It is time to summer somewhere. That's a well-known notion. Everyone wants to go somewhere where the skies are big, the lakes are clear, and the air smells of Eastern White Pine.
We are into the next 2 generations of cottagers. A big boom started in the 1950s. My grandfather built a cottage near Killbear Park in the late 1950s. The landscape there was beloved by many immigrant Germans.
Before they took to cottage country, it was inhabited by the wealthy or the eccentric. The eccentric would be equivalent to off-the-grid types today. Rustic, rudimentary living. Often with the facilities of the 1920s and 1930s - no electricity, a refrigerator with a block of ice, and an outhouse. Or maybe a generator, so they'd have some electricity.
But a lot of decades have passed for cottage country to fill up. Today cottage country is more in the realm of luxury living rather than rustic cabins. There's high demand for cottages that are built for the four seasons. Multiple offers and high prices.
In Southern Ontario, we have many places within easy reach. However there are many people to reach them. Ontario has 10 million residents. That's a lot of swimmers and boaters.
How well-off do you have to be to own a cottage today? The average price of a Muskoka cottage is $737,890 in 2022. That's up from $653,000 in 2021. So I guess you need to have more than a little extra money. And remember that's the average of all the cottages on all the lakes, not just the Muskoka Big Lakes. - which are Lake Joseph, Lake Muskoka and Lake Rosseau. So once the money has been spent, what next?
The next thing is how long is the commute and how bad the traffic is, or isn't.
And then how peaceful is a cottage? With the jetskiers, motor boats, the power mowers, and so on all competing on the weekend.
And would you relax? Or would you be maintaining that "cottage" house, the dock, the boat, and so on?
It doesn't seem to matter, though. The dream of that glorious sun sparkling on the lake as one skims the water in a motorboat. That is quite an experience.
Today's pictures give that sense. They were taken in the Kingston area where Lake Ontario's shores get rugged and rocky with the granite terrain of cottage country.
When we think of summering, what do we think of? The people with cottages who spend their summers on a lake? The birds that migrate to northern parts of the hemisphere?
Summering isn"t used very much. There's a few summer camps for law students. A debut album in 2015. A failed Facebook sites with nothing posted since 2017. Summering doesn't seem to be an accepted verb. That might be because it is associated with the rich heading off to their summer homes on the beach or the ocean or wherever.
What about some summer records? What might we associate with summer? The world's largest scoop of ice cream in 2014 weighing 1,365.31 kg. Then there's the world's largest kick board which is 10 times the standard adult size, so pretty well took up the swimming pool. How long is the longest inflatable water slide? 1,975 feet. Do you imagine joining 1,387 people to make sand angels? Longest hot dogs, largest beach towel, longest bikini parade (China), longest barbecue, most people applying sunscreen... all activities associated with summer.
I wonder if there might be any records this year. Other than heat wave temperatures. Here's one:
Skills Ontario successfully launched the GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS™ attempt event on May 5, 2021. We invited Ontarians in making history by helping us to break the record for Largest Online Video Chain of People Passing and Using a Screwdriver!
Although we had a focus on women in the trades, this record attempt was open to anyone, any age across the province with a minimum goal of receiving 251 individual video submissions.
This montage is a combination of weathered wood and a white stone sculpture. It looks like peas in pods to me.
