Tuesday 22 October 2013

Season Finale - Sunday

Rondeau

Goodness! Another good night's sleep, despite a nocturnal tussle with the hound; these cooler nights obviously agree with me. Sunday morning was cold but bright and it was a pleasure to get out and about first thing with the mutt. She is on sensory overload when at Rondeau so is very excitable, especially today when we went over to the bay side of the peninsular and took in the howling gale blowing across the water.

Maybe it's the lateness of the season, but there didn't seem to be a rush for the gates this morning as there often is on a Sunday. Not many people were moving about and certainly no one appeared to be in any rush to pack up. Our immediate neighbour reversed his truck up to his trailer but that was a far as he ventured, so all was quiet on the campground. 

We make a point of not rushing to leave on a Sunday, especially as the official check-out time isn't until 2pm. We breakfasted (sort of) and I left Mrs T to her leisure to take the hound for another run on the beach. It was breezy there as well, but as the sun climbed higher it wasn't cold, even though the lake looked grey and grim. For the first time in ages, I actually saw some other people on the dog beach and, as they had their beast leashed, I collared up our hound, at least while they passed by. Poor old Willow doesn't get to run off-leash much so these trips down to Rondeau are precious and I unleashed her again as soon as they'd passed.

Back at base we started to pack up at about 12.30 and were mid-flow when our neighbour came over to talk. As ever, he was surprised that we used a minivan to tow and he was lamenting that he used to have a much loved Jeep Liberty but had to swap it for a truck to tow his trailer. We explained about our setup and I think he'd have appreciated the help that we'd had when we bought the Airstream. Still, even though it guzzled the gas, he did have a shiny white Dodge RAM truck to play with.

Then we were off, at least after a trip to the dump station. It was really windy on the drive home and the webbing strap on the driver's side towing mirror vibrated to the extent that it jettisoned the little foam pad I put in there to stop it vibrating! Such is life. We'd had a quiet and restful weekend, which is what it's all about really. 

So, that's it for another season. Towed Haul goes off for storage next week and I have a few days in which to clean her up and put everything away. I shall do a season concluding entry in the blog and then we're into the long, cold winter. Roll on 2014!

Sunday 20 October 2013

Season Finale - Saturday

Wonky Ridgetown


A good night's sleep, despite (or maybe because of) the cold night, had me up a little later than usual and heading out for a Provincial Park shower. I've said it many times before but the facilities are excellent here and this morning's clean stall and copious hot water was a pleasure; I have to say that I lingered a bit in there. So much did I linger, in fact, that the lights went out and I had to resort to waving my arms about wildly to get the light's motion sensor control to activate.

Back at Towed Haul the sun was shining so I deployed the awning and brought the table and chairs out of the car. I fed the hound, walked her around the campground (one old Airstream, a few tents and maybe a dozen or more travel trailers to be seen) and then settled down outside with a cup of coffee and watched the world go by. I'd not been in position for more than a couple of minutes when the tell tale pitter patter of rain started up on the awning; it had been forecast but it was still early and I hoped to have a while longer in the dry. The rain soon came down more heavily so the hound and I retired inside and Mrs T and I decided that we'd go into Ridgetown to see what Pinnel's Bakery could offer us in the way of breakfast and/or lunch.

Driving over there along the edge of the lake was an autumnal experience, to be sure. The trees are in their full fall splendour but the rain was heavy, the lake was grey and the horizon loaded with piles of heavy, brooding storm clouds. The fields that had looked so nice in Friday's setting sun now just looked bleak. That aside, of course, Pinnel's was anything but bleak and we came away with a mountain of baked goodies that served us for breakfast, lunch and quite possibly will serve for Sunday's breakfast, too.

On our return to Rondeau we settled indoors to eat, to write and to read. The hound settled down and both Mrs T and I succumbed to our drowziness and managed to get some daytime sleep in. I blame the soporific effect of the gentle sound the rain was making on Towed Haul's roof; more likely it was laziness! (On my part of course, Mrs T has had a hard week at work).

The rain kept up until five in the afternoon but as soon as it cleared, we loaded the hound in the car and made our way down the peninsular to the dog beach. Those loaded clouds were still in evidence on the lake's horizon but without the rain they looked less depressing and more intruiging. The hound went into beach frenzy mode and skittered about all over the place (two poops and two pees; not a bad visit) whilst we sauntered along the water's edge, Mrs T picking up plastic bags, deflated balloons, discarded children's toys and miles of wrapping ribbon that had been used on the aforementioned ballons. We walked maybe five hundred metres in each direction and ended up with a mountain of garbage that we disposed of in the bin. I know Mrs T put an appeal out on Facebook for people to think about the implications of releasing balloons into the air, regardless of the celebration and I'd echo that here; if you'd have seen the quantity of the stuff on the beach you'd have been appalled.

On the good side, though, there were plenty of birds to be seen, including (I think) a young Osprey circling a fish carcass on the beach. It may not have been an Osprey as it looked a little small but it could have been a juvenile.

