Toads On The Road - Fin

Monday.

Saw this houseboat in Port Elgin on Saturday - what a brilliant name for a party boat!

Up with the lark, or rather up with the hound; seventy pounds of greyhound doing a good impression of a sack of potatoes on the bed is enough to push anyone out from the covers. Still, as I sat semi-dazed outside and watched through half closed eyes, I did get to see the early risers rushing around and packing up, hoping to get off their site before eight. I've often wondered why there's this indecent haste to leave after a long weekend, especially as most people don't travel far. This morning, though, I overheard one fellow say that he wanted to get home early as he needed to clean his trailer up - fair enough I suppose, but not worth giving up the best of a fabulous day for in my (ever so) humble opinion!

Anyway, as the fug in my head cleared I set to on the morning routine (lazing about and/or taking the hound for a walk) and watched the camp ground empty. I always feel quite deviant sat there making no move to pack up whilst others are scurrying about but, as the weather was marvelous, we were rushing nowhere. 

We ate a leisurely brunch of croissants and jam and, when we did start to pack, were on our way in about half-an-hour - or rather we would have been if the power connector between car and trailer hadn't decided to play up. A few unbent prongs later and we were off.

Wind is the enemy of trailer folk. Towing into a head wind makes your car work hard and the fuel consumption scary, even with a relatively slippery Airstream in tow (I suppose the clue is in the name). On Friday we seemed to be battling an unusual and gusty north-easterly and on the return trip we met with the usual south-westerly, only it was blowing very, very hard. Add the high air temperature and the poor old Toadmobile had a torrid trip home. If I remember correctly, though, these early and late season trips can suffer a bit from the wind and anyway, we managed to get home on a single tank of fuel. Just!

So, the first trip of the season went well. The weather was great, the tadpoles were absent and the hound was the only hindrance - she's bloody heavy when lying on your legs at five in the morning! Now our trailer needs cleaning, inside and out, perhaps I should have left earlier...

Toads On The Road (Reprise)

Sunday.

Sunday was our day off. We did very little but enjoy the fine weather; no car rides, no shopping, just lazing about on or around our little camp site and enjoying food and drink.

I did attempt to get the hound to run a bit on the beach in the morning, but she wasn't up for it, even when goaded by a (particularly ferocious) Jack Russell cross. She just stood up straight, tucked her tail between her legs and waited for it to go away; what an embarrassment.

We took a walk down to the second campground, to see what was what, but it was a bit warm for hiking. Whilst there, we did see a rather fancy portable deck/patio that someone had erected in front of their trailer. These Provincial Parks don't allow full season camping so it wasn't a permanent structure, but this fellow must have his deck/patio stored in his truck and he deploys it when the stabilizers go down on the trailer. I wish we'd taken a photograph. The sheer amount of “stuff” people bring with them when camping is staggering; it's almost as if there's some kind of self-sufficiency thing going on. This weekend we have seen a plethora of red Coleman portable propane barbecues, all shiny and new – clearly Canadian Tire has a special offer on them at the moment. We're obviously very odd as we travel lightly, and apart from the deck chairs and table, we don't bring much at all.

Greasy balls have been occupying my mind, too. I don't normally let these innermost thoughts out but there is a distinct lack of grease on balls in this particular campground. I mean hitch balls of course and I worry that un-greased balls are going to impair people's enjoyment of towing; see how I worry for the less enlightened?

Before I sign off for today I have to mention that my cell phone provider, Bell, has let me know that I only have 10% of my monthly data allowance remaining. It already costs an arm and a leg to have a cell phone in Ontario and I'll be buggered if I'm going to add the other leg by incurring overage charges. Bloody charlatans. I shall work off-line and publish when I get home.

Stay tuned for the final day's fun when I sit around and snigger at people leaving the campground at eight in the morning when check-out is at two in the afternoon!

Toads (Still) On The Road

Saturday.

Willow contemplates her busy day

A cloudy start but my hideous curiosity for anything to do with trailers and tow vehicles had me walking the hound around the camp ground checking up on hitches and weight distribution systems. I'll admit to being a teeny bit disappointed that most people had good set up so I had nothing really to tut at. Tut.

This long weekend is very family centred so even at nine in the morning, the place is ringing to the sound of children's voices, and adults of course - "Desiree! You just come back here and change outta them pyjamas, you got bacon grease all down the fron' o' them!" - or something like that.

Having attended to my ablutions, I set off for the beach to see if I could get the hound to run. It took a while to get there because everyone wanted to stop and talk, and be growled at by the anti-social mutt. She did eventually run a few circuits on the sand but her heart wasn't really in it for some reason. We did watch some kind of baptism going on in the lake, where a girl was dunked into the cold water whilst wearing a party frock, much to the appreciation of a crowd of onlookers. Of course, it may not have been a baptism, just a ritual humiliation - how was one to tell? (Pick the bones out of THAT comment!).

