Friday

A slight change of plan today; we’ve decided to head off home later in the day, rather than wait until tomorrow morning. It will mean missing a night, but it also means that we won’t be rushing in the morning to meet the somewhat chintzy checkout time of 11am. No rush, no pressure, just the way we like it.

I thought I’d start today by giving a run down of this KOA Campground. KOAs are not cheap to stay at so you expect a reasonable standard of campsite. This one has a pool, some sports facilities, some kids play areas and some hiking trails in the woods. Like most commercial campgrounds, pretty much all the sites have power, water and sewer hookups, and there’s a couple of shower and toilet blocks for those who prefer tent camping. The actual sites themselves are not big and although the place has been quite quiet all week and we haven’t felt crowded in, last night a whole herd of big fifth wheelers turned up and the place feels a touch more packed now. That said, there are plenty of trees about so it’s not like were just parked up in rows. The sites are reasonably level, with a gravel pad, a bit of grass and little fire pit. We watched earlier in the week as the campground staff went around cleaning out the fire pits and tidying up the sites’ grass, so that was good.

I’m never a fan of the seasonal sites, that is sites rented for the entire summer and a trailer parked there that doesn’t move until the season is over. What people tend to do is build big decks, bring garden sheds and satellite dishes, and generally personalise their area. Unusually for a KOA, there are a lot of seasonal sites here. Normally I’d turn my nose up a bit at that because it limits the sites for transient campers like us. However, this place is pretty quiet during the week, so I can understand the owners wanting to get a guaranteed revenue throughout the season, even when the seasonal campers are not on site. I don’t think there’s always a great rapport between the seasonal and the transient campers, one group will generally resent the other, but the one or two seasonal people we’ve met here this week have been fine.
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I’d read a couple of awful reviews of the place, written after the last Canada Day weekend. The complaints were about failing electricity and foul smelling fresh water. While I agree these are not things to recommend the campground, I think they have to be put in context. Most campgrounds are completely full on the Canada Day long weekend. This year it was very hot so, just about everyone there would have been running one, and quite possibly two, roof mounted air conditioners; with that kind of demand, it's no wonder the supply was failing. I guess the demand on the water, possibly well water, would have been the same. I couldn't find much to complain about, really, and I thought it was a good place to stay as a base to explore the area; I'd definitely go back.

Anyway, we started our packing process after lunch and, given no kids or dog, it was all done and dusted quickly and with no fuss. I took the time to flush out the poop tank because we rarely get an opportunity to do that. We've pretty much got the hitching process sorted, and now that it's all well worn in, it's actually quite easy. So, at around 3pm, we pulled off the site and started our run home.

I had pored over alternative routes to avoid the centre of Owen Sound but decided that the most direct route was best. Oh my, what a mistake. It took us 30 minutes or more to do the first few kilometers, thanks mostly to the tightly packed traffic lights in downtown Owen Sound. One set we didn't get through until the third green, such was the density of traffic and lights. Still, up the hill on the other side and we were out in the open country and heading to Lake Huron and the Bluewater Highway. Naturally, we had a strong headwind to contend with, which was keeping the gas consumption a bit high, but other than that we rolled along, quite uneventfully, and amused ourselves watching the antics of other drivers trying overtake us. It's not that we were slow moving, we were at the speed limit the whole way, but people in this Province simply have to be doing at least 10 over or they think they're being cheated out of something. On that issue, complaining about the price of gas is a perpetual topic of conversation, and yet people seem to feel the need to waste gas by rushing around everywhere and treating the speed limit as an absolute minimum.

We'd stopped in Goderich on the way back for a quick break and when we started back on the road we were immediately followed by a pick-up towing a big, square travel trailer. I'm a speed limit junkie and, to be fair, this guy sat behind us all the way to Grand Bend and didn't attempt to overtake at any point. I could feel he wanted to go faster but he kept a safe distance back and all was well. As soon as we entered Grand Bend where there are two southbound lanes, I pulled to the right to let him pass, which he did. The problem was that his left lane was held up with some left-turning vehicles and we ended up in front of him again. Being a very good egg, though, I slacked right off and waited for him to get back in front of us before we were back to a single lane each way. It was just as well, for him, that we did because he took the same route to Watford that we did and he'd have been royally pissed to have been stuck behind us again. Being in front, though, he did disappear over the horizon quite quickly!

Again, a delightfully uneventful trip back and we were on the driveway unhitching and unloading about four and a half hours after we'd left Owen Sound. Once again we'd done it on a single tank of gas and our mileage, although a little up on the trip up there, was still around 13mpg (US Gallons that is). I'm not sure who reads this but, for anyone doubting the ability of our Toyota Sienna to successfully and safely pull our Airstream, please note that all our trips are wholly uneventful in terms of towing capability and the van is still pottering around quite happily, even after seven years.

