Heading to the Maritimes

I last wrote from St. Williams, Ontario on the North Shore of Lake Erie. The area affords quiet, flat backroads for safe cycling. One wonders that there be enough market for the amount of Ginseng that has replaced the former tobacco fields. Campers may not appreciate rain but after overnight showers one can practically hear the corn growing. The Tobacco Exchange is about to be permanently closed illustrating the demise of a once proud industry in this area. In an area famous for fresh water fishing the Port Dover Legion sells fish sticks and frozen fries at its Friday Night Fish Dinners. The sign on the St Williams United Church announced last service June 28^th. There are outdoor services on the pier in Port Rowan. Life is definitely taken at a slower pace here. A local complained about the Mennonites who let others fight their wars and took over family farms that came on the market because with their boys overseas aging families couldn’t make a go of them. He also complained about the effect these new neighbours had on local service clubs and businesses. His take on half a million bikers arriving in Port Dover on Friday the thirteenth was not particularly charitable.

After stopping half a day in Oakville I headed East across the top of Toronto and the next day braved more traffic on Highway 40 through the middle of Ile de Montreal. Packed camping at the Ivy Lea KOA was $55 a night. The next night I camped near Trois-Rivieres after negotiating with a non-English Speaking Quebecois. There’s more traffic on Highway 40 to Quebec City than I once encountered and St Hubert have changed the formula for the sauce that comes with their chicken dinners. It now comes with rice pilaf as well. The roadbed is also in need of repaving or actively being repaved. So far I’ve been lucky not to be held up by major construction projects. After crossing the Saint Lawrence I drove up Highway 20 through the Eastern Townships with a stop for gas and a visit to Subway for lunch. Last time I drove this highway through dense fog following a transport truck for safety. This time I had a brilliantly sunny day. At Rimouski all that was left was a parking site beside a motel parking lot; there was a 30 AMP hook-up, water, and high-speed Wi-Fi.

I encountered stiff cross-winds driving down the Matapedia Valley amid the steeply rolling hills and farmland. At the Bay of Chaleur crossed the bridge into New Brunswick and returned once more to the land of Salt Water. Was accorded lucky to find a campsite in Beresford near Bathurst. Acadians definitely exude joie de vivre. A local complains that this year lobster brings in only $3 a pound—not enough to cover the costs of the catch. Whether or not the price at the markets or on the menu reflect this I have yet to see. My attraction to rain continues and I spent an entire day at Malybel Park watching as shower followed shower, indeed I couldn’t even leave the park without first waiting out a reverberating thunderstorm the next morning. Fortunately I drove out of the rain as I headed south from Bathurst along Highway 8, crossed the Miramichi River and took Highway 11 to Kouchibouguac. Provincial Highways may provide an efficient route from point A to point B but they certainly don’t provide much scenic value however there are fewer speed zones, traffic lights and stretches of broken pavement.

Kouchibouguac National Park protects miles of tidal plains in the middle of New Brunswick’s Acadian Shoreline in a area where there is an uneasy peace existing with the local First Nations Mi’kmaq population. The park boasts 40 miles of biking trails and miles of boardwalks through sand dunes and salt marshes. The sandbars provide protected waters for canoeing and kayaking as well as habitat for a colony of 3 to 6 hundred seals, nesting terns, and protected nesting grounds for the endangered Piping Plover. The river estuaries are home to eels and fish populations. The summer interpretive programme is superlative. After camping at so many campgrounds with sites crammed together it is refreshing to see spacious level sites with long entryways and plenty of woods separating neighbours. This also enhances wildlife viewing opportunities by providing loads of natural habitat. I was pleased to have a mother ruffed grouse and her brood of 5 as neighbours.

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Wash lines are in again even in areas that once banned them by local ordinance. Whether clothing hung out to dry in smoggy Toronto can actually smell fresh is another question.

Halifax Sewage Treatment Plant. How could the failure of one valve cause $333,000,000 worth of damage? Did someone sabotage the place? Is it possible the people running the place could be that incompetent?

