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Monday 13 October 2014

Leslie Street Spit on the Down Low

The Leslie Street Spit, also known as Tommy Thompson Park, started out as a place to drop off junk such as rock, gravel, and building materials. Over the years it evolved. It still serves the same purpose for construction but now it doubles as a wildlife park as well. Birds thrive in this peninsula, in fact, it is one of the best places for bird watching in the entire Greater Toronto Area. It is completely man-made, but nature sort of took over and turned it into something beautiful. One thing I love so much about Toronto is places like this. You can be in the middle of the city and feel like you're miles away in peaceful wilderness. There are great views of the Toronto skyline from the park as well, I'd say even better than from Toronto Island. 

The park is closed during weekdays because it is considered an open construction area. My husband and I went for a bike ride one early evening and just decided to squeeze past the closed gate. We are rebels like that....haha. For anyone who has thought of checking out the Spit, I definitely suggest doing it the way we did. We saw about 4 other people in the park the entire time we were there. This was the only time I have ever been there so I am not sure how it is on the weekend but I am guessing it can get pretty crowded. It felt like our own secret place. 

I didn't have a lot of time to take pictures because my husband just wanted to go for a nice bike ride and I was ruining it by stopping every 5 seconds to take a picture, haha. I had planned to go back by myself to take more but I never got the chance. Now I am out of town until at least January which is too bad, I would have loved to go back. Here are some of the pictures I did get to take...










Tuesday 7 October 2014

Cheltenham Badlands

Back in July, my sister and I drove out to the Cheltenham Badlands. It's not a far drive from Toronto and it is a really cool place. Surrounded by trees, there is this rolling patch of land that is just dry red dirt. It's actually looks kind of other worldly. The badlands are right off a road too so it seems extra weird. You just park the car, get out, and you're there! I think it is part of the Bruce trail, or at least part of a side trail that connects with the Bruce trail. Well, a picture's worth a thousand words....








It was really hard to get a picture without any people in it! It's crowded on weekends!



Sunday 5 October 2014

Hopefully Australia.

If you read my blog from beginning to end, you would notice that I change my mind constantly and I rarely follow through with the things I set out to do. For once, I just want to finish what I started. Hopefully that thing will be Australia. Plans for a working holiday in Australia have come and gone and come again. I never wanted the plans to go. In fact, I was really upset for a long time when it happened, but they are back now, and the timing couldn't be better! 

In mid-August, my husband and I were both between jobs (our jobs are almost like contract work). I was upset about giving up our plans for Australia, and desperate for travel so I thought why not take the small amount of money we had saved up, and take a road trip halfway across the country? I had never been to BC or the east coast of Canada. My husband had a flight booked to visit friends back in Manitoba later in the month so we didn't have a lot of time for this trip. BC would have taken too long, so we went East! It was really fun, even though we were short on time so most days were spent just driving. We camped along the way to save money which is something we had never done before. It was a really great experience and I am so happy we did it even though it cost A LOT more than we had originally planned for. It was worth it though. Anyway, the details are for another post. The part of our trip that is concerned with this post is the drive home. 

We were nearing the end of our second day of three days driving back to Toronto, we were planning on making it to Fredericton, NB and had booked a campsite at a park near there for the night. Unfortunately, we only made it to Moncton. I was driving and pulled over on the Trans Canada highway because there was something in my eye and I couldn't exactly get it out while I was trying to pay attention to the road. I found an area of the highway with a huge paved shoulder and went to the very edge of that shoulder. I turned on our hazard lights and put the car in park and while I was picking at my eye someone smashed into us going full highway speed. She hit the back driver's side. It was an extremely scary experience. We went to the hospital, and miraculously, we were completely fine. The doctors were amazed at how well we were doing after an accident of that magnitude. We must have one heck of a guardian angel watching out for us. It could have been so, so, soooo much worse. As awful as it was, there was a silver lining...

We owed a lot of money on that car. We bought it new, and we had another car loan that we had added on to that one when we got it. Our monthly payments were pretty big. Our main obstacle for Australia, when we were planning before, was this car loan. There is no way we could have saved enough extra money to make the payments every month while we were gone, and we wouldn't have been able to sell it for enough to pay off the loan. Our insurance company gave us almost exactly enough to pay off our loan...I was ecstatic. I didn't think they would give us nearly enough to cover it. (I love Desjardins Insurance!) Not only do we not have to worry about what to do with our car now but we also have a much easier time saving because our monthly bills have decreased drastically. We have no real need of a car right now because I actually got a job for the next couple of months working in Manitoba and I have a shared rental car while I am here working. I am making more money than I usually make at this job because I am stepping up and doing a job that is above my level. On top of that, I am getting per diem every week! I figure I can save almost enough for Australia by the end of this job, which will be the end of November. We are paying rent on our apartment in Toronto until March, so we figure we will leave either March or April, depending on how much we can save up! 

We are going to apply for our Working Holiday Visas this month! This is it non-existent readers! This is the one I follow through on...

I stole this pic from the internet...from this website which has beautiful photos