Comments on a brief trip to Muskoka

Muskoka is a vacation region two or three hours’ drive north of Toronto in Canada. I was lucky enough to be able to spend a week or two each summer there, growing up in the late Seventies, at my maternal grandfather’s cottage on Lake Rosseau. My parents now share in a small place near Baysville. It turns out that my grandfather’s family helped establish a church there at the beginning of the twentieth century. Since my uncles were flying in for the centennial celebration, I decided that Benjamin and I should attend as well. I made this decision about five days before the celebration, but between Orbitz and JetBlue put together an itinerary without too much trouble.

But I learned depressing things about Orbitz:

• Fares listed in an Orbitz search may not actually have ever existed.
• Listed fares related to a nonexistent fare may also not have ever existed, and Orbitz makes no attempt to remove them.
• Clicking on a dozen imaginary fares as some time period expires is highly annoying. This led me to

JetBlue, which has flat pricing and real fares. (I haven’t flown Southwest, so this was my first low cost airline experience.) JetBlue is a treat: there’s a single class cabin, which I always prefer; Benjamin had his own television screen with Nickelodeon and Boomerang, which is one way to handle toddlers; and—although I didn’t try this—apparently you can bring your own wine onboard and the crew will serve it to you.

Our trip and our visit was brief, but it was great to see family, introduce Ben to his cousins, and experience Muskoka time again. (Plus Canadian food isn’t laced with high fructose corn syrup, so it actually possesses taste beyond oversweetness.)