Surprise Date

Last week I took Rysio on a little surprise date to Dorset, Ontario. The sleepy town boasts a giant fire-tower where we started our day, looking out over 800 square kilometres without a fire in sight. I was fine walking up the tower but on the way down my legs were wobbling from the heights! It was a beautiful way to start the day and I think Rysio was very surprised.

There was a large interactive sculpture at the bottom of the stairs, a pair of binoculars that you could look through and see a little cutout scene. Even though Dorset is a fairly small town (hamlet? village?) it boasts many artists, sadly we did not see a mention of the artist's name - but thank you Canadian artist, we really enjoyed this piece.

After spending a short amount of time in Dorset asking for directions (protip: don't ask, they don't know where anything is) we got on the highway for the second surprise. After a short drive to Stanhope and a small trek through the forest, we arrived at Ontario's last historic log chute. I think this was potentially Rysio's favourite part of the day, it was really fun to impress him with such an odd place. It was loud and beautiful and so much more interesting than I expected. 

We walked around a bit and then headed back to Dorset where we ate wood fired pizza out of an outdoor oven, the third surprise I had planned for Rysio. The pizza was my favourite part of the day, we both agreed we hadn't had pizza that delicious in over a year and we started dreaming about the possibility of opening our own little place in Hamilton.

We got up to all sorts of little adventures on the side that we didn't manage to capture. We saw 7 wild turkeys crossing the road, a snake and tons of deer (including the adorable faun pictured above). I feel the need to quickly sign off before my internet connection disappears yet again. I'm off to read Omnivore's Dilemma in my room and possibly do a quick clean up. 

Have a sweet day!