Almost an Island

 Our next camping adventure has taken us to Presqu'ile Provincial Park. For those of you who do not understand French, Presqu'ile is literally translated to: almost an island.Because there is land on three sides of Presqu'ile it is more of a peninsula, surrounded by the town of Brighton, Ontario on one side and Lake Ontario on the other, it ends in a point which is called Lighthouse Lane as there lies the oldest operating lighthouse in Ontario. 

To say this park is beautiful is an understatement. When you look out onto Lake Ontario, with the vast expanse of water, it feels like you have been dropped into Paradise. Bike paths and walking paths line the water from the lighthouse to Owen Point, the home of many species of shorebirds, swans, gulls, commerants and geese which you can hear crying and calling from a far distance, probably a distance of 20 km, end to end. 

Although we do not come here often, I always try to make it up here for Labour Day weekend, which is entitled Monarchs and Migrants. Every Labour thousands of butterflies gather at Lighthouse Point in order to catch the winds that will aid them in their journey to Mexico for the winter. On Saturday and Sunday, campers have a chance to tag a monarch and personally send it off on its journey. The sight of  hundreds of monarch butterflies flying around you is an almost spiritual thing. I am always filled with such joy to see them, flying around. They also set up nets to capture and band the migrating songbirds to track their journies to the south. If you are lucky, they will let you hold the little birds as they tag them and release them back to the wild. So awesome.

We arrived here Wednesday and have already seen many monarchs flying around, feeding on flowers for the nectar to give them energy to fly south. Most go to a place in Mexico where they will overwinter and return to the north where they mate and die, producing the next generation of Monarchs. Natures circle of life. There are some songbirds left, but are hard to spot. In general we do not see much wildlife here, but last night, around eleven o'clock we had a skunk come into our site and go into the fire pit, where the previous tenants had left unburnt food. Luckily Finnegan, my dog did not see it or smell it, he was inside asleep.It stayed away from us, and we stayed away from it, when he was finished he left and went into the bush.

Today dawned clear and I was able to have a long bike ride along the water to Owen Point and beyond to the Park store. I have already been on two walks and will be doing many more before the day ends. I have waded in the water, and hopefully have some swims, the water is cool but not unswimmable.

Stay tuned for all my adventures here!!

A 'Fair' Tradition

Almost every year, (with the odd exception) since I was a child in the sixties, I would attend our city's annual fair. It's been named many things over the years, and changed in many ways, but to me it will always be the Ottawa 'Ex'. It's a place of sights and smells you don't ever forget: onions and pogos, Tiny Tom donuts and French fries from the chip wagons, and fresh squeezed lemonade. The Ex normally ran every mid August for 10 days. As kids, we would wait all summer in anticipation for this event with a bittersweet knowledge that the start of school wasn't long after the Ex finished.

 Back in the sixties, it was more of an agricultural exposition, lots of horse shows and livestock, (who can forget the cattle castle) to buildings full of samples of baking and sewing and quilts, which we would have to endure before we could hit the midway. I hated the buildings and still do to this day. 

How I loved the Ex!! I would be excited for weeks before.   

Mom and my Aunt Lois would take us along with my cousins, one of who was my age. As we got a little older Denise and I would be allowed to spend time by ourselves on the midway. We would ride the double Ferris wheel, Wild Mouse, Roundup, Scrambler, and the Tilt-a-whirl, then join them for supper. You would fight your way through the Pure Food Building to get a seat and to eat the greasiest, most delicious food on earth.  My favorite part was playing the games to win stuffed animals. How I loved the stuffies (and still do!!). Every year it was a quest to win one bigger than the year before, and you only hoped you didn't win the big one too early in the day and have to carry it on all the rides. We would stay till it was dark, then on the way out we would be allowed to get a candy apple or floss to take home. We would go home sore and tired, but happy. It was the dirtiest, smelliest, wasp infested place I had ever been in but we couldn't wait till next year to do it all again. 

As a teenager, I went with friends, scouring the midway looking for boys or if you were lucky, you had a boyfriend to take you and cuddle up to on rides and win all the cool stuffed animals. 

The tradition continued once I had my own child, and she delighted in it too. Mike and I would take April and drop a small fortune on the midway and games!! As my daughter April grew older, Mike stopped coming and he was replaced by my younger sister, Maggie, now with her two small boys Alex and Andrew and my mother, would traipse around till we were lame. As the years went by, Mom grew too old to go, so it was me, April and Maggie and her boys to carry on the tradition. When April had her son Jackson he joined us also. Four generations of Ex lovers. How awesome! 

The city closed down the Ex at Landsdowne Park about four years ago, much to our sorrow. 

Someone came up with the Midway Magic, a much smaller fair, at another location in Ottawa and we alI had to be there. It was as much fun as far as I was concerned.The Magic was moved 3 years ago to yet another location, at Rideau Carleton raceway. One year we had a big group, my brother and his wife and grand kids, myself, Maggie and Andrew, and April and Jack. Last year, we did not attend but instead, Mike and I along with April and Jack, went to the Carp fair, but I did not find this as exciting. 

