I’m at camp! I’m at camp! It was exciting when I was a kid, and it’s exciting now, too. And, to make it even more exciting, I’ve been to art camp twice before so know what to expect – but do you?
About three hours north of Toronto, in the sleepy little village of Haliburton, Ontario, nestled in the middle of Haliburton County, there is a very special offshoot of Fleming College called the Haliburton School of the Arts. In the summer, this school caters to artists, or would-be artists, and offers up quite a diverse selection of week-long (or weekend) courses – check them out here.
In previous years, Steve and I have enjoyed a week’s stay but, this time ‘round, we decided to go for two weeks and take advantage of a couple of different creative outlets. So, we signed up a few months ago, after agonizing over the calendar for a couple of weeks. Based on our vacation schedule of early July, we chose Wire Sculpture – Large Scale (me) and Water Colour Exploration (Steve) for our first week; Ukulele (me) and Finger Style Guitar Playing (Steve) for our second week. (Water Colour Exploration ended up being cancelled so Steve substituted Acrylic Landscape Painting.)
With courses chosen, and paid for, we had to find a place to stay. The school provides an extensive list of pre-screened accommodations – everything from apartments to exclusive cottages. The first year we went to camp, we stayed in a B&B right in Haliburton, which was nice, but we had no kitchen privileges so we had to eat every lunch and dinner out. The second year, we chose a ground floor apartment attached to a private home, also in Haliburton, but it was dark and damp, and not at all what we wanted to come home to each night. This year, we chose a bunky over a garage, about 15 minutes east of the village on a lake, which might sound questionable but the description and pictures of the property were promising. All we had to do was wait to see.
We arrived late Saturday night, June 29th, and were so pleasantly surprised by how well-kept the property was and how friendly our greeting was. But the real surprise was upstairs in our home-away-from-home – a fabulously lovely, very well decorated and appointed 2-bedroom home, complete with a large balcony that overlooks the lake. We also have a private yard, and private pathway to our private dock. Not sure we’ll get that much time to enjoy the dock, but the view is spectacular.
Sunday, we woke up to a symphony of birdsong just as the sky was starting to lighten. As beautiful as that was, it thankfully stopped about 20 minutes later and we were able to go back to sleep until a more reasonable waking hour (8:00). We lounged around, ate breakfast, then checked out the property in the daylight.
We got off to a late start, heading into the village for groceries. But before we did that, we stopped off at the main college campus to eye-ball the course list to understand where we had to be the next morning. Thank goodness we are both in the same building!
Directly behind the campus is Glebe Park that houses the Haliburton Sculpture Forest. This forest is a unique collection of sculptures by Canadian and international artists. The trails in the forest lead you past each and every one of them, providing a most interesting hiking experience. Although we have experienced this forest both times in the past, it is always a pleasure and we were happy to notice three new sculptures.
Back at our bunky, we ate a fairly early (for us) dinner and relaxed on the deck as we watched the sun start to set.
