Viamede Resort

Earlier in the spring I bought a voucher on wagjag for a resort up near Kawartha Lakes called Viamede Resort. The voucher was $199 for 2 nights in a standard room with all use of the amenities at the resort, and since we could only go on a weekend because of Peters schedule it was an extra $100 for the weekend stay. The time we had was spectacular! every minute of it was awesome and I'm pretty sure i smiled for 3 days straight, or so Peter tells me.

Our room was lovely. I've never stayed in a fancy place like this (and neither has Peter) so we were both really shocked and in love with the place.
 

yay water bottles they dont try to make you pay for!

Down the hall from our room was a gathering area and the hottub and suana room

We spent our first night at the 'Boathouse Pub' located on the Resort, it was a great atmosphere, filled with adorondack chairs for lounging and wicker chairs at the wooden tables, free pool and cool beers on tap from weird breweries (and cools light for normal people like me) that Peter really enjoyed. We had some wings and fries and played pool until I won.

The view from our balcony on one of the bright sunny beautiful mornings! :)

Included with our stay was a breakfast buffet each morning. It wasn't some shitty like cereal and muffin breakfast like a hotel it was a great hot breakfast with almost anything you could think of. They had scrambled eggs, 2 kinds, 1 was just plain and the other had bacon and cheese mixed in it, and the second morning it mushrooms mixed in it. There was bacon, sausage, grilled tomatoes, hashbrowns, pancakes, 4 kinds of toast (really?), croissants, yogurt with oats and dried berries to put on top, and a bowl of fruit salad mix. Yes, this breakfast kept us full ALLLL dayy long! we weren't even hungry til about 530 at night. It was nice to because the breakfast ran from 8:30am-10:30am so you could still sleep in and get to breakfast with plentyy of time.

Breakfast had the same great view we had from our room and balcony it was of the bright sun rise, the calm lake and the pool along with the boat club and an outside barbeque patio.

Zero Points for spelling, but otherwise lovely!

 

Unfortunately I did not get to see all of the nature named on this list :( The most exciting thing I did see though was a porcupine! I was beside myself. I made peter turn around and drive back downt he road and stop while I got out and observed. too bad though i didn't have my camera though. I was a little precautious when approaching the porcupine though since i picture my interaction with a porcupine to be moreso like this - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2y4cQEEyuTw - so it was probably for the better that i stayed my distance

Peter expressing his dislike for poison ivy which he is pron to

This path of the trails reminded me of a scene from Harry Potter or something so had to snap a pick. It was even darker and creepier looking in person.

The Oak Tree!
this was a main point on the map that we had to visit and it was so worth it. This tree was nuts and just phenominal looking and my camera captured it perfectly! I wanted to climb it but it looked far to difficult.

Cool snap of Pete jumping into the pool! love this camera function

During our stay there was also a wedding going on at the resort. All the guests of our wedding were staying on our floor and the wedding reception area was pretty well right across the hall from our room. The bride and groom invited us for dinner to the wedding we assume to try and not make it feel so bad that they were loud and noisey all night. Instead Peter and I spent time relaxing and having some drinks outside near the river and making up some burgers on the public barbeuqe patio during the perfect weather. We also briefly met some funny groups of people who had docked their house boats at the marina for the night and were enjoying their dinner time as well. We spent our night in our room and watched 'The A-team' which we borrowed from the front desk as they had a bunch of movies and games you could sign out and there was a DVD player hooked up to the tv. Side note on the A-Team, uhhhh its GREATTT! and there should definitly be a sequel, like soon!

 

serious burger face

 

 

Obese tall boy! never seen one of these before?

Moss grows on the WHAT side of a tree?

Some of the many other activites they had at the resort that were all included with the stay were, Kayaking, tandem kayaking, canoeing, hydrobikes (what's this you say? wait and look below :) mountain biking, a little hobby farm to visit, at this time of year it only had ducks and turkeys I think it is more active during the summer. There was also a beach, a tennis court, oh and a ultimate frisbee course, but I really didnt feel like chasing around off course frisbees all day long.

