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What a beautiful day to wake up in Sauble Beach, near Owen Sound in Ontario.

I woke up with the sun shining through the tall maple tree outside my window.  I stepped onto the patio to check the temperature and it was shorts weather! When I am comfortable in shorts I know it is already +10C or more…I just knew it would be a great day for golf!

Tree on golf course

Large weeping willow on the Saugeen Golf course

We drove down Highway 13 and Highway 3 to the Saugeen Golf Club – we’d made a reservation to play the nine holes of the Legacy and then nine holes of the Sunset.  They had us down as a twosome – no one had opted to play with us – and for any of you who’ve played on a sunny summer Friday, you’ll know that being a twosome behind foursomes isn’t a heck of a lot of fun. Ruth and I spent a lot of time waiting, we tried to keep each other amused (although, let’s face it, that too gets old!) Finally, on the sixth hole on the back nine the foursome in front of us let us play through. Ruth played her better game on Legacy and I played better on Sunset, so we each had our day! We loved this Stanley Thompson-designed golf course and are very sad to say we most likely will not play it again this year, as our real road trip will begin, in earnest, in just under a week, from Sauble Beach, Ontario to Calgary, Alberta. After our round of golf, we were on to Southampton and back to the shops where I had put a pair of Simon Chang pants on hold – and both of us found a few items we had not seen before! Both L and Co. and Sisters on Huron were happy to slide our cards – and we were happy with our purchases!  Ruth and I bought identical funky tops: bright colours of the rainbow with black inserts on the side.  These are long and look great with a skirt or leggings.  Ruth bought a navy and white classy top as well and I bought a black and white sundress and leggings. The lady at L and Co. was sad to see us leave as we had such a fun time in her store.

At Sisters on Huron, they have a room at the back that is filled with samples.  Now many of you know that samples are what the manufactures make up (mostly in size SMALL) to show prospective shop owners.  Then the owners order what they have seen in the sizes they figure will sell best in their stores.  This entire room is filled with marked-down prices and then everything in this room is on sale at 30% off the lowest price.  There were a lot of extraordinary pieces, such as reversible jackets regularly priced at $300 for around $100.  The sizes may show “S” but they could really be medium or large as these are only samples.  You could spend am hour just in their back room!

We had a light dinner and we’re off to watch some sports at Sauble Dunes, the sports bar.  With the time change from Eastern to Mountain we found that the CFL game was not on here until 9:00 pm.  We decided it would be too late for us to stay for the whole game, so we came home.

One last thing I nearly forgot to mention. Before we left the cottage – which is still for sale, by the way – we made a phone call to Cobble Beach to find out all about their Canada Day Golf Tournament, like I mentioned to you in my last post. They had room for both of us, and made us an offer of a practice round on Monday and the tournament on Wednesday for the price of $175 each. We’re thrilled to be golfing at Cobble Beach and we’ll be golfing with another woman, a club member, for the tournament! They’re also having a Canada Day Party starting at 7:00 pm and we’ll be there – maybe in our matching tops – who knows?! In any event, it’s so exciting and I can’t wait to try out that course!

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Southampton Beach.

The beach at Southampton

On Monday, two of Ruth’s friends from her nursing-school days in Guelph, Ontario arrived for a two-day visit. Marg and Barb arrived around noon and they were a lot of fun. We spent most of the afternoon outside until the rain came. And when it came, it poured for a couple of hours – and hard – hard enough to knock some leaves off the trees. We probably got half-an-inch, all tolled.

We had a nice dinner together, then spent the evening playing Scrabble, a game I love to play both with friends around the table, as well as playing online, against two of my friends as well as my daughter, Lisa. Barb brought her game as she is known to do whenever she travels, and why not, Scrabble is always a lot of fun and puts your grey matter to good use!

Downtown Southampton

Downtown Southampton, with great shops for ladies wear!

On Tuesday, I had an appointment to see Brenda at Sauble Hairwaves and, in no time at all, she had my hair just the way I like it! We had an interesting day, although it was exceptionally windy and cold, cold, cold. We were off to Southampton, about a half-hour drive from Sauble Beach, heading south. There, the four of us checked out three stores on one side of the street. Each of these stores offered a great selection of clothing, with designer brands like famous designer Joseph Ribkoff as well as Lissette L, both from Montreal. One store was called L & Co., the second was called Sisters on Huron– owned by 7 sisters, and a brand new store called Cottage Chic, which had men’s clothing and furniture in addition to the ladies wear – and seems to be the talk of the town! Southampton is a diamond in the rough when it comes to great fashion at reasonable prices!

Like Sauble Beach, Southampton is on Lake Huron, and on the mouth of the Saugeen River (just a stone’s throw from the Saugeen Golf Course I told you about yesterday!) We managed to keep our cameras still enough to take some pictures of the beach – but swimming was definitely out of the question!

