We don't usually camp in the school holidays. Camp sites can be hard to come by, and for many families it's the only chance they get to take the kids away, so we don't take places that would be better used. But when we were planning earlier in the year, I thought about Selkirk Provincial Park, a small and surprisingly unpopular camping park on the northern shore of Lake Erie. Ten minutes on the Ontario Parks website and I had divined that I could get a site, the same site we'd been to twice before, for four nights before the Labour Day weekend. There were plenty of other spaces available, too, which meant we weren't doing some family out of a trip, so I pressed the go button.
Quite why Selkirk is not much favoured is a bit of a mystery because it's really nice. There's a little beach, picnic areas, and an inlet off the lake that's good for kids to learn to enjoy the water. Certainly there are no long trails, or even too many diversions in the area, but it's pretty and quiet, and just the place for a peaceful break.
Our travel preparations were knocked a little off kilter with some last minute running around for the grand-baby. But Towed Haul was clean and ready to be filled with supplies on the Monday of our departure, so we spent the morning loading up. The summer's been very warm, but our travelling day was set to be around 20C, part cloud, part sun, and no threat of rain, so looking quite good. Selkirk is about a three hour drive from home, longer than we've done in a while, so I made sure there was some fresh water in the tank in order that we could use the onboard facilities if we had to.
Selkirk is also on the old Highway Three, a route that follows the shore of the lake all the way from the St, Claire River in the west, to the Niagara River in the east. We joined it at Blenheim, just about twenty minutes from home, and apart from dipping south of St Thomas, we stayed on "Number Three" for most of the run. It's not one continuous straight road, though, as there are the habitual right-angle turns every know and again as the road skirts the original land grants, and crosses north-south roads that have become more important over the years. There are arrow-straight sections of course, but there are also some nice "dips and swoops", and some challenging bends for us trailer towing people. There are also quite a few little settlements to pass through, which brings the speed down, and breaks up the field after field vista of soya beans and corn. It's actually a really pleasant drive, with or without the two and a half tons of metal behind us, and makes a change from the flat, straight roads of Chatham-Kent.
As we progressed and made our way into Norfolk County, the crops in the field changed markedly, apparently because the well-drained sandy loam of that county supports other things. Tobacco is one of the major cash crops, a paler variety than in Kent County, and dried in small sheds rather than the smoke barns that cure the darker tobacco grown in our part of the Province. There's a lot of asparagus (sandy loam again), and ginseng, a more recent introduction the area. Ginseng is grown in the shade, so there are fields filled with dark netting on metal frames with the rows of plants laid out below. I'm not sure what the market is for ginseng, but the farmers of Norfolk County seem to be able to make a profit on it.
As we approached the park, we skirted north of Nanticoke, a curious hive of industrial activity in the agricultural landscape. Nanticoke fronts Lake Erie and is home to a huge Stelco steel mill and an Ontario Power electricity generation station. I guess that steel milling supplies are brought in and out of the plant using the lake and the mass of freighters that ply the Great Lakes Waterway, which makes sense. The power station is powered by natural gas these days, but I'd bet that it was once coal, which would also have been transported on the water. Selkirk Park is just ten kilometres east of Nanticoke, but once in the park you'd never know it existed.
We arrived after about three hours and ten minutes driving, and I went into the little park office and shop to register. I'd already checked in online so it was just a case of confirmation. I was expecting some paper park's permits but no, apparently it's all paper-free at Selkirk these days. I haven't seen any Park's staff wandering around, but I'd imagine that they do a random check on camp site occupation. I'm all for it, but I hope people don't abuse the system.
Having dumped the holding tanks of the water I'd used in cleaning the camper, we found our site, a pull-through, and spent an age deciding where to park the Airstream. It made sense to put the "street side" of the camper to the power and water outlets, and that left a big usable space in front. Then we had a debate about whether the trailer was level, from side to side, and decided it wasn't. We deployed our "Lego Blocks", little plastic blocks that you can put under the wheels, and backed onto them. Still more debate ensued and we decided all was well, but only when we had unhitched from the Toadmobile did we decide that we'd over-done the levelling and Towed Haul was still on a slant. Too late, though, I wasn't going to hitch up again. I was going to be the first to fall out of bed as a result of any level issues.
We did notice, in among the Hop trees, a super-sized wasp's nest that was still clearly in use. With our newfound understanding of the insects that live around Ontario's native trees and plants, we didn't exclaim even the tiniest of shrieks of alarm. It was good to know that the nest was there, but if we don't bother the wasps, I doubt that they'll bother us.
The campground was fairly busy, a few empty sites but not many. There were lots of families, too, which is always good to see. The kids all seemed to be enjoying their camping, judging by the noise, but there's something quite comfortable about the sound of children enjoying themselves, or at least there is when there's a bit of distance between us and them!
We pitched our bug tent, the Pleasure Dome, and after dinner sat out in it until we both felt the cool air was too much. All our recent camping trips have been in the blazing heat of the early summer, so it was quite a turn up for us to start feeling cold. As the night time temperatures were set to dip to 12C, we broke out the duvet as well.
It was only about 10pm when I gave up the unequal struggle and went to bed. A couple of beers certainly hastened my move to the bed, but I was feeling a bit pooped after the drive.
We have three full days ahead of us at Selkirk and plan to do very little. Let's hope we achieve that lofty aim.
As a postscript to this entry, I should mention that this travel day was, coincidentally, our sixteenth wedding anniversary, so congratulations to us.
The sites at Selkirk are mostly pull-throughs, and are universally grassy. Unfortunately, on site 114 someone had obviously been camped for a while (two-week maximum) and there was a big, patio mat-shaped square that was completely devoid of grass. Those reprobates had clearly never been in the Scouts and learned that you take up or move your mat every couple of days. Still, we covered the area with our patio mat and it looked a wee bit better.
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