An afternoon's vacation: visiting Elora

It was a sunny, hot afternoon, and we decided to make an impromptu trip to the Elora Gorge, to walk through the woods to the lookout, and to check out some of the shops in the town.

Elora has gotten more...I don't know, Euro-cized?...in the last number of years.  Brighter, more upbeat, more hip.  The river wasn't at its best, though--the drought has brought the water level down.  We saw someone fishing, but nobody was tubing or canoeing, at least that we could see.

But it turned out to be a good afternoon for just enjoying.

Photo found on Wikipedia

Some things we did this week

1. Met Coffeemamma and three of the Blue Castle progeny in the park, along with another Ambleside Online mamma and her family. It was so nice to talk in person after all these years of long-distance chats!

2. All the Squirrels went to the Elora Gorge, and had a good time wandering through the woods, oohing over the precipices, and climbing up and down 59 steps (Ponytails counted them) carved out of the rock.

3. Mr. Fixit, Ponytails and the Apprentice went to Cruise Night with Grandpa Squirrel. Ponytails says, "There were a lot of people, and we met one of our cousin squirrels, and he had some new wheels--it was long and black, one of those cars with no roof, and it had red seats, I think. It was really cool and it made nice smoke."

4. Ponytails made Shrinky Dinks (Shrink Art). Note to Coffeemamma: "thank you so much for the Shrink Art, it's very fun!"

5. We played a new game called Woolworth that we found in a Dover books preview. (This isn't the card game Woolworth, it's played with two nickels, two dimes and a printed-out playing board which would be really easy to copy yourself. If I can find this online anywhere, I'll post a link.)