Peter and I just wanted to try out this tandem kayak thing, althought we definitly never will again and we knew that before we even stepped foot in it. We both have different kayak levels and paddeling speeds and just cant work well together in these. Well REALLLYYYY, i think I do just fine! :) but Pete gets highly irritated and annoyed by me so it's best we just get our own kayaks next time

 

This I would definitly say was our most FAVOURITE part of the trip. The resort had 2 seadoos that were available to rent for $18/ten minutes. Lucky for us the guy working the Marina was super cool and cut us an awesome deal so we got to enjoy it for four times as long. The lake was stunning and filled with gorgeousss cottages and i thought WOW must be nice to be a millionaire ; ) The adrenaline rush was so fun and i giggled the whole time while hoping not be to thrown off be the thrilling driver. The following day we got to take the seadoos out again for another complimentary ride along with the guy from the Marina. He said he would give us a little personal tour of the lake which quickly turned into just darting around and racing for half an hour which was just as great and fine by me!

 

Yes, I did dress to match the ride :p

Stunning breath taking hike through the trails, I think this would rate as my second favourite path of trails i've been on

 

Iron Man Petawawa

 

 

Peter has been training for the Iron Man 2012 ever since he found out about it in July and he's only lived in Petawawa since July 2nd so he tried to squeeze in all the quick training he could. The Iron Man is relative to other Iron Man Triathalon competitions with a slight army twist on it (story of my life!) To finish and have a qualifying time for this race you must complete (under 12 hours time) a 32 km ruck, pick up a 45lb canoe and portage for 4 km, then into the Ottawa River and solo paddle for 8 km, come out of the water, then it's a 6 km ruck to the finish line! The whole time all while wearing combat boots and pants, and carrying a 40 lb rucksack. Wow, just reading that makes me tired.

 

Peter's energy stash

 

 

Breakfast of champions! (haha just kidding)

 

 

Below is not a photo of my own but just one that one of the army photographers took at the beginning of the race, which began at 4am in the morning, aka why I was not up, maybe next year though, I would love a photo.

 

 

Most of the guys & girls running this race train alllllll year for this, so Peter's month and half of training was probably a little less than he might have needed compared to everyone else. There is no real prize at the end just the glory of being at the top or the satisfaction of having finished.

I was unable to get pictures of Peter throughout the first section of the ruck cause I had no idea of the layout of the course but next year i'll have to scout it out ahead of time and meet him at every check point.

 

Lots of the army famillies and soldiers were out to cheer on the competitors as they came in from their canoing. Peter says that the canoeing was the easiest part because at that point he was so exhausted from the ruck and the portage it was nice to just sit and use his arms. The portage proved to be the most tasking part of the race taking about average 25 mintues to cover 1 kilometre!

 

Peter on the right

Goof ball forgot to take off his life jacket before putting this ruck on, half backwards lol

 



 

At this point in the race I got to see Pete and give him some water and pep talk. Although there are water stations throughout the whole course full of water, juice, granola bars, and other snacks to keep everyone going. Sportstat.ca covered the event and each racer had to wear an anklet that would track their progress live online at each checkpoint they would walk through these electronic pilons and they would pick up the tracker on the anklet. Very cool!

 

 

Some of the other competitors helping eachother along the last leg! The last 6km ruck section of the race was through the golf course and through the pre-marital quarters on base. I took a seat at the park and waited for Peter to come along.

See i was actually there! :)

 

The home stretch was the last km of the race! Pete was walking when I met him at the park but I got to run for the last km with him and ended up passing someone at the last like 50m (woo!) haha that was the inspiration "you can pass that guy!" although its all fun and everyone is really cheering eachother on and encouraging. There were sergeants stationed at different points, even famillies sitting outside their houses, and army guys directing traffic along the way and their main job was just to offer encouragment and keep each guy moving, it was nice to see.

 



 

 

FINISHED! :) Peter finished 110th out of 225 participants with a time of 7 HOURS 54 MINUTES and 45 SECONDS (http://www.sportstats.ca/displayResults.xhtml?racecode=101416). Pete was happy to be done and have finshed in good time as his stomach hurt and he wanted a shower and some rest! The guy that finished first finished in like 5 hours and 43 minutes or something close to that, how is that even possible!?!

 

I can see he's already pondering about how to can beat his time for the 2013 race. Only 365 days away! Peter says one of the guys in the race uses the comparison "The Iron Man is kinda of like drinking, by the end of the day you're in pain and you swear you're never ever going to do it again. But, by the next day you're already thinking about it again"

 



The aftermath :( was a good 2 days of broken Peter. He learned that taking to many anti inflammatories will make your tummy hurt instead of doing their actual job to make you feel better. Lesson learned!