I always enjoy the drive down to the dog beach as we pass a lot of the Park's cottages. They're privately owned, although on land leased by the Park, and many date back to the 1920s and 1930s. They're holiday places, really, but there were plenty of cars in the driveways and lights in the windows, indicating that there are still more weekends available before the winter sets in. Most of the cottages will be closed up for the winter but some won't and I reckon a few hardy souls will be cottaging at Christmas. There's a movement by Ontario Parks to get rid of the cottages and return the peninsular to a more natural state; it's a policy that seems to be prevalent in North America and there are many cases where entire settlements have been removed so that a park can become "natural" again. At Rondeau I don't know that the cottages are causing any great problems, they're just there and part of the park as far as I can see. Personally I'd leave them alone but up the lease costs so that they became a real money earner for the park, which would be a positive move rather than a negative one. I don't know who'll win this debate but I don't think I'd be looking at buying one of these cottages any time soon.

As the evening drew in I decided to bring the awning in as it was beginning to blow up a bit, and we sat down to supper (Quiche part two) then a couple of movies - Keeping Mum (we'd seen before but love the blackness of it) and Little Voice. When it came time to take the hound out before bed, we stepped out under a cloudless sky that sported the brightest full moon I think I've ever seen. It was easily light enough to read by and my flashlight remained unused for the expedition. Even though it was past midnight, there were still a few people up drinking and chattering the night away; it's quite cheery to see a group of people gathered around the camp fire at that late hour. I'm not sure that the hound was that impressed, though, as the noise was getting her agitated.

So, Saturday night is our last night in Towed Haul for 2013. It's a cold one again, but I'll report on it and on Sunday's progress, when we get home. Stay tuned, folks.

Saturday 19 October 2013

Season Finale - Friday

Well here we are at Rondeau Provincial Park again, this time for the final trip of the season. We've not been out in Towed Haul for a while what with school starting up, visitors and surgery. Still, we're here now and loving being back in our mansion on wheels.

One of the reasons we like Rondeau is that it's so close, which means that there's not too much rushing about on the Friday evening when everyone gets home from school. It was a good job that we weren't in a hurry this particular Friday night as everything went haywire at about three in the afternoon. We were due to have the railings fitted to the staircase after lunch but the guys doing the work arrived some hours later than agreed. Then the tadpoles' father arrived to take them off for the weekend, which was quickly followed by the youngest of the small fry arriving home from school and having a meltdown about not going away with her dad. The upshot of it all was that we didn't get hitched up and rolling until gone five and, with a water tank fill and waste tank dump to do on arrival at the park, we were going to be setting up in the gathering darkness, which is never a fun thing to do.

That apart, it was nice to be heading down to the lake on a fine, if rapidly cooling, Friday evening. The sun was bright and the autumn colour was vivid in the stands of trees on the otherwise quite featureless landscape. It was also nice to see the fields in a state of flux, too, with some remnants of seed corn still about, and a lot of recently ploughed acreage now that the soy crop has been gathered. It may not be a spectacular part of the country here, but it's not without its charms.

Our site for the weekend is number seventy-two; a new one for us. The photographs on the web site didn't show that the pad, the bit where you park your trailer, was on a fair slope down away from the access road. Not that this was a problem in any real sense, it's just that you have to make sure that you can get enough height on the tongue jack to actually unhitch the car, given that it's higher than the trailer on the slope. As it turned out, it was OK and even though we needed a little bit of side to side levelling, too, we were unhitched quite quickly and trying our best to get things set up as the darkness descended. I forgot to shut the rear storage compartment door and left the light on in there so, some hours later when we were wondering where all the bugs were coming from from, I realised my error. If you're wondering, the rear storage compartment opens to the outside but you can also access it from under the rear bed, which where all the greenfly were coming from.

One of the big disadvantages of not having the trailer move from your driveway for eight weeks is that the water gathered in the sewage tank from my efforts at cleaning after our last trip had had a nice long time to stand stagnant and gain an unearthly but earthy aroma. Opening the flush valve on the toilet sent up a ghastly smell that was only remedied with the application of some tank santizer and an hour with the extractor fan on. I think I have to dump even cleaning water from the tank if we're not going to use the trailer for any period; the reason it has to be drained fully before winter storage, I think.

Having recovered from our brief gassing, we feasted on Quiche, salad and boiled potatoes before setting down to watch that highbrow movie, The Inbetweeners; classic intellectual entertainment for a cold Friday evening. The temperature was in single figures outside, for the first time since the spring, so we had to resort to firing up the furnace just to get the inside temperature a tad more bearable before settling down. We had, somewhat fortunately, thought to bring the big duvet so at least once in bed we weren't going to freeze. 

Just before turning in, we did give the hound a quick spin around the campground and were surprised at the number of people not only in trailers this late in the season, but in tents, too. There were a few campfires to be seen and some people out socializing over a beer or three, despite the weather. There are three trailers gathered on one site at the moment, facing inwards like wagons heading west across the Great Plains. They did have the benefit of not one but two seven foot tall light up palm trees, something the early American settlers didn't have, but I guess that's progress, isn't it?

We have nothing much planned for Saturday, other than to get the hound running on the beach, so tomorrow's blog may be a trifle thin. "Hurrah" I hear you say. Stay tuned for 2013's penultimate camping day.