Trees

Yesterday was a pretty sweet day.

In the morning, we headed over to 'Tree-Top Trekking' at Horseshoe. We buckled ourselves into climbing harnesses and strapped some helmets on our heads. Our guide, Brandon aka. B.J. showed us how to clip ourselves to trees and cables and how to attach our pulleys to ziplines. Then, it was up into the trees! We balanced on slack-lines, tip-toed across swinging steps and slid through hanging hollow logs. I don't really know quite why I enjoyed this adventure so much, but I did. It was great! It was fun to see how fast I could complete a 'game' between two trees and to look down to see how far up I had climbed. In all, my family and I completed five courses. We also sped down a 1000 ft. zip line! I think I enjoyed tree-top trekking more than the aqua zorb! Do this.

After a much-needed afternoon nap, we headed out to a place I have never been… and will likely never go again: Casino Rama. I have never really had that much interest in gambling, so I wasn't very keen to go to the casino, but I was promised a buffet dinner, so I went along. The dinner was pretty decent, by the way. My Dad gave me $20.00 to gamble. I wasn't surprised when my money was completely gone in about fifteen minutes. What a waste of time. It wasn't even fun. My brother doubled his money and my Dad made enough to by each of us a drink at Rama's new hotel's expensive lobby bar. It was interesting to try something different, but next time I'd rather go to an arcade or something.

This morning, we slept in and had pancakes and maple syrup and bacon for breakfast. We piled into our mini-van and took a little drive over to Penetanguishene. There's not much there. So we drove to Midland. Midland is a pretty cool little harbour town. There was a ma-hoo-sive Canada Steam Liner ship in the harbour and many murals about the town's history in the shipping industry. We took a stroll on the dock and had a little lunch at a fish & chips grill. (I didn't have fish & chips, I split a Reuben sandwich with my Mom.)

After lunch, we visited 'Martyr's Shrine', a Catholic church and grounds dedicated to martyrs around the world and specifically to those Jesuit missionaries who died while spreading the Gospel among the native people of what they called 'Huronia'. The grounds is covered in statues and monuments. It was pretty interesting to learn about these guys and what they did for their faith. While we explored the outside of the church, there was an 'annointing' service going on inside. I think it was about healing, because when everyone left at the end, I saw many people who are confined to wheelchairs or otherwise injured. When I went inside the church, I saw a whole wall covered in crutches and canes of people who had been healed by the Holy Spirit at previous services. It was pretty cool to see that, actually.

I think we're all incredibly exhausted today (and I don't know about everyone else, but my whole body aches from that tree-top thing), so tonight we're staying in to watch a movie. Nice.