Earl Rowe - Day One

 
The Toads are on the road again, this time heading to Earl Rowe Provincial Park in Alliston, Ontario. It’s 333Km from home, according to Google Maps, which makes it relatively local.


Yes, I know that we’ve just returned from the swamps of Rondeau but this trip was initiated by the need to get the Tadpoles up to their father’s place in Collingwood and Mrs Toad’s desire to make sure they arrived safely. We’re not normally so generous to the man, that is, running the little ones up on a four hour trip at our expense, but we saw the opportunity of delivering them under our control and getting some Tadpole-free camping at a new to us Park, so plans were made.

Because we were already in Camping Mode, Towed Haul required very little preparation, other than a good clean, so it no time we found ourselves rolling off the driveway at home and onto the open road. That said, I and the lady in the Satnav had decided to take an alternative route to the highway and that really spooked the big Tadpole as he thought he was being kidnapped.

There are three grades of Gasoline here in Canada; Regular Unleaded, Super (I think), and Premium. The octane content gets higher with each grade, as does the price. I mention this because I decided to opt for a higher octane type when re-filling, just to see if it made any difference to the gas mileage. Unsubstantiated stories from other Airstreamers had told that it was worth the extra money and I was keen to try it out, so a tankful of Super was added to the Toadmobile and I watched both the consumption figure on the trip computer, and the good old fashioned fuel gauge, with extra interest. When we’re towing we can go about 250Km at full highway speed before needing to fill up so that was going to be a good marker.

The run up the highway towards Toronto was uneventful; the weather was fine, the wind not too bad (not against us, for a change) and the traffic was light (it was a national holiday and the trucks were thin on the ground). We’d planned a lunch stop at the Cambridge Service Centre and apart from being unnecessarily excited about getting parked in an RV Only parking slot there, the gas consumption figures had me smiling. Based on the consumption thus far, I reckoned that we could comfortably go about 375Km on this tankful of gas, and certainly we’d make it to Earl Rowe without filling up again. Now, how much of that improvement on the mileage was down to the better gas and how much was down to the wind conditions, I shall never know, but we did set off for the second and final leg of the trip without topping off the gas tank.

The stop also gave us a chance to do that caravan/trailer thing where you go into your little mobile house, use the facilities and sit down to lunch. It feels almost deviant to do it but, when all’s said and done, you might as well make the most the thing you’re lugging around behind you.

Back on the road, we negotiated Highway 407, the toll road, then made our way up to Brampton on the 410 where we turned off and allowed the lady in the Satnav to guide us across country to Earl Rowe. The roads out in the country are every bit a grid-like as those in the towns so you end up driving an arrow straight road before turning left or right at a junction, driving along another straight road and turning at another junction; on a map, the route looks like a squared off graph. At least on the country roads there was a bit of scenery to see, as well as some hills, both up and down. Hills are an oddity when you come from Chatham, where the land rivals that of a good billiard table, so it’s always quite good to do some “uppiny and downiny” driving.

Then we had arrived, still will some gas in the tank. We dumped out Towed Haul’s waste tanks (we travel with some water in the tanks, which gets sloshed around on the trip, then dump it on arrival), filled up with fresh water and made for our site, number 206 on Fletcher Field. It’s a nice looking park with a man-made lake and a couple of beaches, and was much to chagrin of the Tadpoles who were about to be whisked off for a week of “fun” with their dad. The camping area had a metalled road and the sites were all grass-covered with trees separating each one. We arrived at 206 and had a little debate about where to park on the site when it occurred to us that instead of backing in, as is the norm, we were going to have to drive in car first. It wasn’t a “pull-through” site so when unhitched I had to go forward a little then reverse back past the trailer and park between the back of Towed Haul and the access road. A curious state of affairs but, given that the site was big, certainly posed no problems. Indeed, as I walked with the hound later in the evening, quite a lot of other trailers had been parked sharp end in first. Actually, as a camper I can feel myself full of curiosity and wonderment about such details, but you non-caravan folk must find it all crushingly dull!

So, set up and settled in, we passed the Tadpoles off to their dad. Mrs T prepared the evening meal and I walked the dog. As is often the case, I spoke to some of my fellow campers and had a little gander at the other trailers on site. The campground was tidy, the pitches large and the Park as a whole seemed to have lots to keep us from even going out of the gate.

A couple of pints of beer and a snooze on the sofa later, we made for bed at an early hour. The hound was being a bit anxious again and we knew that occupation of the bed was going to be an issue. Still, the weather was a bit cooler and the presence of a 70lb dog wasn’t going to be so critical.

What to do tomorrow? Rain’s forecast so excursions will be limited. Tune in later and see what we did (or didn’t) do.

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