I walked the hound up a huge wooden staircase up the side of a cliff and had a mooch around the second camp ground before heading back to Towed Haul. No Airstreams this weekend but a lot of very old trailers, dusted off for the new season and bursting with kids. Everyone looked to be having a good time so it was clearly worth getting these old RVs on the road again.

Our planned destination for the day was the town of Owen Sound, about 150 Km north of us, on Georgian Bay. If you're a geography buff then you'll know that the bay is an off-shoot of Lake Huron but is the low side of the Niagara Escarpment (Huron being on the higher side) and is very deep. It's great for sailing, apparently, as it doesn't get as stormy as Huron proper, but the water is always very cold. Anyway, we didn't get to Owen Sound, so the geography lesson isn't required!

On the way we were diverted by the Cheese Shop near Kincardine and Lord Elgin's Fish and Chip Restaurant (one of the top five in Canada, apparently) in Port Elgin. I'm not sure that we'd have seen the restaurant had we not stopped for gas, so a big up to Canadian Tire for building their Gas Bar next to it! 

We had to buy takeaway because of the hound, so we found ourselves down by the beach in Port Elgin, enjoying pretty good F&C whilst looking at the bright young things playing volleyball on the sand. Traversing the boardwalk, we were accosted by a fellow with an accent that would make Rab C Nesbitt blush - broad Glaswegian or what? These Scottish types never lose their accents, do they? He'd been in Canada for over forty years and still sounded as if he lived in Glasgow. His car was bedecked with Scottish stuff, just in case we'd missed his accent. We knew that he was a nice fellow though, because Willow didn't growl at him.

Back at base we sank into a grown up's camping weekend, lazing about and doing very little. It was marginally too cold to sit outside, but sitting inside with the trailer's tinted windows cutting down on the light, the evening seemed to draw in really quickly and at eight pm we were both thinking of sleep! Chivvied by Faceboook friends, though, we had some pizza instead and stayed up to watch Cold Comfort Farm on the DVD. It's a rock and roll lifestyle, eh?

We did take the hound out for a walk at eleven-thirty, which is always a good time to stroll around a camp ground. Most people were in bed, with dark trailers and glowing embers in the fire pit. Some hardy souls were still up, though, happily flouting the booze ban and making lots of noise; it is May Two-Four after all.

What will Sunday bring, I wonder? No footy on TV, I know that. We could nip off to the Pizza Place I suppose, they have banks of TVs there, but maybe we'll give it a miss this time; after all, we are supposed to be camping.

Toads On The Road

Friday.

Hello Toad Fans, it's us again and we're back on the road. It's the Victoria Day weekend here, known to the youth of this parish as "May Two-Four", and the traditional start of the camping season. We've left Do-It-All Dave working on the Kitchen Project and headed north to the lakeside beauty of Point Farms Provincial Park; Ontario's West Coast, no less, even if it's Lake Huron that laps the shore rather than the Pacific Ocean. We even had a bit of a result on the Tadpole front as they're domiciled with Pater this weekend, so it's just me and you and a dog named Boo. Or rather me and Deb and a hound named Willow.

Being ever helpful, we hitched up and headed to the Husky Truck Stop (you have to say that in a gravelly voice) in London and deposited the Tadpoles there (not without checking that Pater was there, first) before striking north. It was sort of on our way so we didn't feel too put out, and it gave us an opportunity to take a different route to Point Farms. The countryside north of London was resplendent in the first flush of spring, and as it undulated a bit, which was different from the billiard table world we live in down in Kent County. The roads, even in the country, are on a strict grid pattern so it was drive north for a bit, take a left and go west for a bit then take a right and go north again. In between the lefts and the rights, the roads are arrow straight, as is their way in these parts. 

Even the agriculture was a little different, with real live cows in the fields (as opposed to tobacco and soya), and there were poultry farms every few hundred metres , too. I say poultry farms but they are really just chicken factories; tsk, enough of the social comment. 

Curiously, just as we cleared Goderich, Spring seemed to be lagging behind a bit. Sure, it's about 100Km north of London, and lake side so it's a bit cooler, but the difference in the leaf cover on the trees was startling. It had been 20C in London and was now 13C! Still, no rain yet.

Our site ("The Gross" - number 144) is tree covered, flat and spacious, which is nice. Parking and setting up went smoothly and in no time at all we were walking the hound in the gloaming and looking forward to Tortellini Soup. The Victoria Day weekend is traditionally a time for teenagers to go camping and drink themselves into oblivion, which is why our parsimonious Provincial Burghers insist on an alcohol ban on the camp ground for the whole weekend. Pffft I say. The young shaver on the Park's gate who checked us in said "It's to encourage a family environment". I was going to argue the point and suggest that having a glass of wine with your meal was a pretty familial thing to do but I knew he wouldn't understand - and not just my accent. We enjoyed our wine with our meal all the more for knowing that.

It was early to bed for us both, and even the hound slumped down on here bed without complaint. Fresh air, nice food, wine and fresh air always add up to a heap of zeeeeees. 

Stay tuned, dear reader, for further adventures!