Going for ice cream

Some friends of ours have a little gallery / coffee / gelato café in the little town down the highway. It's called Horsefeathers and is one of our favourite destinations. Staffed by unschooled teens for the most part -- and nice ones at that. We're there a couple of times a week at the height of summer. Today marked our first gelato outing of the year. After a busy morning of soccer games, we went to sample the new gelato flavour, the natural maple-walnut that we'd been hearing so much about.

We loaded ourselves into our canoe and kayak for the trip down the lake. How many people get to take this sort of trip to the local ice cream store?

It took us about 45 minutes to get to Silverton. We pulled up on the public beach and walked the few blocks to Horsefeathers. Along the way we passed what is rumoured to be the biggest-trunked birch tree in the world. It's three-and-a-half-outstretched-children around (we know -- we've checked). It was a beautiful day -- partly overcast but with snatches of sun, enough to inspire a run down the quiet village streets.

The maple-walnut definitely lived up to its reputation, though between the bunch of us and our double scoops we also reacquainted ourselves with lemon-mint, chocolate hazelnut, raspberry and our perennial favourite, coffee.

Erin and Noah are very strong these days. They easily outpaced Sophie and me in the canoe while paddling the kayak, and almost kept up to us on the return leg when we swapped boats.