Talk about being a marked man. When a bank robber stuffed the loot down the front of his jeans the exploding dye-pack in the bundle of cash turned his crotch brilliant scarlet and left him with second degree powder burns in the area.

News of the Weird

In North Carolina a pregnant bank robber took a cell phone call in the middle of a robbery and became so involved in her call she walked out of the bank ignoring the cash the teller was trying to hand her.

In my book there is no circumstance in which it is other than extremely rude to abandon the person standing in front of you with whom you are dealing as a customer to answer a phone as happened to me at Kouchibouguac National Park today. Keeping that customer waiting while you talk to a fellow employee is right up there behind it as a turnoff.

In a CBC Comedy Podcast today I got a laugh at the suggestion that the seal hunt is good for the economy whether or not the hunt itself is still a profitable undertaking. The hunt attracts celebrity protestors who hire helicopters to get out to the ice flows, occupy expensive rooms and eat at pricy restaurants at a time when tourism is nearly non-existent.

To support the local tobacco industry in a province in China government workers are now required to buy a set number of cartons of cigarettes a month and schools have been allotted a similar quota. Are they actually attempting to reduce their population due to premature death by cancer? Are they taking into consideration the costs of health care?

In Canada our governments are shelling out our tax dollars at the rate of $2,000,000 per auto job they are supposedly protecting. Wouldn’t it be a better investment if they gave us a tax credit for the motor vehicles we buy? Those same automobile manufacturers are renting extra space for the cars they are unable to sell.

I'm Overdo for a Rant

I never believed in Santa Claus because I knew no white dude would come into my neighborhood after dark.

Dick Gregory (1932 - )

 

I've gone into hundreds of [fortune-teller's parlors], and have been told thousands of things, but nobody ever told me I was a policewoman getting ready to arrest her.

New York City detective

 

Psychiatry enables us to correct our faults by confessing our parents' shortcomings.

Laurence J. Peter (1919 - 1988)

 

I've done the calculation and your chances of winning the lottery are identical whether you play or not.

Fran Lebowitz (1950 - )

 

Things could always be worse; for instance, you could be ugly and work in the Post Office.

Adrienne E. Gusoff

 

 

There is no sign marking the crossroads community of Dog’s Nest north of Lake Erie, seems it was such a collectors item township workers couldn’t keep them on the post. 

 

I’m a bit behind in my magazine reading so I recently came across a new tale about the challenges of preparing the Christmas Turkey.  The turkey helpline regularly publishes lists of beleaguered chef’s gaff’s like the lady who called to report that she’d accidentally set her oven on auto-clean with the turkey inside or someone attempting to bake a deep frozen 25 lb bird—2 days defrost time in a refrigerator.  Seems in an ever widening range of methods that have been developed to prepare the perfect bird someone came up with the idea of deep frying it.  Unlike a turducken that takes 12 hours deep frying takes 20 minutes however miss steps with over-heated oil can result in more than a flambéed fowl.  Other hazards include overfilling the container with oil and upset.  Placing an improperly thawed bird in hot oil can cause rather spectacular boil-overs when the hot oil suddenly hits the ice and turns it to steam.  Some things, it would seem, are best left to the professionals.  The same issue of MacLean’s also talked about heritage bronze turkeys but who can afford turkey at $100 a pound?  

 

In honour of Obama’s inauguration Ben and Jerry’s introduced a special Butter Pecan flavour called Yes Pecan with a picture of the prez. 

 

In Germany a scrap metal firm cutting up an old safe found it to contain over ¼ of a million Euros left behind when a bank disposed of it.  OOPS!

 

When did provincial park and conservation campground guides become more about the hazards, do’s and don’ts and even a listing of offences and the fines appertaining thereto than about the parks resources and how to enjoy them?  After reading the park’s brochure for Turkey Point, for example, why would anyone who didn’t already know the place want to go there?

 

What better way to  ride down a bobsled run than in a Chinese Wok or that’s how they do it in Germany of all places. 

 

“Will you have fries with that?”

