Falling in to Autumn - Saturday

Saturday dawned cold and grey, but at least the rain had stopped. I made my ritual walk over  to the delightfully named Comfort Station for a shower and discovered a slightly tired and scruffy looking shower block but one that was quite clean and that dispensed copious amounts of very hot water, so I was happy. My route there took me past some valiant tent campers, a lot of whom were huddled beneath huge plastic sheets strung between trees, or cooking their breakfasts on open wood fires. It all looked very backwoods but I was so happy to be going back to my heated mansion on wheels. Now here's a thing about tent camping in North America; most tents you buy here have only the most basic of fly sheets, that is a secondary cover over the tent that acts as the primary rain defence. Some fly sheets cover only the dome of the tent, the few square feet at the top, others are more generous but none, including our tent, go all the way to the ground like they would in Europe. I can assume a couple of reasons here, the main one being that perhaps tent manufacturers think that tent campers only go out in the good weather. Now that's a little short sighted because even in the more southerly parts of this continent, it does rain in the summer. The other, more cynical reason is, I think, that it's cost cutting on the part of the manufacturers. Either way, though, most tents you see in campgrounds over here are covered with a makeshift flysheet consisting of a big plastic tarpaulin and lots of string, and the tents at Port Burwell certainly needed extra covering this weekend. Maybe I need to start importing European style tents? Another business opportunity in the making!

Up and about, we'd decided to go to the Green Frog Tearoom (appropriate for Toads, I think) at Pinecroft for an early lunch. On the way, we went through Port Burwell village and had a  look at the leaden skies over the churned up, muddy watered lake; dark grey over light brown. It was cold and windy and not at all the place to be on a wet Saturday morning, which is why we stayed in the the car to watch the Turkey Vultures and Canada Geese about their business on the beach. Port Burwell village seemed nice enough but it looked like it was the deep mid-winter rather than the first day of October with most businesses closed and no one on the streets. Much to the chagrin of a lot of the locals, there is a veritable forest of wind turbines along the north shore of Lake Erie and this area was no exception with the grey uprights stretching out along the headland. The wind was keeping the myriad blades busy and, although it's not the popular view, I think there's a certain majesty in these huge blades spinning around at what seems like a leisurely pace; of course I don't live in the shadow of these things but they look impressive.

The Green Frog Tearoom

Over at the Green Frog Tearoom we had arrived just at the right time. Despite this place being fairly well hidden (we missed the signs twice), it was buzzing with arrivals and cars were jostling for position in the little parking lot. This place is a favourite haunt of “Ladies Who Lunch” and I did notice a distinct lack of my male brethren at the tables. The tearoom itself was in a little wooden building beside a small lake, in a wood; it reminded me a bit of a very small Centerparcs. The decoration inside was twee but the menu wasn't and we enjoyed the home cooked fare very much, even though I did have to pick out the green pepper from my lasagne! We also enjoyed the short walk through the woods that we took afterwards and took great delight in looking at the huge variety of fungi that was growing around and about; see what we get up to at the weekends? It's real rock and roll.

After feeding we headed to Aylmer, a nice little farming town just up the road. I say little, it had two Tim Horton's outlets, a big No Frills and a liquor store, so it wasn't that small. It also had a lovely baker's shop, which we attempted to clear of doughnuts, but it had nowhere to get our propane cylinder refilled, not that was open on a Saturday, anyway. Mrs T had a session calling around various likely places, none of whom seemed able to understand her pronunciation of the word “propane”, but we eventually had to settle on driving into the much larger town of St Thomas, about 15 Kms away. We didn't reckon on having to do a propane chase this weekend.

Up Close

Anyway, propane was eventually found at a place in St Thomas, one that we had been warned not to go to by another retailer who's own propane dispensing system had developed a fault and wasn't working. Goodness, the things people will say to keep your business! With the car full of compressed gas and doughnuts we headed back to Port Burwell, stopping along the way at the Wind Turbine Interpretation Centre (Closed For The Season) to get a close look at a wind turbine, which was as impressive close up as I had imagined. The wind was spinning the three 123 feet long blades quite quickly and there was definitely some noise associated with it but not, as the detractors would have you believe a deafening drone or a “whumping” sound as the blades moved. In fact the normal wind noise drowned out most of the turbine's noise, and the passing cars covered the rest. Still, I'm not sure I’d like to live in the shadow of one of these things.

Canada Geese. Well they would be, wouldn't they?

Back at base the sun had emerged and we sat outside for a while, eating doughnuts as enjoying our leafy glade. The temperature was running at about 10 or 11 degrees Celsius so was a bit too cold to stay inert for any period, so into the Toadmobile we hopped and headed the kilometre or so to the lake front part of the Provincial Park and had half an hour wandering on the beach. With the sun out and the wind not too obvious down there, it was really very nice; this will be a good place to be in high summer I think. There were some nice information boards, too, with data on the birds of prey migration route (which we were now under; that was the reason for the morning's Turkey Vulture sightings) and the exploitation of natural gas reserves under the lake. It was all most informative and made for a really enjoyable afternoon. As I said, ours is a very rock and roll lifestyle.

Armed with plenty of propane, back in Towed Haul we fired up the furnace and had a nice night in. Scrabble, DVDs and beef stew are excellent constituents of a weekend's camping in October, especially as when the weather isn't being very kind. I have to admit to using a sleeping bag as an extra duvet when we hit the hay, which is a bit wimpy I know but with the mercury  at 5C and falling, I though it wise. So we retired, our only full camping day complete, but certainly feeling pretty good for the day's activities. We'd seen no rain, so that was an unexpected bonus, although I felt sure we'd pay for that respite when breaking camp on Sunday.