Day 18 ~ Oakfield Park

We were all tired. Make that VERY tired. All this gallivanting was really catching up with us and we were weary to the bone. We started our day with a delicious pancake breakfast cooked up by Darryl & Sinead. Keith and I then went out to pick up a few groceries for supper and when we came home I made a batch of chocolate chunk cookies. I wonder if Clodagh is calling them cookies instead of biscuits still? I was trying to Canadianize her a bit!

Around 4 pm we headed about 20 minutes out of town to visit Oakfield Park. Check out this cool website http://www.oakfieldpark.com/ for a bit of background. It's privately owned land (by some gazillionaire TV executive) that has been opened to the public for train rides and wandering through the gardens. It's stunning and I had a hard time choosing which photos to post. I took loads.

The highlight for the kids was the train which ran through the land in a meandering fashion. We didn't have to wait too long for our turn as the park wasn't very busy that afternoon.

It travelled at a very high speed and there were a few casualties :)

It would have been nice if I would have centred my frame a bit better.

All aboard!

I thought we had snagged ourselves some great seats....for about 2 minutes. Then I started smelling the diesel and was facing backwards. A bad combination. Chad traded seats with me and I hung my head out the window. Much better!

We are not fare evaders!

A cool 'castle' on the pond we passed by.

After the train ride we crossed over to the grounds where the formal gardens and house are situated. This building was new according to D & S who had been there a while ago.

Looking up to main house.

Many very old and unique trees.

The main house. Very grand.

Perfectly manicured gardens.

In front of the greenhouse. The grounds are almost completely free to poke your nose in all the corners.

This is how the rich live!

How does one get those lines on the lawn? I love it.

Are you becoming glad yet that I have spared you more than half of the photos?

The vegetable garden. They must eat very well in summer...it was lush and very well maintained.

I love these decorative boxwood hedges.

This is looking down from the house to the pond and structure that was in one the first photos of the grounds.

Clodagh did very well. As long as you let her walk along at her own pace she was as happy as a clam. We were in no rush so we just ambled along.
We came home and I made us enchiladas for supper. Afterwards the kids had a presentation that they had been working on for about a week. Ceara is very creative and spearheaded this. She actually is a good leader and the boys just seemed to follow her every command. Her passion is ice cream and they did a very good presentation on how ice cream is made. Then they had a contest in which they all submitted some new ice cream flavours and we had to vote as to which one we would chose. There were some very unique combinations!

We wrapped up the night with one last episode of The Office and then went to bed. The late nights were really catching up with me!