 

The Golden Arches is not on my list of gourmet stops so I had to read MacLean’s back in Canada to learn that with profits falling and franchises closing up shop in the land of super-sized fries MacDonald’s has started charging patrons for the privilege of squeezing ketchup and vinegar out of those infernal blisterpaks.  Airlines, you may remember have the problem licked by not feeding their patrons in the first place, even bottled water sales are down—the only drink available since onboard reservoirs on planes, trains and boats were discovered to be contaminated and the cost of cleansing them  deemed to be too high. 

 

 

 

Out Again for a Not so Dry Run

Whether or not as a friend asserts I attract rain I am once again seated in my RV listening to the sound of rain on the awning outside my window.  Certainly given the sight of fields upon fields of corn barely a few inches high rain is welcome here north of Lake Erie.  Why it has to arrive at this precise moment is the issue. 

 

In the first place may I make a pitch to those who read these ramblings that they leave a comment or let me know in an E-mail that they do so that I might know that my work is not entirely in vane.  Secondly I would inform you that for the next 3 months as at present I am going to be without internet service for weeks at a time so that my postings and responses will be erratic.  Yes, I have decided that my odyssey will continue, I have not yet exhausted my wanderlust nor have I seen as much of America as I would like to visit. 

 

After sweltering in the Gatineau I crossed back across the Ottawa River for a couple nights in Renfrew.  There was a time when I might have been attracted to the idea of white-water rafting in nearby Beachburg but having done so in an open canoe the idea no longer holds so much appeal.  Instead I spent a good deal of time attempting to catch up with a week’s worth of E-mail and browsing.  On Monday, June 29^th I drove down to Marmora on Highway 7 through rolling farm country and  forests with my host’s words in my ears.  “Highway 7 is like Highway 17, either it’s under construction or it should be.”  For a good part of the trip I drove over newly paved roads so fresh they lacked proper markings.  At least I was fortunate in not being held up by flagmen or jostled across newly built washboard. 

 

In Marmora I was faced by towering thunderheads and failed to get off the highway to visit the local cheese factories or go to a grocery store.  Highway 7 is much improved since I drove it decades ago.  When the rain held off I decided to join the campground hosted ‘hayride’ around the park.    It was not as lame as it first appeared, seeing how people have their seasonal campsites set up from an elevated view was interesting.  The rains did not in fact come until I set out for Oakville next morning. 

 

My return home was for the purpose of tying up loose ends.  It’s discouraging how matters one believed to be dealt with keep coming undone because others can’t seem to get it right the first time.  When cloudbursts returned with a vengeance I decided to find a place to park and sleep in my own bed overnight. 

 

Canada Day Morning I arose early and drove out to the RBG where I found the Centre still in the throes of remodelling and everything else gated and locked.  Giving up on that idea I drove out Governors Rd, Hwy 99, in Dundas toward Brantford and checked out an RV park near Burford—no I had no idea it existed either—and decided it was an old folks home in a trailer  park.  When did Brantford rename the town Gretskyville?  From a large parking lot at the LCBO in Burford I decided to head south to Lake Erie and try out Woodland RV Park in St Williams.  Sad to say its now cheaper to camp in a private campground than in nearby Turkey Point Provincial Park.  I have electrical, water and sewer hook-ups here but no internet access. 

 

St Williams is a crossroads community with a garage, general store, grocery store, Book Nook, and pizzeria.  For anything else it’s a 10 km trip to Turkey Point with its shoppes catering to beachfront clientele or the small town of Port Rowan where the Legion has a weekly Friday Fish Fry.  My campground has a heated swimming pool with adults only hours, a couple of trampolines, the requisite horseshoe pitches which seem to be a campground staple and here in use, a games room with “penny arcade”, and the usual laundry room and play areas.  As suggested by the name the park is surrounded by the St Williams Forest and infested with black flies. 

 

I still need to sort through the clothes in my RV wardrobe and see what else needs to be removed in a weeks time when I drive through Oakville once more but  otherwise I seem to be ready to strike out again.  Before I leave here I should take time to give myself a haircut for the sake of my 88-year-old Aunt in Oakhill.  One of these rainy days I’ll probably spend some time planning a route to Nova Scotia.  This time I’ll probably take a route along New Brunswick’s Atlantic Coastline.