I'm not sure when or where we'll be off again as sadly I have to go to work for a living. Watch this space, though...

Tuesday

Another day with no real plans, but with a few things to do tomorrow and a limitation on when we ought to go to Tobermory, I thought we should go west today and dip our toes in the waters of Lake Huron.

On the way, though, I thought a trip to Inglis Falls would be in order.

Impressing Mrs. T with my navigational skills, we hauled it over to the falls. Then I had a senior moment that my mother would have been proud of; I saw the notice saying that there was a $6 parking charge, so I aborted my turn into the place and carried on down the hill. Mrs. T snorted, out of humour or derision I’m not sure, and I spent the next two minutes babbling about $6 being too much for a 10 minute visit to a small waterfall. In truth, $6 is a scandalous amount, especially given that we haven’t paid a cent for parking all trip. Am I cheap? Certainly. Is $6 too much for a parking charge? You bet!

So, at the bottom of the hill I took an executive decision and turned left, mostly on the grounds that it was westbound and west was the direction we needed to be going. Those arrow straight roads took us though undulating farmland (mixed farming, mind, arable and cattle) until the road took an unexpected 90 degree turn left, which meant we were now heading south. Before I could correct that by taking a convenient right turn, we hit another closed road, and we were forced into a second left turn. Two lefts from west means east, so we were now coming back the way we came! Our map was not the greatest, with print so small our aged eyes couldn’t cope, so it was onto Google Maps on the cell phones. All that told us, though, was that we needed to make two right turns to go west. We managed the first right turn OK but, and you’ll laugh at this; we did in a strangulated sort of way, the next right turn was another closed road! At least we were able to go straight on this time, down a gravel road, and search for the next right turn; if we’d have been forced to go left we’d have been back to going east again. Keep up now, it’s not that complicated.

Given that all the roads hereabouts are on a north, south, east, west grid, it really is a case of going to the next turn and travelling along that country block to correct your direction of travel. Fortunately, all roads in the grid join up, so you never end up stuck down a “blind” road, as they’re known here.

Eventually, we found our way to the County Line, which conveniently turned out to be a full sized, non-gravel, north-south road and we were able to head south (a left turn) for one country block, then go west (a right turn) to continue on to our eventual destination which was Lake Huron, or more accurately Port Elgin, on the shore of Lake Huron.

We did get to see a lot of cattle on our travels, a lot of corn and a lot of beans. We saw plenty of Turkey Vultures and we also saw a horse-drawn cart with a fully complemented and finely attired Amish (or something similar) family, who gave us confused looking tourists a cheery wave. Don’t we have all the fun?

So, Port Elgin is home to Lord Elgin’s Fish and Chip Restaurant, into which we made a hasty entrance. The dining room was massive, low ceilinged and very noisy, which was a surprise; the crowds were there, apparently, for the “All The Haddock You Can Eat Tuesday” promotion, and it was very popular. We also lowered the average age a bit as we entered.

Actually, the fish and chips were good, and reasonably priced, and the din in the dining room did go down a little as the early diners left. There wasn’t much on the menu for the vegan Mrs. T, I’m afraid, but chips and onion rings made do.

After feeding, we made our way down to the beach to have a little wander around. It’s a nice beach in Port Elgin and, despite the wind coming off the lake, it was crowded with young families enjoying the sun and the protection of the breakwater a couple of hundred metres off the beach. We’d have liked a walk along the breakwater, but it had been fenced off as being in a dangerous state, but that didn’t deter many people, though, as they just waded through the shallow water and circumvented the fence. Not us, though, we’re law abiding sorts who didn't want to our feet too wet.

You will be pleased to know that the regulation paddle in the lake was achieved (on the beach and not on the mission to get to the breakwater) and we can report that the water in Lake Huron is considerably warmer than the water in Georgian Bay.

We took the long, although less convoluted, route back to Owen Sound, this time via Southampton and Sauble Beach. We rounded out the day’s excursion with a scouting session in Owen Sound for a place to watch the football tomorrow, and a quick stop in at the grocery store for the next few day’s lunch supplies.
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What happens tomorrow is in the lap of the Gods, or Gareth Southgate. I don’t have high hopes, I’ve been following England too long for that, but I didn’t think they’d get this far, so you never know.
 
 
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Monday

As anticipated, it was a slow start to the day. Well, we are on our holidays.

Today’s jaunt was a road trip up the eastern side of the Bruce Peninsular, hugging the shore of Georgian Bay.

