My Daughter's DOH! Big Adventure

BABY YOU CAN DRIVE MY CAR...

BUT YOU MIGHT WANT TO LOOK AT A MAP.

My super-independent daughter, who's 19, borrows my car often.

This past weekend, she wanted to use it again to go either to Grand Beach on the eastern shores of Lake Winnipeg or to a nearby provincial campground/beach called Birds Hill Park.

Grand Beach was once voted one of the top 10 sand beaches in North America, if I'm not mistaken.

Lake Winnipeg is the 22nd largest natural freshwater Lake in the world. That's pix of the beach, above.

My daughter wanted, ahem, to just sunbathe with a friend and be a beach bum or bunny or whatever.

As per my previous post, this somewhat cramped my own plans to mingle with the masses in the summer heat.

However, I acquiesced.

She used the car Saturday night and kept it overnight so she could leave early for the beach on Sunday. She called me Sunday evening to return the car.

"So, where did you go," I asked.

"St. Malo," she said. "We got lost."

St. Malo is southeast of Winnipeg. Grand Beach and Birds Hill Park are northeast of Winnipeg.

St. Malo's an OK place, but it ain't the rockin' spot that Grand Beach is, or even Birds Hill Park. They took the right highway but they went south instead of north.

Doh!

It's a good thing Manitoba is known as the Land of 100,000 Lakes.

You can basically drive in any direction outside of the city and hit a nice lake with an acceptable beach.

It's the beauty of living in the Canadian Shield.

"It was OK," she said. "We had a good time."

And she even put some gas in the car, although the "Check Engine" light's been on ever since she had it.

I've spent $3,000 on this car just in the past month alone. But that's another tale.

I've shown her what to do if the car overheats. Now I guess I've got to show her how to read a map.