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As previously mentioned here, a friend changed his country location as described here, to be where I now describe in this post.

He has 7 or 8 acres of land on Lake Windigo in a small town called Vendée, as the crow flies very close to where he used to be, but the way the roads are, a half hour drive away.

As part of his property is this 1.5km long road:

Along it are a few structures including a cabin within which lives a tenant who is raising pure bred hounds of which there was a litter of nine roaming about in an enclosure, they were five weeks old and cute.

As we approach his property proper we come to this beginning of a roundabout in front of the cottage:

The next two photos bring us closer in:

To the right is this large overhang garage like structure that stands in also as a firewood stack, and then the following photo shows what the side of the house looks like if heading to the right of it, note the large windowed room above the garage, this they call the 3-season room:

On that same side, if panning to the right, this is where we had a firepit. So much in the same way that  back in the pre-pandemic property we would cook on a fire, we used this fire pit to cook as well.

Just behind the firepit is a creek in which we saw a beaver and geese at various times. Also, there is a bridge across it to a further ~100 acres that did not get sold when my friend bought this, the original owner still owns all of that large back property.

Going now to the Lake Windigo side of the property, first there is a hot tub that our group only decided to go into very late at night, and at that time I decided that sleep was more important; so I did not end up entering the hot tub at all this weekend. Going past the hot tub and around the corner we can see the house from the Lake side.

And then if we turn 180 here, we can see the dock and then the lake:

On the Saturday we assisted the guy who owns the place to load up the trailer connected to his four wheeler with logs from a tree he had cut down while we were there, to then bring it and stack it properly in a place perhaps 500m from where he cut the tree. After doing this for about two hours, once we were done, I donned my swim suit and jumped off the end of this dock to swim in the water to cool off. It was a little bit colder than I would have liked and so I didn't stay in very long.

The room right above the cottage's garage doors is called the 3-season, principally because it is not heated and so it becomes too cold in the winter. We ate most of our meals at this table.

Upstairs in the house are two enormous bedrooms of which I did not photograph and one great room with a high ceiling, a kitchen, living room and stairs to go downstairs.

Outside the windows from the first living room photo above there is a porch that wraps around two sides of the house; once the sun passed noon or 13h, this area was in shade and it was pleasant to sit here.

And this is a view from that porch looking back on the road that led us to this house.

One of the others picked me up at my apartment on Friday at around 13h30, and then after a stop in Hawkesbury, we arrived at around 16h. I just explored and checked everything out and then we lit a fire in which after hardwood coals had been produced, cooked potatoes, onions and steak which we ate in the 3-seasons room to no longer have to deal with the various types of bugs that were out there,

Saturday, the guy who owns this spent most of the day doing a number of small projects or tasks that make up the upkeep of the property. At various times one or more of us would help him, at other times he (and the rest of us) were off on our own. Among the projects were included replacing a few of the barrels that are beneath the dock that help the dock to float, setting out his sprinklers and putting them in the right position so that when his auto-timers go on, they water where they are supposed to, and not where they aren't. And then there was the tree felling, where he chainsawed down three trees each of which were already in a decaying state. After perhaps 40 minutes of hearing the chainsaw at work, the three of us walked over to where he was and asked how we could help, and that is when he suggested we help by bringing the chopped wood back to a spot he had directed us to.

For lunch that day we had hamburgers and for supper a leg of lamb with corn on the cob, roasted sweet peppers and roasted portabella mushrooms (the latter of which I had none as I don't like them).

Sunday morning the guy that owns it and I, alone the two of us, went to the church that is nearby for mass. It was an interesting experience to be in a country church with only 16 people present which includes the priest. Back at the house we had a bacon, eggs, leftover lamb and toast breakfast. Following that we said goodbye to one of the guys who left at noon, and then we helped move the last remaining logs to where he wanted them. I had been wearing work gloves the previous day but forgot to use them on Sunday which was unfortunate. It happened that the tree he had cut was mostly covered in sap and so my hands got covered in sap, dirt and sawdust. It takes furiously scrubbing the hands with soap and a firm brush to get that stuff off it is so sticky. Soon after that I went home with someone else who drove me right to my apartment. The drive was uneventful and traffic free, we didn't stop once.

Overall it was a nice weekend away, though I did have some misgivings about it that I already posted to this blog.