FROM Y'ALL TO EH!!! Day 38 - 51 June 29 – July 12, 2010 North Bay, Ontario to Stouffville, Ontario

We headed south on Hwy 11 towards Toronto, waved at Bruce and Chris as we passed Burk’s Falls and pulled into Barrie late in the afternoon. Tonight we are staying with Tom and Lyse McDonough, we are parking in their driveway. Tom and I met in 1973 when we were both working for GWG and even though I left GWG in 1982 we have remained friends. They are both doing well and we enjoyed a nice evening out for dinner. It was good to catch up.

The next day we headed over to Midhurst to have lunch with Kent and Rebecca Osborne at their home. Kent is a consultant and worked with Kathy at Levi's. They have a beautiful home set back in the woods that really gives them a lot of privacy. They are very charming people and we had an extremely nice visit.

After leaving Midhurst we have planned to go to Shelbourne, Ontario to visit with my aunt but the closest park we could get was in Cookstown. So we settled in there for two nights as we were going to visit on Friday. Aunt Donna was married to Uncle Leo who was my dad’s younger brother. Donna moved to Shelbourne from North Bay after Leo passed in 2005.

It was good to get all the gossip on the rest of the family which is all over the country. We thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon. We also got a chance to visit with Cathy, Donna’s daughter and my first cousin.

Once we left Shelbourne we headed for Stouffville to visit with the Smiths. Tom and Ruth have been friends since I met Tom playing baseball a number of years ago. We only planned on being here a couple of days but here we are 12 days later. It is reminiscent of when we were renovating our house in the Beaches. We needed a place to stay for a short time while I finished enough of the house so that we could move in. I told Ruth it would only be about 2 weeks, 4 months later we moved out. Amazingly they are still friends.

We have really enjoyed out time catching up and having a break from the camper. We also got to see 2 of their three kids. Joe is on holidays so we missed him but we did get to see Sunny and Dylan. The last time we saw them was in Mexico when Dylan and Dawn got married.

The Wedding, Cancun, Mexico  April 2008

They have been busy since the wedding.

The little one in the middle is Avery and she is the new boss of the Smith Clan. She has GrandPa and GrandMa wrapped right around her little finger.

Tom and Ruth are two of our closest friends and we have really enjoyed our time with them. They have made us feel very at home and I can’t tell you how much we appreciate it. We will be sorry to leave.