We started by going through Owen Sound and taking the first right past the river. There are very few signs on Ontario roads, at least not signs telling you where the road might lead to, which is difficult for someone like me who has been brought up in England where you can navigate purely using the direction signs, which say things like “Upper Lowerham 4, Lower Upperham 4”, and point usefully in the direction you need to travel. Here they will (sometimes) offer a sign as to which road number you’re on and, if you’re in a town, maybe a street name, but very rarely will you get a sign saying something like “Lion’s Head 66 Km”.  This morning, we were looking for Grey Highway 1, but the only indication we could see was a small, foot-square, #1 sign just before the road took a left at a set of lights. We blindly followed everyone else and were happy to see, about 2km further on, a second #1 sign; luck was with us today.

You could, I suppose, set the SatNav up but, when you want to take a meandering route to nowhere in particular, they’re not that useful especially when they only display a few hundred metres around your current location. However, my old map reading skills resurfaced and off we went, more or less in the right direction.

One thing we’ve noticed in Ontario is that so much of any lakefront is private. Individual lots of land, between the road and the water, have been built on with hardly a gap between them. As a result, you can travel miles along the shore and never really see the lake, which is what we did for a large part of the first 30 minutes on the road. We did, however, discover a small public park that not only had parking, but had access to the stony shoreline. The view was lovely, and the water was cold, as usual. We progressed through places like Balmy Beach, Cobble Beach, Big Bay, Oxendon and then eventually on to the metropolis that is Wiarton.

It’s at this point that I could ramble off on a tangent about Wiarton Willie, but my Canadian friends know all about him and my British and American friends will wonder what on earth I’m on about. So, next stop, Cape Croker.

(If you really want to know about Wiarton Willie, click Here)

The name Cape Croker brought to mind the film The Italian Job, where Michael Caine plays Charlie Croker, the cheeky cockney crook who is a villain, a charmer and a bit of a dunce, in equal measure. Cape Croker is, though, an Unceded Territory, Neyaashiinigmiing Aboriginal Reserve No.27, home to the Ojibway and Chippewas of Nawah. 

I had intended to drive out to the lighthouse, right on the cape, but gave up that idea when I realised that much of the trip was going to be on gravel roads. So, we made do with stopping at the Community Centre and looking at the war memorial. Some of the scenery and views were lovely but, as ever, there's never a place to stop and admire them.

Then we were off to Hope Bay, off the Reserve and up the shore a little.

Hope Bay is a charming little bay with a big campground and a small, sandy public beach. The water was cold and the little shop/café was closed, so apart from a brief paddle in the chilly waters, all we did was turn around and make for Lion’s Head.

Lion’s Head is named for a rock formation on the southern side of the little bay it sits on. Time and erosion have meant that the lion’s head is now without a lower jaw, but I guess it’d be difficult to rename your village Lion’s Head Without A Lower Jaw, as it would play havoc with the mail.

The village looked quite smart on it’s main street, where we were able to park, visit a nice gift shop and eat in Rachael’s Bakery and 50’s Diner. Rachael’s scored maximum points because it had a number of vegan options on the menu, and free WiFi, which was a bonus. They’re also showing the World Cup on TV on Tuesday and Wednesday but the reports from the last game shown there was that this little diner became quite wild!

The bay the village sits on has a campground and sandy public beach, but it also has a swanky marina nestled behind the stone breakwater, which is why the place seemed quite lively. Despite the gentle slope of the beach, the water was no warmer here than it had been further down the lake’s shore on the stony beaches, but that wasn’t stopping kids from swimming out to the pontoon anchored a little way off the beach, the mad buggers.

Heading south back to Owen Sound, we took the main Tobermory road, which was comparatively busy. It’s mostly arrow straight, with speed limit of 80 km/h, which is what I set the cruise control at. That, though, simply encouraged the lunatic drivers of Ontario to make some scary overtaking moves on me, often with too little room. I’m sure they were all cursing me for having the temerity to stay on the limit, but the curious thing was that we ended up directly behind most of those risk takers when we arrived in Wiarton. All that risk, and gas, for a 15 feet advantage; tsk.

Back at the ranch, it was snooze time for Mrs. T, and it was so warm that we succumbed to the lure of the A/C. It’s noisy when it’s running, but the outside temperature at 6pm was 30C, so I reckon it was OK to burn some electricity.
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We rounded off the night with a DVD, Sunset Boulevard. Mrs. T suggested that I might want to bring the awning and lawn furniture in as there was a storm due at 10pm. Naturally I complied, but 10pm came and went with no sign of the promised storm. Oh well, I can set it all up again in the morning…

Sunday

In full camping mode, I slept in until 8am, which is a full three hours after my usual wake up time. I blame my usual hideous rising habits on the hound, who is kind of insistent on getting fed at some ridiculous time in the morning. It seems, though, that the Georgian Bay air is good for getting me out of my routine.

