Day trip becomes a two-day trip

So I asked Adam to pick out a nice beach for us to laze about on (as a juxtaposition to the heckneckness of the Lion Safari), and he chose one that was three hours away! Now when one is driving a longish distance with a toddler, the trip can be quite pleasant until the tot wakes up. At which point he will demand to be let out of his car seat immediately and/or need to be fed large quantities of honeycomb.

To be fair, Sauble Beach is supposedly the "best beach in Ontario" and once we got there we had a great time. It's difficult to say if William had a better time than he would have in our back yard (which is equipped with both a pool and a sandbox), but it was nice to get away. The weather and water were perfect (not too cold, not too warm), the sand was a great sandcastle-building consistancy (William enjoyed playing Godzilla to our efforts), and the waves added that extra bit of fun without too much fear of being swept away by the undertow.

Of course we couldn't go home the same day, that would have been ridiculous, so we picked a motel at random and stayed the night. We brought a playpen to use as a temporary crib, but William wasn't so keen on that so I tried him in the other double bed. Seemed to work. Middle of the night: crash! William fell between the bed and the wall. I think he hit the radiator on the way down because he got a small gash on the back of his neck. He was fine, but added to our parental guilt, as it was his second big fall that day (at home that morning he had taken an impressive tumble down the stairs and was still walking with a limp). After much cuddling and crying and bed with Mommy and Daddy and a little advil, William finally went to sleep in his playpen.

The next day we took a tour boat and went here:

Flower Pot Island, in Fatham Five National Park. Isn't it gorgeous? The sky, the trees, that tropical-looking water (don't let it fool you; we stuck our feet in and considered having them amputated).

Anyway, William was having none of it. Cranky, cranky, cranky. You'd think two major falls (and two new molars) were some sort of big deal. The island was also very unstroller accessible, and we didn't want to carry him for the hour-ong hike everyone else was taking so we hung out by the rocks.

A trip can either be super fabulous, or dreadful, based on the mood of a toddler. Luckily William is usually a pretty happy kid. If he were crankier more often perhaps I'd have a bigger tolerance, I don't know. Anyway, looking at the pictures now, I remember some portion of a nice time on the island. It is beautiful there after all.

For more pictures of our two-day trip, here's a link to Adam's gallery: http://www.filipowicz.ca/galleries/sauble.html