The homework assignment

Weekly face-time chats and laughter with chums Sara and Kelly has been a real tonic during these unusual times.

After our "chats" I always feel better.    All that laughing really gives me an endorphin hit.

And now for something completely different we've added homework to our weekly agenda.

Kelly when next we chat will be presenting a design of a new section of her garden; Sara a newly taken insect photo.  Me a report on "See(ing) ruins".

These are ruins that I've been looking for for ages.  I learned about them first through a FB group on abandoned places in Nova Scotia.  Kelly and Sara and I went looking for them once.  We must have been close but couldn't find the ruins despite rambling around in circles for ages through the woods. 

Now thanks to the twinning expansion of highway 103 the ruins not only are easy to find, they are in danger of disappearing.  They are high atop a hill.  The land between the stone house and the highway is to be blasted and brought down to road level.  Current thought is that the act of blasting will create enough of a vibration to cause the house to fall down.

Today I set off to do my homework and find those ruins.  I spotted a couple of cars pulled off to the side of the highway, and joined them.

See my little blue car parked way down there ?

A well worn path snaked up the hill.  The trees had been cut right up to the door.

I wasn't the only visitor.  

Originally named "Bonavista Lodge", the beach-stone cottage tucked into the woods near Exit 6 at Hubbards was built around 1926 by George Guilford Harnish.  The getaway was named for its stunning panoramic view of Fox Point Lake in the distance.

The remote compound, consisting of the main stone building as well as a "maid's quarters" and wooden bunk houses -- enough space to sleep eight to 10 people.  But it functioned more as a "man cave" than a family cottage, where the owner would invite his friends to stay for hunting and fishing trips led by local guides.

A FaceBook group created to protect the future of the stone house: "Save the Simms settlement stone house" warns against visiting the ruins, though there is no signage to that effect there at the moment.

I'm glad I went when I did, though I'm not sure I could have stayed away even if I knew.

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Hope the girls will give me a good mark on my homework.