Sunday night. I’ve just booked my summer vacation – the first uninterrupted stretch of time off, all by myself, in 3.5 years…

One odd thing about a pandemic is that it shuts down everything, up to and including the normally secluded attractions. I was looking forward to sleeping in a tent at one of Ontario’s rural campgrounds, but every single one I checked is closed due to covid.

In Thunder Bay, a city of 100,000 about 15 hours north of Toronto, there are some mines where you can dig around for amethysts for a very small fee. One of them is shut down due to the pandemic as well – I just hope at least one of them will remain open (or re-open) by the time I visit in late July. If not, I can always find a mineral occurrence in public access and do a little digging. Worst-case scenario, I’ll have some peace and quiet, a lot of nature, and all the sleep I can handle. Even with the rental four-wheel-drive car (mine won’t be good enough for offroad driving) and the two AirBnBs (Thunder Bay and Bancroft), this vacation will cost less than $1,000 CAD. That’s quite a steal, and will help me keep my mind off the pandemic. (Things get worse every day…) Just seven weeks of work, and I’ll be able to have my very own rural Ontario adventure.

The world news is mostly subdued by more political insanity from the US. The death toll in Brazil is climbing, though the real numbers are almost definitely higher than the official ones they’ve been putting out. I wonder what this coming week will bring…