Our visit to the Scandinavian spa was initially scuppered by a powercut meaning that as we arrived the staff were starting to tell people to leave the hot pools (which were quickly cooling down). The spa looked incredible and we made sure to plan another day for our visit.
During the weekend after our aborted spa visit, the Inn was inundated with two large parties. Firstly on the Thursday and Friday a group from Mars Canada visited (bringing along a welcome bundle of sweets and chocolates). I went with Paulie (one of the son's of the couple that own the Inn) to take the eight Martians (as they call themselves) on a guided hike of the Bruce Trail and caves (which went surprisingly well). Once the Mars group left, there was a quick turn around as a large (20+) 80th birthday party arrived on Friday evening. Accompanied by a set of screaming triplets, the party was a big challenge, but lots of pre-planning on the behalf of Linda and Paul made it go off without a hitch. In fact, the bakers made the birthday cake twice as big as it should have been resulting in lots of wonderful left overs for us. Yum yum.
The week following was much more relaxed with just a few guests each day and Lisa and I went about our usual chores (by now we were getting to know the personalities of the horses quite well) until Tuesday 17 October when we went for our second attempt at visiting the spa. It was truly amazing and amongst the most relaxing things I've ever done. The spa was composed of a series of steaming outdoor pools, cold plunge pools and log buildings housing a sauna, steam room and relaxation areas all built amongst the trees (you can see more about it here). The routine suggested for visitors is hot-cold-relax which means going in one of the hot pools or steam room / sauna then into one of the plunge pools (the first of which was a little colder than we had expected) and finally either relaxing indoors or outside by open log fires. We repeated the process five or six times and left feeling wonderfully mellow. To complete the day we went into Collingwood for an Indian meal and then met up with Linda, her neighbour Connie and Manu to a watch a movie - 2012. There's no better way to round off a day of relaxation than with some hardcore disaster and destruction.
The remainder of our time at the Inn went along quickly and before we knew it were saying our final goodbyes to the gang. It was particularly sad to say farewell to Libby and Manu as we'd forged quite a friendship (based in no small part on our quiz winning feats). We'd both felt very comfortable at the Inn and felt thoroughly at home, but often that is a sign it's time to move on and start mixing things up again. Linda kindly dropped us at the airport and sent us on our way.
Our 4 hour flight to Calgrary was surprisingly pleasent - the plane had live satellite TV so I watched an ice hockey game as we jetted across country (although agonisingly the plane landed as just as a penalty shootout was beginning). Mac met us at the airport in a friend's car that he had borrowed because, as we soon learned, shortly after seeing us in Ottawa, he had rolled his car and written it off - winter driving conditions in Canada can be very treacherous indeed. He drove us up to the resort town of Lake Lousie where he has been living and working for the past two years. Since we arrived in darkness, we really didn't have any idea of the scenery thay surrounded us until the following morning - it was stunning. Huge snow-covered mountains form a bowl around the lake at the head of which sits the hotel that Mac works in. It was like some sort of chocolate box winter wonderland with snow covered pine trees everywhere and icicles hanging from every building.
We spent the first day hanging out and relaxing whilst drinking a few beers and watching American football (for which I am developing an increasing obsession) and in the evening went out to watch some surprisingly good comedy in one of the pubs in the resort. The lifestyle in the town for employees reminded me a little of being at university with lots of young people living in close proximinty and flitting in and out of each other apartments. Over the next couple of days we engaged in some wintery pursuits firstly visiting Johnson's canyon (complete with incredible frozen waterfalls and treacherous frozen walkways) and then renting some snowshoes and heading out on the packed snow of a local circuit trail (which was deceptively tiring). We were, however, discouraged from attempting snowboarding or skiing by the bewildering array of injured people coming down from the slopes each day. Mac's girlfriend Jo was nursing a broken wrist and during our 4 day stay, two other friends suffered a dislocated shoulder and a broken collar bone respectively. It seemed that half of the hotel employees must be walking around in slings or casts.
Mac was an excellent host even somehow managing to secure a second apartment so that Lisa and I could have a room to ourselves as well as cooking us lots of meals and hooking us up with snazzy cocktails in the very swanky lounge of the super swanky hotel (see here). What a guy. We managed to squeeze in some discussion of our best man duties too - I'm confident we'll be excellent.
As ever with this trip though, we had to roll on and so it is that we are now on a 13 hour bus journey from Lake Louise to Vancouver, our final stop in Canada.
Thursday 3 December 2009
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