Day Trips with Work

If you are newer to reading my blog you may not know that every evening Monday to Friday I support individuals with Intellectual Disabilities. I am a primary counselor to 4 out of the 8. We are two staff, one works days and I work evenings. We support these individuals with living everyday life in their own apartment. Each summer we brainstorm and decide on a 3 day 2 night vacation. This summer we decided to do this a little differently and do 3 days of day trips. This was to help with everyone getting to do something they could afford and that they had interest in. Here is what everyone decided on.

Papanack Zoo, Monte Cascade and Upper Canada Village. I will tell you right away we had a full crowd on the last day for Upper Canada Village.

Monday August 8th, both myself and the other staff (R) headed into work for 8am, packed a cooler, made sure we had sunscreen, money, map, and anything else we may need. Next we hurried around the apartment building to each person's apartment to make sure they were good to go or if they needed help with anything. (This is a normal thing we did for all three days).

8:45am - Let's head out and pick up one more guy that is coming with us and hit the road to Wendover, Ontario.

10:00am - Arrive at Papanack Zoo, everyone is very excited to see the animals. We saw lots of neat critters, Lemurs, Peacocks, Coyotes, Tigers, and even a black Jaguar. A few pictures and then I have a funny story about the Jaguar. hehe

If you have never been to a Zoo or to Papanack there is a lot of walking from one animal to another and we had a pretty hot day. When we approached the Jaguar he was in the back of his housing area. He came up to the front and laid down. A few minutes after he got up and paced back and forth turned around so his behind was facing all of us at the fence and lifted his tail! AHHH quick everyone move. Well three of our guys moved very fast but the other person, who is afraid of uneven ground - L (but he did a great job walking everywhere that day!) shuffled over. We thought everyone got out of the way until I turned and looked at L, I saw he got hit ALL down one leg!

I said - "oh no, you should have moved faster." trying not to laugh

He said - "I didn't get peed on!" he started laughing.

I replied - "look again!"

He looked down and looked back at me and we burst out laughing. L then replied "I did get PEED on!!"

The rest of the day and still now that has been a big conversation with everyone! I believe he may even be proud :)

Day 2 - Monte Cascade, We ended up with only 3 people going and it was a cloudy day. Of course the day we wouldn't have minded it being Super hot, it was overcast and also a cool breeze. Monte Cascade turned out to be a lot of fun and only cost each person $12.99! How can you go wrong as most water parks are over $25 a person.

Day 3 - Upper Canada Village, this was a FULL group for us and we ended up with a big van and our car to take everyone to Morrisburg, Ontario. If you haven't been here before but love to learn history this is a great place to learn what it would have been like to live in the 1860's, the daily life, the challenges etc. Tour the almost 60 acres of "village" and learn how they made wool, bread, logs, cheese curd (my fave - I learned a lot there) and much more. See demonstrations and talk with the village folks. We took a ride in a horse carriage around the village to see all the homes and farms. Also if you plan to go here check out my Attractions Ontario post for a coupon, Buy one Adult and get one Child free. The price is not cheap but everyone should experience Upper Canada Village at least once in their lifetime! This year marks 50 years they have been open!