Falling into Autumn - Friday

It's the end of September and we're still set on camping. Of course, for us northerners this is the end of the season; the temperature is dropping, as are the leaves, and many of our fellow north country trailer types have already put their babies into hibernation for the winter. We, though, are determined to get some more outdoor living done before our winter closes in. Oh, and the City council say that we can't have Towed Haul parked on the drive over the winter!

Our destination this weekend is Port Burwell Provincial Park, on the north coast of Lake Erie about 40 minutes south of London. It's around a two hour run for us, which is really local considering some of our jaunts this year.

Port Burwell. Not my picture 'cos it was almost dark when we arrived.

The weather forecast was looking a bit mediocre, to say the least. Mind you, the forecast and what actually transpires are two different things, especially when this last week's forecasting has been so woeful; I was clinging to hope. For Friday we were promised rain, a strong northerly wind and plunging temperatures and guess what? Rain, wind and plunging temperatures. Why did the forecasters have to get it right today? Anyway, loading and hitching up was done in the rain and the gathering wind and as we set out through Chatham, the flags straining on their poles outside the car dealerships were an ominous sign. By the time we hit the highway I was glad that I'd tightened up the anti-sway bars on the hitch, as our northerly wind was screaming across the road and the whole rig was being pulled sideways. Now that sounds dramatic but the towing properties of Airstream trailers mean that apart from a slight squint on the steering, Towed Haul and the Toadmobile stayed pretty solid and were as nothing compared to the tractor/trailer units that were being buffeted all over the place, they being taller, longer and squarer than us. The rain didn't help, either, making the extension mirrors all but unusable and the visibility very poor with the spray from the big trucks. Were we downhearted, though? Of course not, with the prospect of a tadpole-free weekend ahead of us, we were all happiness and laughter!

So we barrelled along the highway amidst the spray and the veering trucks, shouting over the  wind noise coming through the extension mirrors and looking forward to a change of scene. I took great delight in overriding the Satnav as he tried to send us via Port Stanley, something I was confident of doing having done my navigation homework, and came off the highway up near London, getting away from the spray and, for some of the remainder of the trip, converting the cross wind to a tail wind. The countryside all along the lake's shore is fairly flat but delightfully bucolic, with neat farms and small towns along the arrow straight roads. We made Port Burwell in reasonable time and, having registered at the campground gatehouse, made our way through the wooded camp site to find our pitch, number 151. There were a few other people about, in tents and trailers, but our little corner seemed fairly quite and we were unmolested as we backed Towed Haul straight onto the site in one, fluid movement. I mention that because we're in grave danger of looking a bit like seasoned campers with our trailer parking these days; sure the site was good, but straight in with no jiggling about is something to be proud of!

The campground was indeed very pleasant, with wide spaced sites along narrow but good quality loop roads. Autumn had arrived here, though, with a complete covering of leaves on the ground and a constant fall going on whilst we worked to set up. The wind was blowing the trees high up but down on the ground it wasn't too bad, apart from the occasional crack and crash of a large bough coming to earth, something I mentally crossed my fingers about as I looked at Towed Haul's ever so slightly dented aluminium skin.

The Toadmobile and Towed Haul at Port Burwell

Friday evenings at this time of year don't give you a lot of time for exploring before darkness descends, so we settled into Towed Haul, set up the little electric heater (the one with the big orange glow) and tucked into our traditional Friday night Toad meal of baked potatoes and baked beans. Sadly tonight we were lacking our usual English Heinz beans as the lady in the shop in town didn't know her HP from her Heinz, but at least they weren't the local variety, so all was well. We were a little wary of firing up the propane powered central heating system (known as a furnace, here) on board as we had one empty gas cylinder and didn't know the state of the second, so we stuck with the little electric heater for as long as we could. Despite its jolly orange glow, it wasn't really enough, though, as we started to feel the cold creeping in whilst we watched a DVD into the night and eventually succumbed to the furnace with a thought that we'd seek out a propane refill in the morning, just to be on the safe side.

We were quite snug as we turned in for the night, the rain drumming out an uneven beat on the roof and the temperature dropping like a stone outside. But hey, this is camping Toad-style, so like Scouts all over the world, we were prepared.