Happy Fourth of July!

Traveling through Canada on the Fourth of July makes me miss home.  Our friends are gathering today after church to celebrate one of our most precious families.  They are moving back to the Carolinas next week.  Vaya con Dios, Melanie, Scott, Eric, Morgan, and Bailey!

We want to especially take the opportunity on our Independence Day to give our heartfelt thanks and prayers to our military men and women who ensure our freedom.  You have really been on our hearts the last several days.

We have been eating MREs.  As my brother says, "they'll eat."  They actually aren't bad at all... and there's always a surprise combination tucked inside each MRE.  I bought them because they seemed like a good idea for this trip.  Not so... they are much to heavy and cumbersome to carry about and contain a good deal of waste materials.  They are much better suited for hurricane emergency rations.  So we are dwindling the supply and will opt for the freeze dried food we have always used in past excursions.

We only have a dozen MREs with us and look at them as a novelty.  How must our military feel about them after eating them for days or months at a time?  Many of our soldiers are in foreign lands tonight under very difficult circumstances.  God bless you all for your dedication and service to our country.

We will spend the evening at Carson-Pegasus Provincial Park.  This beautiful little gem rests on Lake McLeod's peninsula.  The forest is lush and full of pines, aspen, ferns, mushrooms, bluebells, and wild roses.  There is a wonderful hiking path around the park.  We have strolled most of it.  So far, we have seen a mother duck with three ducklings, gulls, ravens, and loons.  Several trees were gnawed but we saw no beaver lodges.

We have had intermittent rain all day.  There is a chill in the air, so we have opted to test just sleeping in the back of the Xterra without popping the tent tonight.  We will fall to sleep to the lullabye of the loons.