Holiday #1 - Sandbanks

Well, I thought I’d post a bit about what we’ve doing this summer (other than school-learning related activities!!)

This summer we stayed pretty close to home. Our first holiday, which began two days before school was out (owing to my work holiday schedule) was five days at Sandbanks Provincial Park. This is a very VERY popular park, and when I made the reservation back in late February, there were only about 3 or 4 sites available (and I had to modify out travelling dates by one day to get a site).














The kids and I, along with Lovely, drove down in our little PT Cruiser, but this time we didn’t have to pack along much of anything except our clothes, swimming gear, and a few books and toys, since Laolao and Laoye were driving from out west with their camper bus and we’d arranged for them to meet us at the campground.

We got there around 8:45pm, as dusk was settling. Laolao and Laoye had arrived a few hours earlier and were already set up in the campsite, a nice spot not too far from the beach. Although seeing as the closest beach wasn’t open to dogs, we ended up driving out to the dog beach most days.









I can see why this is a very popular place! Not only is it fairly close to a number of major cities, but more importantly it has great amenities and the beaches are fantastic. Being on a VERY large lake, we had almost ocean-like waved coming in to shore, and the shallow water extended way, way out into the lake, so the kids & dog could ride the waves and walk far far out before the water even reached their chests. The sand is magnificent, and one section of the beach has large dunes, small mountains practically, that we climbed up and down and explored. It was handy to have the car along with the bus, so we could drive to the far-away dog beach and the sand dunes, without having to move the big bus around.

The weather was quite good. Not particularly hot (not like one might expect in late June), and we had some rain, but the rain mostly fell at night and being in the bus, it didn’t affect us much at all.









The bus has sleeping capacity for 4, so one of the kids (and Lovely!) slept on the floor while the other slept with me (they took turns!). Given that it was a bit crowded inside, we mostly ate outside, and rigged up a bit of a tarp to keep the picnic table dry.

About all we did was play on the beach, sleep, eat, play some more, have ice cream, swim and play and sleep. It was great!!!

















On the way home, we parked the bus at a church parking lot in a small town a few hours’ drive from home, and all climbed into the car for the rest of the trip, because in just five days we’d be coming back this way for our second summer jaunt.