So this year when a new incarnation, called the Capital Fair came to Rideau Carleton raceway we were determined to go. My husband Mike, my daughter April and new beau Dave along with Jack, made the trek to the fair. I will admit, I was as excited as ever. Although smaller than the Ex, the fair had all the elements, the greasy food, the sights, the smells, the midway and the games. Jack was excited to find out he was now tall enough to ride the big kids rides and had Grandpa Mike on the fireball, a ride which goes upside down and suspends you in mid air. I figured that might be the end for Grandpa Mike or that Jack would lose his cookies, but they both emerged intact and smiling after it was over. Jack got me to go on the Musik, a ride that spins around at great speeds both forward and backward and the centrifical force pushes the person on the right (Jack) into the person on the left (me) and squishes them. This is the fun part of the ride. Jack laughed hysterically, I had a ball. Jack and his Mom and Dave did the bumper cars, April nearly getting whiplash. 

We ate the usual greasy foods, had our Tiny Tom donuts, played Crown and Anchor, the horserace game and the usual: water race and ball throwing and of course, the birthday game, which April won a giant stuffed Moose on her very first try buy putting the marker on Daves birthday month of December. 

We left full of stomach and sore of feet,(Mike dragged me through some buildings) and I felt like I had been back again to my beloved "Ex". 

Some traditions are worth continuing, no matter how old you may be.

A Trip Back In Time

On Wednesday, August 6, my daughter April, grandson Jack, husband Mike and I decided to take a trip to Upper Canada Village, an attraction near Morrisburg, Ontario which depicts the manner in which people lived in the late 1800's. I have been to UCV several times in my life, once with my parents which I don't remember, and another with my class in elementary school nearly fifty years ago. Almost every school in Ontario has taken class trips there and continues to do so to this day.

The draw at UCV is the various buildings and methods which early settlers used to conduct their everyday chores and business and lived their lives. There is a church and school, mansions and working man quarters, bakery, cheese making factory, tin smith, and blacksmith, lumber mill, flour mill, restaurants, broom makers, dressmakers and a complete farm with horses, pigs, cattle etc. as there would have been in the villages at that time. You can go for train rides, horse-drawn wagon rides, milk cows, view different trades in action. All which was part of everyday life in the eighteen hundreds.

As a child, fifty years ago, I could scarcely imagine all the manual labour it took to produce a loaf of bread, get lumber, shoe horses and live in that labour intensive, yet simple society. I can only imagine that to my grandson Jack, it must all seem incredible. I know on this visit I certainly could appreciate it much more than I did back when I visited as a child. One wonders how those people endured such hardship and toil, but that was what life was, hard work, good home grown food and a deep sense of community.

I couldn't help but reflect on the irony of it all. The gardens they grew and ate from, the unbleached flour, the homemade bread, is today what we call 'organic' and the way of life 'sustainable' by using the power of nature to run machines. ' Living off the land ' is today, to be envied. It has taken us nearly 200 years to discover that they had it right all along. I ask myself, would I go back in that time, if I could? What kind of person would I have been if I had lived in that era?

If you get nothing out of a trip to this village which time has forgotten, you surely get an appreciation for what you have now and a bit of nostalgia for the simpleness of what life used to be.

A Reason for Everything

Let me start by saying that throughout my life I have firmly believed that things happen for a reason. Sometimes we can clearly see the reason and other times it remains a mystery. When faced with a decision, we can rationalize and debate, discuss the pros and the cons, then arrive at a decision or course of action we feel is best. We have our own reasons, but then fate can show you that there was another reason in store for you that you hadn't even considered. I got the proof of that today.

We have an above ground swimming pool that must be taken down for the winter. It is a nice size, 15ft around and 48 inches deep. It has a metal frame with a plastic liner, what I would describe as just this side of flimsy. We bought this pool brand new last year to replace one that we had had for the past seven seasons. You can't dive in it, you can't really frolic, but you can get wet and I can swim around in that pool for hours on end. I love the water. Nothing delighted me more these last years than coming home from work and jumping in that pool while my husband bar-b-qued dinner. But I work no more. I live the good life of retirement. But in that good life, some things have to change. We decided to spend mid-May to mid-September (prime pool time) camping at different spots across Ontario. The only exception was that we would be home for four weeks in August for various engagements we had.

So, the dilema was whether or not to put up the pool. It's not that it's a terrible amount of work, but the cost of the water, the power to run it, and the liability of leaving the pool unattended for a long period made us think twice about putting it up. We had just returned from a wonderful 5 weeks in Florida where I swam every day in a heated pool (ours is not heated), and the weather was still cold here. I knew even if the pool was up I would not be able to swim in it before we returned in August. So we made a pact, my hubby and I, no pool and no bitching about it when we returned. Sounded like a good plan, and since I was not swim deprived, I figured, no problem, I can live without it for a few weeks. 

Fast forward to August. We returned from almost 3 months of the coolest, wettest camping we had ever experienced. Upon returning to our pool-less home, we were hit with a heat wave that we never had while camping. During the first three days of it, I was OK with no pool. I was busy unpacking, groceries, visiting, yada,yada, but today, the fourth day, when I was sweating up a storm in the backyard, I must admit, I wanted to re-live that decision. I wanted my pool. I lamented to my neighbour that while it doesn't make sense to put it up now, I sure wished it was up. So much for pacts and reasonable thinking, I just wanted to feel that silky salt water on my skin and swim around in circles till I was dizzy. But I squashed the urge, kept my mouth shut and went about my day. In the afternoon, the humidity of the last four days built up enough to cause a short but violent thunderstorm, which we watched from our garage at the front of the house. Meanwhile, in the backyard, whether by wind or lightening, one of the trees split apart and came crashing down right on the inner edge of the pad for the pool. We happened to look out our patio door and see this giant branch sitting where the pool would normally be. Had the pool been up, it would probably have been totalled.

I rest my case, there truly is a reason for everything.