It had been curious first night away, with me being alternately hot and sweaty, then cold. We had the windows open, but the night time temperature was low compared with what the past few weeks has offered. Still, the fresh air obviously helped, and not having a dog sharing the bed was very enjoyable.

Also, because I’m in full camping mode, I made up some fine coffee and sat outside in the bright morning sun to enjoy it, which always makes for a good start to the day.

With no plan to speak of, we headed into town for some fuel, and baulked at the price - $1.39 a litre! But, I thought, we’re on holiday, so I filled the tank with gay abandon (and fuel) and scoffed at the $76 total. Then I turned right and headed out to Meaford, on the shores of Georgian Bay.

We’re up on the top of the Niagara escarpment here and it was a fine sight as we dropped off the plateau down the arrow straight road towards Meaford. We could see the other side of the bay, some distance away, and admired the incredibly blue water between Meaford and Christian Island.

Meaford itself is a sleepy little town, with a small harbour and an almost deserted Main Street. We parked up (free parking, my English friends, free!) by the little beach and set off to explore, which didn’t take long. We saw the harbour and its resident cormorants, then mooched along the quiet main street, diving into a couple of junk shops to see what we could see. It was uncommonly quiet, but then it was Sunday and I think this is quite a God-fearing part of the world, at least judging by the number of churches dotted around.

What we did see, though, was gas on sale at $1.29 a litre, 10 cents cheaper than 30Kms away. I was all for taking the expensive stuff back to Owen Sound and re-filling in Meaford, but Mrs. T pointed out the impracticality of that little exercise. I’ve inherited my fascination for fuel prices from my dear departed father, and it’s darned annoying.

On a whim, lunch was taken at a smart little restaurant called Andrew’s Roots. The lunch menu was a wee bit limited but at least it wasn’t burgers and dogs. Mrs. T opted for the vegan curry while I went for a fancy version of that good old Canadian classic, Grilled Cheese. Our server was attentive, although hardly overworked as there were only two other people in the place, and she helped a bit with the information on the contents of the curry. Sadly, Mrs. T didn’t really enjoy her meal; not that it was badly prepared or presented, it was just not to her taste. My grilled cheese was OK, and made a change for me, but I don’t think either of us was bowled over. Nice try Andrew’s Roots, not sure we’ll be back, though.

Heading back to the car, we decided to have a little paddle in the lake. It looked so inviting but, true to form, the clear waters of Georgian Bay were very cold, despite the fine weather we've been having over the past few weeks. The Bay, you see, is very deep as it forms the lower part of the Niagara Escarpment. Blue and welcoming the lake water may look, but it’s a real shocker when you get in there.

From Meaford we headed south to Thornbury, on the edge of the Blue Mountains. The Blue Mountains area is famed for its winter skiing, the steep drop of the north facing escarpment being perfect for collecting, and keeping, the snow. Of course, in July, all the slopes, carved out from the vast woodlands, are vivid green but still look striking as they drop down to the lake. We did a very short circuit in Thornbury, mostly because it looked like just a bigger version of Meaford, then decided to head inland, following the course of the Beaver River.

Most roads in Ontario are drawn with a ruler; straight and visible for miles. But following a river, the road twisted and turned and that made a pleasant change. As we motored, the broad valley narrowed, and cliffs were visible in amongst the trees on either side of the road. We were climbing, too, and eventually ended up on top of the plateau again, at a place called Eugenia, home of the Eugenia Falls. The little river there tumbles off a limestone ledge and drops thirty metres to the floor below. It’s not a big waterfall because the river has been dammed further up and the water supply is limited, but it was a very picturesque place to be. Slightly worrying was all the people walking to the very edge of the falls to look over, despite all the signs saying, “Don’t Do That!”. I waited with camera ready to see if anyone did topple over and was mildly disappointed when no one did.

Then it was a long run back up Highway 10 to Owen Sound, with only a brief stop at the Liquor Store for cider and beer, and an irritating detour, down gravel roads, as there had been some sort of crash on the main road. I mention the detour because, it being a Sunday afternoon, the southbound traffic was really quite busy (that’s comparative; this ain’t Toronto), and the sight of hundreds of cars barrelling towards us at 80Km/h down a narrow, dusty road wasn’t really much fun.

Anyway, back at base on what had been a very hot day, we sat in the darkened trailer and put the world to rights. We resisted the temptation to fire up the A/C and endured the slowly cooling evening with the windows open and the extractor fans on.
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As ever, we have no fixed plans for the morrow, other than a lazy start to the day.