Falling in to Autumn - Sunday

Sunday mornings are bittersweet affairs when weekend camping. You have nothing to rush about for but you know you’re going to have to leave; the ecstasy and the pain. Talking of pain, it was taters outside, only 5C when I staggered out of bed and the sun had been up an hour by then, that’s not right for October 2^nd. Still, it made my short walk to the comfort station quite bracing and make me keep up a reasonable pace as I took a stroll around the site after showering.

Such a neat and tidy site!

Lunch was early so that we could be making tracks as checkout was 2pm, but we just couldn’t really raise the tempo to get an earlier start, after all why should we?

Breaking camp and hitching up is getting to be quite an easy task these days, especially when it’s just us two. We’re tidy campers so there wasn’t a great deal to pack up outside and we were hitched up and ready to go just as the rain started. We were accosted by a fellow camper who made the usual enquiries about how we could tow such a heavy trailer with our Minivan but I’m also getting used to that so I told him about our modifications and showed him the hitch and he seemed suitably impressed. To be fair, no one has said “you can’t tow that with that” but I still enjoy seeing people looking impressed. Of course, flushed with my own comprehensive towing knowledge, I set off for the dumping station having forgotten to fit the extension mirrors to the car. Doh!

Dumping was a thrill this time because I think the campground’s sewer holding tank was quite full. When I pulled on the valve to empty the poo tank, the horrible brown soup came back up the access pipe in the ground a bit and I had to be sharp to get my feet out of the way in time. However, these dumping stations are designed to cope with this sort of thing so the application of some water from the attendant flushing hose had the problem sorted. That’s the first time that’s happened, which isn’t bad for a whole season.

Back on the road and the rain and wind were as bad as ever as we headed west again. I missed the turn to get back to the Highway but we decided that we’d stay on the minor road all the way home today. Even though it’d take longer, we’d save gas and have a more interesting drive and so it turned out to be. We stayed on what is known as the Talbot Trail and enjoyed the unfamiliar towns on the way and smiled knowingly as the average fuel use figure crept slowly downward (given that it was recording litres per 100 kilometres where a lower number is better). As we progressed, even the rain cleared away.

Despite the weather, that was a pretty good weekend. We really don’t deserve the rain and the wind and the cold, it’s been a pretty wet season so I thought we’d be due a bit of a break from that. Still, we’ll probably have one more run out this season, before we have to put our baby into hibernation. Who do I have to see about getting some fine and dry weather arranged?  

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.

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.