Our Day in Gardenhill Ontario
Gardenhill Ontario
is an-almost-too-small-to-be-called-a-town sort of place. On a Spring day, when the temperate
everywhere else around Cobourg was in the double-digits, except Cobourg itself,
it was time to venture out to a space with better heating, so we were
Gardenhill-bound.
We loaded ourselves into the car, tunes at the ready and
headed towards that lovely little place called Gardenhill. I lived in
Gardenhill during my high school years, and my parents often referred to it as
heaven on earth.
Gardenhill doesn’t boast much. It has a general store, and a fruit stand for
commerce. I remember getting the
tastiest strawberries in the world from that stand, freshly picked and still
tasting of sunshine.
Attached to the firehall is a small library that I
volunteered at in my youth. Behind that
dual building is one of the more popular baseball diamonds in Northumberland
Region. But that’s not why we go to
Gardenhill. We go to Gardenhill for the
clean air, open spaces, the ponds and the lookout.
The weekend of March 12th was no different. Tunes and car-singing and car-dancing
abounded on our drive to the Gardenhill pond.
The gates were closed for vehicular entrance, so
we parked at the gates
and walked to the back area lugging our gear.
On the way to our destined clearing we stopped to take pictures of the
changing season, the ice almost melted, the greenery almost budding… we were
engulfed in the perfect in-between; a bridge linking winter to spring.
Spring springing |
Back in our clearing we played with Dave’s drone til the
battery died. Trixie hated it. She barked
at that poor little thing like it was a hell-sent demon come to slaughter us
all.
When the battery died, we brought out the Frisbee and the
boys tossed it back and forth like champs.
On our way back out of the park area, the boys noticed a
downed tree over “a lake”. I didn’t have
the heart to tell them it was just a puddle that was frozen. Regardless, they saw it as an adventure and
decided it was set there to re-enact their own Goonies adventure. They climbed onto the limb and shimmied
across convinced that certain death awaited them should they fall.
Strike a pose |
That’s the thing about road-trip adventures, you don’t
actually need amusement parks or grand locations, just nature, a great imagination
and an adventurous heart can make memories that will last a lifetime.
We couldn’t leave the pond without heading to Richie’s
lookout. We climbed up to the platform
and took in the view as the sun set over the trees.
As I look out my window today, I see the sun shining and the
road calling for new discoveries or to recapture old haunts in new ways.
Thanks Dave, Darien,
Cameron, Miles and Trixie for making this day all it could be.