Group photo at the restaurant

Maureen, Ruth, Barb and Marg at Lord Elgin’s Fish and Chips

We drove along the Great Lake from Southampton further south to Port Elgin, headed for the famous (at least to the locals) Lord Elgin’s Fish and Chips. True to the advertising, they had all-you-can-eat haddock, but we opted for the halibut instead, and all of us enjoyed our meal. Then, we stopped at the Farmer’s Market where I bought 5 pounds of fresh asparagus for $5.00! We came home and had a fantastic dinner of pork tenderloin with fresh vegetables and for dessert, I whipped together another rhubarb strawberry crumble. It turned out really well, so I’m going to share the recipe with you, below.

Rhubarb Strawberry Crumble

Rhubarb Strawberry Crumble with frozen yoghurt on top

Rhubarb Strawberry Crumble
1/2 cup melted butter         3 cups cubed rhubarb
1 1/2 cups rolled oats          1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup flour                         1 1/2 tbsp. flour
2/3 cup brown sugar           2 cups sliced strawberries
Combine butter, rolled oats, 1/2 cup flour and brown sugar. Put 2/3 of this mixture in an 8″x 8″ cake pan.  Cover with rhubarb and strawberries. Combine granulated sugar with 1 1/2 tbsp flour then sprinkle over top.  Spread remaining oat mixture on top of everything.  Bake 45 minutes at 350 F.  Serve with frozen vanilla yogurt or ice cream.

Marg and Barb left for home at the same time Ruth and I headed to Pinewoods Golf Club to join the ladies group for nine holes. I had a partner on the cart and, our group was a threesome. This time, I played with Deryn Preston and Carol Bohnert and we had a lot of fun. Deryn spends half the year in England and the other 6 months here at Sauble Beach. What a lady! She hit the ball pretty darn good and has a lot of class! After golf, she insisted I had given her so many tips, she was buying me a drink! She ordered a Coors Light for herself and a Palm Bay Lime and Cherry for me. My game was one stroke better than last week and I was low gross again! More bragging rights!

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We woke up to bright sunshine and that made both of us happy! Thursday, it had been trying to rain at times and, grey and overcast, we ended up having just a few sprinkles. The sun came out for awhile around dinner time, so I was optimistic that we would have a sunny day for golf and a great day out.

Our tee time was 9:30 a.m. at the Sauble Golf and Country Club, a sixty-nine year old course teetering on the 6400 yard mark. When we arrived at the Pro Shop we were informed that they had a shotgun tournament starting at 1:00 p.m. We said that shouldn’t be a problem as we play fast.

The course had very nice, big greens with not a lot of undulation. The fairways were much the same, open and quite good and there was a varying degree of difficulty with the rough. In some places, the rough was really thick and other places, it was very thin! There were just a few gravel cart paths, most went from green to the next tee box. There were a couple of small lakes and several three-foot wide ditches with water going across the fairways, teasing you to hit your ball into them to add some drama to your round!

When we finished the par-5 seventh hole, we noticed what appeared several large rhubarb plants growing between the course and one of the neighbouring houses. Ruth said we must drive over see if if we can get some! Then we noticed the lady that lived there was outside, so we high tailed it over to her, and she was more than happy to cut some for us! We picked it up after finishing the ninth hole. I think that rhubarb apple crisp will be on our dessert menu tonight, perhaps with a scoop of vanilla ice cream!

The course was pretty empty and we finished in three hours. We enjoyed the golf course and, although it was a bit windy, we had fun!

Two Chicks Cafe

Two of the young women working at the Two Chicks Cafe.

Our next stop was Two Chicks Cafe on 2nd Avenue North, just a block away from the beach — and us two chicks thought it would be a great idea to drop in to have lunch there.

We had the pleasure of being waited on by Georgia McLay and Maranda Murphy, and those two young women were gracious enough to pose for a picture for the blog!  Great service, Georgia and Maranda — keep up the great work!

Ruth had a tuna sandwich with fresh vegetables and I had the egg salad sandwich with chips.  Both were excellent choices.

The hockey stick chair

My chair at the Two Chicks Cafe was made out of hockey sticks. What a great idea for #recycling

The cafe is tiny with about six tables, but they also have outside seating. My chair was made of used hockey sticks and the base of the table was made from an old pedal sewing machine – such ingenious ways to recycle!

The Two Chicks Cafe has really good food and it’s run by great people. Stop by and enjoy the country music on radio — and I read on their website that they have a big lineup of live music on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights ALL SUMMER LONG. What a great idea.

And I’m not the only one who thinks it’s a great place. I found this on Twitter:


Oh, and one more thing about this great cafe: they’ve got free Wi-Fi that was pretty fast, so I was able to write my blog post for you!

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