As I'd said in the previous post, it was an early night for me. Snuggled down under the duvet I went out like a light, although two beers had me up again in the wee small hours, but then I slept until six. Normally I would start moving at that point, but I just went deeper under the duvet and slept through until a quarter to nine, which is something I haven't done in a long while. Clearly the cool air of Selkirk Provincial Park is good for aiding restful sleep.
The first order of the day was to shower, which meant a walk through the campground to the Comfort Station. There's only one Comfort Station in this park, and you'd expect to have to wait for a stall but no, all but one was unoccupied and the cleaning team had been in and the whole place, changing area and all, was wet. While that meant drying off the clothes' pegs before hanging my clean stuff up, it also meant it was clean, which was nice.
The shower system itself was old fashioned but it worked. Lots of hot water, albeit discharging from the shower head at quite a leisurely pace. A hot shower is what sets me up for a hard day's camping.
It had been a cool night and the air was still warming as I sat outside with my coffee. The kids in the neighbouring sites were up and about of course, but that's what excitable kids do, and they seemed to be having a great time; I'm not sure the adults were enjoying it as much, though.
I spent the morning working on the Chromebook and enjoying the warming sun. I did deploy the Airstream's awning because looking at the Chromebook's screen was getting a bit difficult in the bright sunshine. That was about the extent of the morning's activities. Breakfast didn't happen, so I went straight to lunch, prepared entirely by Dear Wife, which was lovely.
In the afternoon we ambled down to the lake, noting that the campground was fairly full and people looked quite happy to be sat outside their trailers or their tents just enjoying the fine weather. The day use area of the park is a large grassy field with barbecues and benches, kids' play equipment and even a volleyball net, which looked quite serviceable to me, someone who hasn't played volleyball in many a year.
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| Lake Erie, the yellow blob is Selkirk Provincial Park |
The lake was flat calm, albeit that there were heavy clouds, including a funnel cloud, and rain far out across the water. While only the fourth biggest of the five Great Lakes, Erie is still 241 miles (388 Kilometres) long, and 57 miles (92 kilometres) wide. It has a surface area of 9,990 square miles (25,874 square kilometres). When you're stood on the north shore, you can't see the south shore, although sometimes you can see the steam from the power stations in Cleveland, Ohio, rising up over the horizon. It's an inland sea, and the weather can be quite different out on the lake to that on the shore, as was the case this afternoon. Funnel clouds out on the lake don't have quite the impact that they do on land, unless you're in a small boat of course, but we snapped some photos anyway, just to show how brave we were.
The lake looked a little low, with a flat limestone shelf exposed which allowed us to walk out to the water's edge and take a look. The water wasn't deep and, given that it's late August, was quite likely fairly warm. There was no one out swimming, though, and I wasn't going to start a trend, even though out there away from the beach the water was crystal clear.
The area that Selkirk Park now occupies was once the domain of the Anishinaabe and Salteaux people, before European contact. I don't do it enough, but we should always make land acknowledgements when we visit and enjoy places in modern Canada. We're not far from the Grand River, and the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy First Nations Reserve, the biggest reserve of its type in Ontario. The six nations comprise the Mohawk, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Seneca and Tuscarora people, and the reserve is home to some Lenape as well. A few years ago, we went to a Pow Wow on the Six Nations, and jolly nice it was, too.
I did check on the history of the park itself but couldn't find much of any value, other than the area the park occupies wouldn't make great farmland. Then I found the following paragraph in an Ontario Government paper about the Park's management plan:
"Selkirk Provincial Park commenced operation as a Provincial Park in 1969, primarily to provide recreational opportunities for the anticipated influx of people into the Haldimand-Norfolk Region. However, the increase in local population has not materialized as employment opportunities at the Nanticoke Industrial Complex failed to reach forecasted levels."
That would go some way to explaining why the park doesn't get as busy as some of the other parks in Ontario. Gubmint, eh?
Our evening was spent lounging around, inside the trailer mostly, and just chilling out. I started to watch a film on the Chromebook but couldn't maintain interest in it so I went to bed. That all sounds dull and boring but, when you consider that we've had Charlie on the go this past three months at home, the peace and quiet is something we both appreciate. Being a grandparent is fun, but us oldies really need the break sometimes.
We're going to have to go off site tomorrow to get some petrol; it's much easier to fill the car up when you don't have a thirty-feet long trailer attached. Maybe we'll explore a little, maybe not.
Watch this space for more battery-charging adventures.
