Deep River Weekend

DSC_1101, originally uploaded by losi0003.

On Friday night after work, I took a nice nap for a few hours and then Vero showed up and ruined that. 😉 We then sat down and watched some episodes from Veronica Mars. I really enjoy the show and I like how Vero enjoys it as well as she doesn’t care for a lot of the shows I tend to watch. It is difficult for me to go ahead and watch all the episodes when she is not around, but I stick to the plan and only watch them when she comes over for a visit.

Unfortunately, we did not end up going to dinner with Amelie and Daniel. We never got in touch with them so in the end, we had some fish around 8PM and watched a few more episodes of Veronica Mars.

The next morning, we packed up the car and headed out to Deep River to visit Maureen and Shannon. We picked up Duncan and Kristen along the way and we were on the way to an excellent road trip. I was commenting to Mike that a two hour trip is ideal for a weekend jaunt as it’s not too daunting of a drive. Although I do have memories of going to visit Joe in Brockville when he moved into his house and let’s just say someone else had to do the drive home the next for me!

We arrived to see people getting breakfast ready and we chatted with Mike and Mel who spent the night on Friday. Unfortunately for them, they took HWY 7 instead of 17 to Deep River and it took them four hours to get there the night before! That is unfortunate. After watching people eat breakfast (and checking out Shannon’s new toy – a Sirius Satellite radio), we headed to the grocery and beer store while Shannon was packing up the boat. We picked up some corn along the way but alas, we discovered that corn season is a few weeks away as some of the corn were smaller than your average sausage size!

After picking up the necessities, we headed to the marina and got to the dock where Shannon was waiting to drive us over to the Quebec side of the river. There was a giant storm brewing so we hopped in fast and furious-like and and managed to get to the other side before anything hit us but it surprisingly passed to the right of us. There was a gamut of people who had come to the beach…Mike, Melissa, Duncan, Kristen, Vero, Mike, Matt, Karilee, Alex, Holly, Shannon, Maureen, Shannon’s friends Jamie and…ah, I can’t remember her name. Either way, there was a bunch of us and the day was spent in the sun, playing volleyball and I got to test out my new rod and reel that I got last year for my birthday. Jamie had some tackle so I tried it around some weeds offshore and proceeded to snap my line so I tried another jighead which was supposed to navigate the weeds better and it did. A few people tried out the reel but it is a pain to learn if you are not used to the open reel concept as the line can spool out of control if you don’t stop it after you cast. I think we spent more time untangling it then actually using it!

Mike and I mistakenly only brought a couple of beer for ourselves but Mike saved the day when he went on a trek with Jamie down the river to some beer selling facility and arrived with a cold one in hand for me when my mouth was parched. For this, I thank thee Mike. We did manage to have some good sandwiches and salads on the beach and I ended up playing a bit of volleyball against this one team who were really great, but pretty cocky. They were way too serious into the game and didn’t even laugh at one of my jokes!

I also took Alex for some wake boarding on his boat. It’s nice to be able to drive a boat around. I really enjoy it and I also realize that there’s certain things that I don’t think about because I don’t drive a boat all that much. For example Alex reminded me to not go to close to the house boats along the shore as they may not appreciate the wake the boat is creating.

We ended up coming into shore real fast as there was another storm approaching. Shannon loaded up his boat and headed for sure but we decided to stick it out on the beach as we knew we would get caught in the lightning storm coming our way. Vero and I headed to the point of the beach to watch the storm come in and it was quite intense. At one point the wind picked up and we were getting sandblasted. I think a layer of my skin peeled off from the sand hitting us! It then started to hail on us! We saw a poor canoe trying to make it to shore in the storm and I must say that I thought we would have needed to go out in the boat and save them at one point but they did make it to shore alright.

The storm passed and we packed up and headed back to the marina on the Ontario side and headed home. Vero and I husked some corn and commented on the small size of the corn. All was well in the world as a BBQ was prepared and tents were set up and fun was being had. We, unfortunately, had to wait for our veggies to cook which was near impossible with all the other action on the BBQ. We didn’t end up eating until around 9PM and by that time the energy was sapped from Vero’s body. We did have a lovely feed of chicken drumstick which, coupled with the corn, potatoes and carrots turned into the ultimate meal! Success!

I was surprised to see that my birthday was being celebrated along with Shannon’s as I was not expecting it at all. Melissa ended up making a couple of cakes and one of them even had a heart with Shanon and my name in it. Awww…thanks Mel! I ended up getting a sweet gift card to HMV which is always welcome and music is my life! The cake was super good too.

The night progressed into some campfire and poker playing while another faction (led by Vero, it seemed) stayed in the living room and played charades all night long. Mike and I were trying out a few new beer that night and I am writing about them here for historical purposes:

Spitfire: Recommended by Dave at work, both Mike and I didn’t really care for it. Like any beer, we won’t shy away from it, but I personally felt that it didn’t have a great taste to it.
Innis and Gunn: I’ve already had some introduced to me by Troy and it’s a great beer, oak aged and it has that great smoky flavour to it. Mike had ended up putting these in the freezer and I didn’t know if the taste would be lost but it actually turned out quite good and I actually prefer it to the warm draft that I had before at Chaucer’s.
Lakeport Red: I had picked up some Lakeport Red a few weeks before and it was decent. However, I don’t know if it was due to us drinking this beer after our palette had had so many higher-end beers touching it, but I quickly realized that it wasn’t the greatest tasting thing in the world. However, the verdict is still out as I have had it before and I didn’t mind it. I will put it through a few more tests before offering a final thought.

The next morning we went for breakfast at the Petro Canada station and had a delicious Clubhouse sandwich. We then packed up the car and headed into town and I had the itch to check out The Dark Knight on the IMAX screen and once again was dismayed at the lineups. I ended up talking to the staff and they said the lineup to the IMAX screening is around two hours long (!!!) but I also confirmed that the film should be in the IMAX theatre for another 2-3 weeks so I will check it out in the future.

Another great time was had in Deep River. Shannon and Maureen are always welcoming in their houses, whether it be with a ton of dogs (which I compared to our eventual children running around the house), a bunch of drunks, or just some general chaos for 24 hours! I always enjoy my visits and I am thinking of heading back out to make a proper fishing trip out of it in the future.