Today, we've been away from home for a month.... and no one is homesick yet. :) After leaving London, Ontario, we went to Burlington to visit with Allan's old Silver Valley school buddy, Mitch Seekins and his wife Nicole. We also met Mitch's two daughters, who are almost the same age as our kids. The Seekins family took us to downtown Toronto, where we went up the CN Tower. It was a clear day and the views were superb. Mason was the only one brave enough to go onto the glass floor part, that looked straight down to the ground. The tower is 553 metres high, so it is quite something to overcome the fear of the height if you are looking straight down.The next day, we went with the Seekins to Niagara Falls. It was wonderful! We took pictures at the brim of the falls, and then went on the tour into the tunnels underneath the falls. We all looked pretty cute in our yellow rain capes (that were provided with the tour). Next, we went on the Maid of the Mist, which is the boat that takes you right up to the base of the falls. It was neat to see the water spilling over the brim, almost on top of us.

Later, we went to the Butterfly Conservatory, where there were over 50 types of butterflies flying around. We all had fun taking pictures in the conservatory, as the butterflies are quite used to people and therefore are very obliging subjects.

After Burlington, we drove north toward the Muskoka Lake area of Ontario. We had supper with Debbie (Junk) Lloyd and her family (an old friend from my Fort Edmonton days). The Lloyds live on a lake, so the kids went out tubing with the Lloyd kids, Jeremy and Heather. It was a very fun evening.

A few miles down the road, at Rosseau, we met up with another old Fort Edmonton colleague, Sylvain Croteau, and his family. Sylvain's wife's parents have a cottage on Lake Rosseau, so we spent a couple of days canoing, kayaking, and swimming in the water. It was such a neat experience to enjoy the Canadian Shield lake, and to visit with friends from decades ago.

The Ontario experience continued as we camped in Algonquin Provincial Park for several days. The highlight of our time there was to go to a ranger program one evening, and to go to "Loggers' Day" to see how logging was done in the 1800s.

Today, we spent the day in Ottawa, first seeing the changing of the guard, with the soldiers in their red uniforms and big black bear-fur hats. We then toured the parliament buildings, which was fascinating. We'll recognize the House of Commons when we next see it on the news. One of the highlights of the tour was going up to the top of the Peace Tower, from which we had very impressive views of the city and many of its famous sites. We also strolled down beside the Rideau Canal where we saw the lock system in operation. We were glad to be able to see how they actually work.So, we are still enjoying our learning experience.