Kathy and I went to Toronto this past weekend for my cousin’s birthday and my uncle’s birthday. We stayed at my favourite Toronto hotel, the Westin Harbourcastle from Thursday night through Sunday afternoon.

Friday morning, we were treated to fly-bys by several heritage aircraft who were presumably flying in support of Memorial Day celebrations in Toronto. Kathy and I went shopping Friday afternoon. This included a trip to MEC and walking almost the whole of the Eaton Centre. In the end, we bought a gift certificate and a small backpack (for geocaching) at MEC and a couple of birthday cards at the Eaton Centre.

Saturday, my Dad and I went geocaching while my Mom and Kathy went shopping. The weather was great and our caching activites took us out to the Toronto Islands where we found a couple of caches, one at the eastern end of Ward’s Island (GCFE01) and the other on Algonquin Island (GCKNWM). I hadn’t been out to the Islands in years, possibly since I worked for Canadian Tire Petroleum’s head office in the early 1990’s.

Sunday started with a swim in the pool followed by brunch at Toula’s on the very top of the south tower of the hotel. After packing, we headed back to Ottawa. The major excitement on the trip was a deer in the ditch looking intently across the road like he wanted to be on the other side. This occured on the 416 a few kilometres north of our last deer encounter. Fortunately, the deer ran away from the road when I honked the horn rather than across it.

Some of the pictures from my Miami Beach trip are available here. More will become available over the next few days.

So, Kathy and I went to Miami Beach for a week’s vacation involving sun, sand and surf.

We managed to get in the ocean every day of the trip, even with the other things we did which included driving through the Everglades, taking an airboat tour of the Everglades which included seeing alligators (!), touring Miami Beach, scuba diving (me) and snorkelling (her) at Key Largo, and driving to Key West at the very end of the Florida Keys. We even had time to do a little geocaching.

Oh yes, I got to hold an alligator!

I’m in the progress of uploading pictures from the trip to my photo album. I’ll add a link when they’re ready. 🙂

I went to Toronto last weekend to work a booth at the Toronto Outdoor Adventure show for Save Ontario Shipwrecks. I headed down the night before and stayed at the Westin Harbourcastle, my preferred hotel when I have to go to Toronto.

Friday morning, I looked out the window and saw this:

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Carrying on from my spur-of-the-moment trip to the UK the week before, I headed to Columbus, Ohio on Thursday, November 18th to visit my friend Ken the Vet and go to the OSU vs. Michigan football game. Unlike the UK, however, this trip had actually been planned for a couple of months.
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All of the pictures from my “Gone to England for a pint, Back Sunday” trip are now online. 🙂

You can find most of the pictures from my trip here.