball in Chatham, and followed it up with a crazy weekend on PEI. A side note- we carried our camping gear across the country, along with the 'stuff' we'd need for the year, and needless to say our car was packed to the brim. Once we got to Nova Scotia, the first thing we did was to start unpacking gear and storing it at our respective parents' places, as we weren't camping. When we were getting ready to leave Miramichi for PEI, we discovered that in our haste to get on the road, we'd forgotten to repack our tent. We were 5 hours away from where we'd left it, and had to swallow our pride and buy a new one. That turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as PEI weather that weekend was buckets of rain Friday night and all day Saturday, and insane wind all of Saturday night. The tent we'd bought was called the weather maker, and it held up. We put that thing to the test. Coleman knows what it's doing.

Cavendish Beach, PEI

Potato museam- perhaps not the most exciting museam, but AMAZING food at their restaurant. Worth it!

Cavendish Beach, PEI

Green Gables

Another dream come true!

Tim's home town of Chatham, NB, on the Mirimichi River.

Driving with our new tent in a jam packed car.

Tent is up just in time for weather.

I tried seaweed pie- it is fantastic!

Skinner's Pond schoolhouse, restored by Stompin' Tom (who was a student there in his boyhood).

Mom's dream comes true!

After another week in Fredericton with the indomitable Ingrid and Feds (my sister's daughter and husband), and a visit with the fabulous Burt, Chels and Mason in their country haven, we finally settled down to what is our new temporary home in New Edinburgh (Bas-de-la-Riviere), Nova Scotia. We are so happy here. But that's all for this post, more to come soon.

Love to all,

The Jardine Sardines

Retroactive!

Hello friends,

Due to a number of on the road kinds of problems, including being on the road, the theft of our camera somewhere in South America, and the implications of Tim's being away in South America for the better part of the past month and a half, we've been stalled in blog updates. Tim's back, we've got the account sorted out, and we're actually living in a place that we'll be staying in until the new year. So many stories to tell. It's been an action-packed summer, and we're glad to be settled down in New Edinburgh, Nova Scotia. Here's our first post, probably written at the beginning of August.

We have been on the move for over a month now, with most of that time being out of the reach of the internet . This has been good, but has led to little communication on the blog front. Here’s a summary of our camping adventures.

Our first 6 days of travelling from Saskatoon were camping days. So, beginning with Riding Mountain National Park through to Chutes Provincial Park on the North shore of Lake Erie, we drove, unpacked, swam, cooked meals, slept, packed back up and drove some more. These were fun and adventure filled days.

Fun at Riding Mountain. 

Manitoba is big. And as Tim says- this is NOT a vacation! Which is why he is on the phone in this picture.

Manitoba boasted a few great landmarks, including this one.

We found Riding Mountain National Park to be our least favorite stay, but we really didn’t spend much time there, and it being our first night, we were working out the kinks in how to live out of a vehicle. We found many ways to be more efficient and careful in what we were doing as we camped longer.

Our second night was spent at Rushing River Provincial Park in Kenora, ON. We had a great campsite on Dog-tooth Lake, a nice, placid lake which was perfect for a cool evening dip. Knowing that thunder showers were in the forecast for the night, we prepared a makeshift tarp to go over our tent and fly- which kind of felt like we knew what we were doing. It wasn’t necessary in the end, because it didn’t rain until 7 the next morning. It was a pattering when I woke up, so I woke everyone else up and we packed fast. 20 minutes later we got the last thing into our vehicle seconds before the skies opened up and poured. It felt like such a win to drive out of there dry.

The fun begins in Ontario!

Beautiful place and weather for an evening swim.

Our next campsite was Rainbow Falls Provincial Park on the North shore of Lake Superior. This was a smaller campground, but our site was located right on the shoreline. Unfortunatley, it was a cold and foggy day/night, and blackflies were abundant. We had a great evening of exploring the shoreline, and watched a fellow camper land a good-sized lake trout in front of our site. We tarped over the tent again, and found ourselves mostly dry the next morning. It should be mentioned that we found a restaurant called Serendipity Gardens in a nearby town, that is aptly named for the gaden on site, and also that the restaurant just kind of pops up in the middle of nowhere...It was amazing food, and a wonderful atmosphere. Highly recommended.

Such a perfect place to unwind after a long day of driving.

We headed for our next and last stop on Lake Superior (yep- a big ol’ lake), Pancake Bay Provincial Park, driving through Wawa down to just North of Sault St. Marie. This was an amazing place to camp- granted we had beautiful weather and a campsite right on the shoreline. By this time, we were feeling like pros at camping. We got our chores done and spent time in the water and exploring the shoreline. We had a campfire and savored the experience. If ever we do end up camping on Lake Superior again, this is somewhere we would definitely come back to.

Our last underwater shot with our camera.

Our basic planning of this drive across most of the country revolved around meeting up with the Davis family (who now live in Ohio) to camp for a few nights. A 2-year follow-up to our Michigan camping trip together. When we crave adventure, we plan things with the Davis family. Ever since we met them while living in Australia, they have been a part of most of our great stories- both planned and unplanned. We love them a lot, and they are so much fun to camp with.

We spent the last 2 nights of camping on our cross-country journey with the Davis family in Chutes Provincial Park in Massey, ON. It was a bit off the beaten path, but proved to be beautiful, and a great spot for our group. The Davises have 3 children, close in age to Edie and Celia, so they play very well together. They also brought their rescue beagle Fern, who provided yet another wild-card in our melee. We hiked, swam and played together for 2 days and 2 nights. A lot of the playing involved very little parental input (touch football with a ripped towel, squirrel luring, etc.), and it’s easy to see that our children ‘get’ each other, despite the fact that we haven’t spent any substantial amount of time together since we moved back to Canada from Australia in 2012. We spotted a mother bear and 2 cubs near our campsite, which I’m sure is still providing much fodder for the imagination of 5 young children. We also found an old school playground near the campground, while scouting for icecream. If you go back a few blog posts, you’ll find that this also happened on the Upper Peninsula in Michigan 2 summers ago. Amazingly a rickity old merry-go-round has shown up all 2 Jardine/Davis trips, providing just enough terror to apease thrill-seeking children, and keep adults uncomfortable.

Hiking with kids. A definite memory-maker.

Miss Fern.

Lazy river.

Two of my favorites.

Eager readers.

These two are super squirrel hunters.

All kinds of amazing.

Chutes Provincial Park was the last place that we camped on our cross-country drive. The remaining week of travelling was spent staying with friends in real homes, or in the case of Quebec City, in a hotel. Our next posts will deliver some of those details.

We are having fun, but definitely have moments of missing home. We hope that our friends back in SK are doing well- including our beagle Charlie. We know he’s in good hands, but we miss him a lot.

Love to all!

Laura and the Jardine sardines (riding in our tin can across the country).

Pre-departure goodbyes with Grandma Howard. We miss her a lot.