Finland Day 6: Savonlinna Birdhouse Walk, Roasting Dinner

 Happy Father's Day!

We enjoyed being outside at the lake before going to breakfast at the main house. We enjoyed visiting with some of the other guests including a couple of men from Grenoble, France.

We headed into Savonlinna to do the birdhouse walk. Marko Ruuskanen has over 100 birdhouses in trees around Savonlinna. Some are quite fancy. Here are pictures of a few of them.

 A lot of the birdhouses look like this: wooden boxes with metal designs around them.

Olavinlinna Castle birdhouse

Megan and Me with the Fairy Tale Castle

Me and U with a birdhouse

Matthew with one of the wooden birdhouses with metal framing

U, Megan, Me, Matthew

Me and U

Savonlinna Cathedral, birdhouse edition. It weighs over 20 kg!

Savonlinna Cathedral, brick edition, weight unknown

We roasted hot dogs for dinner.

Matthew roasting his hot dog.

Megan and U roasting hot dogs.

Matthew, Megan, U

Megan has a hot dog!

Me roasting a hot dog.

We also made s'mores.

Matthew, Megan, Me

Me's finger got burned by a marshmallow. The marshmallow was sticky which made the burn worse since it stuck to her finger until she could pull it off.

We went to sauna. Me kept her finger in a bucket of cold water.

We went to 2 zoom churches: Luke's homecoming and Jonah S's farewell.

Megan, Matthew, U, Me on the couch for our zoom church.

U's Step Count: 13k

Maritimes: Cabot Trail, Meat Cove

 We woke up Friday morning to wind and light rain.

Matthew was excited to find this biscuit (or 6!) in his Frosted Mini Wheats.

A couple of pictures of the view from our hotel. It really was nice to be able to eat while watching the river (and the wind!).

We stopped by the bakery to pick up some bread and pastries and then headed out on the Cabot Trail. Thankfully there was good visibility, even if it was a bit cooler.

Matthew walking down to the beach at le Buttereau.

Matthew at the beach.

Me and Megan walking along the trail.

We saw three bald eagles on our hike. Here one is flying.

Another one on the beach.

Megan and Me

The foundation of le Blanc house. 9 kids lived here with their parents. There were 5 Acadian families who lived in the Buttereau settlement and they had a total of 50 kids! They were part of the bigger Bloc settlement which included around 35 families.

Some birds riding the waves.

Pretty!

Me enjoying the views. It was quite gusty here.

Me and U

Matthew showing us how windy it was!

Hello Matthew! (Megan took this picture from inside the car.)

We hiked around the Bog. This is a carnivorous plant.

U, Me, Matthew and Megan on the Bog trail. It started raining more and visibility went down so we drove to Cape North after we finished the short hike.

Cemetery with white church.

We ate at Morrisons where we had these yummy mussels. They tasted quite different than the ones on PEI.

U's pink cream soda was interesting.

U got the chicken sandwich.

Matthew had a burger.

Me had a club sandwich.

Megan had chicken fingers.

Don't flush hopes or dreams!

We went to the North Highlands Community Museum where we learned some of the history of the area. It would have been a very isolated place to live. The museum had a piece of the Titanic.

School room

Some sample quilts including one from the Ladies Aid Society.

We saw a rainbow on our drive to Burton's Sunset Oasis in Bay St. Lawrence.

The room had a small kitchen.

We drove out to Meat Cove. We read that the road was paved the entire way but that was not correct. The steepest portions were paved but much of the rest of the road was not. It was a pretty drive!

We found our way down to a little beach at Meat Cove. U and Me walked out to see it and when we did, we went back to get Megan and Matthew who had opted to stay in the car.

There were cairns everywhere! It was really amazing to see!

Matthew with one of the five cairns he built.

Megan with one of the three cairns she built.

U really liked this picture of Me.

Matthew with another cairn.

U and Matthew worked together to build this cairn.

Their cairn with the others on that rock. Theirs is the one closest to the center of the picture.

We saw a fox on the way back. It was really cool!

We watched a spectacular sunset from our lodging. The whole sky lit up and it looked like the mountain was on fire!

The low, long cloud looked like a dragon!

Megan, Me and U

One of Megan's treats from the bakery.