Month: November 2024

Since Bob and I were wanting to visit a local market, Bob found us a couple of parks/trails to explore with Jack that were in the same direction. We started at Millennium Forest Park in the nearby community of Lincoln, which has a loop walking path through the park as well as 135 different commemorative trees that were planted as part of a Millennium celebration project. The park also had some winged visitors that were pointed out to us by a couple of other walkers when we first arrived.

We stayed parked at the park and just walked up the street to head to a section of the Waterfront Trail that goes through the neighborhood to (wait for it) the waterfront of Lake Ontario.

Finally, we visited the Grand Oak Market. It’s a cute market that sells local goods, gifts, as well as their owned baked goods, and you can eat lunch there as well.

We didn’t shop today but may head back for lunch sometime.

Bob and I took Jack to a new (to us) park for another local walk about in St Catharines. It was a 10 minute drive to what is now Richard Pierpoint Park. It was originally called Centennial Gardens and was unveiled in 1976 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Canada.

In 2021, the park was renamed after Richard Pierpoint, one of Canada’s most famous Black loyalists, and who lived on land that is now part of the park. The park contains a lovely trail (apparently a portion of the Merritt Trail (though we can’t make it link up with the other sections we’ve been on) and a disc golf course. There was supposedly a totem pole given for the Centennial celebration, but is not currently there or is very short, as we didn’t see it.

That’s not illegal right?

Happy belated Veterans Day or Remembrance Day. Yesterday, Bob and I took Jack for a short neighborhood walk on the Terry Fox Trail. Terry Fox, as I imagine all Canadians and many runners everywhere know, was a young Canadian stricken with cancer who raised funds for cancer through his attempt (after having one leg amputated) to run across Canada.

This trail wasn’t nearly so ambitious, but it made for a nice outing in a new area of St Catharines before we headed over to a local mall to buy some new running shoes for Beth and check out a new (to us) grocery store, Zehrs, to pick up some provisions for dinner.

Today, we tried a trail that we had noticed the last time we were here but didn’t try. It’s the 12 Mile Creek Trail, which is also part of the Merritt Trail, which in parts runs concurrently with the Bruce Trail. It’s all very confusing, but the takeaway for us is that this area is crazy with trails, which is okay with us.

On Friday, we returned to the Merritt Trail to walk the other direction from Glendale Avenue. We passed some historical markers, walked through a pretty park along the old locks, and along a road near a nice neighborhood.

Yesterday, we got out for a second walk with Jack in the late morning ahead of the predicted rain. We just took him to a trail around a school and into a neighborhood fairly close to the house. I didn’t bring my camera, as I didn’t think it would be much, and the trail was fine but not special. But on the way to the start, we saw a young couple pushing a stroller and walking their cat on a leash. Missed pic opportunity.

Yesterday afternoon we decided to get out to visit one of the wineries we had visited last time, Megalomaniac. We were planning to go anyway, but Bob saw on their website that during November, you could get a free tasting at the bar if you said you were a Megalomaniac fan. Not to be cheap (well why not?), but that sounded good to us. We each got supposedly 2oz (but think it was more) of 3 of their wines. We each tried different ones, so we could try more of them. We had a chat with the nice pourer, enjoyed the wines, and perused the fun wine-themed merchandise. My favorites were a magnet that said, “What wine goes with laundry?” And a tote bag that read, “Corks are for quitters.” It was a (they have great names for their wines) lovely outing, all for the cost of a lovely bottle of Pompous red wine.

A quick note for history, there was an election in the US Tuesday, November 5th. I fear the results will make it one of the few dates that Bob and I will always remember exactly where we were at and what we were doing when they (the results) were announced. We did little yesterday except try to process.

Today, we needed to get out for a walk to try to regain a sense of normalcy. We walked a short portion of the Merritt Trail with Jack. The full trail is 10.1k and is a combination of paved and off-road trails, with some connector portions on neighborhood sidewalks. It runs partly along an older version of the current Welland Canal system.

Well, we actually absentee voted for real US candidates running in local, state, and national elections, but we (or at least me) are trying very hard not to think of that hot mess right now, so on with today’s events.

Grimsby, Ontario, is a town of about 29,000 on Lake Ontario at the eastern end of the Hamilton Census Metropolitan Area. It is named after a fishing town in England, or so says Wikipedia. We went to check out a couple of parks as well as their downtown area.

It was a beautiful day, warm and windy. High of 70+ F, although not quite that warm while we were out. Jack scored a dog biscuit from a female store owner in Grimsby. He has a way about him. Bob and I were left treatless.

We began our walkabout in Covenant Park, just off of Main Street. It has a great play area, pool, gazebo, and colorful picnic tables. To continue the local creek numbering system, the park lies along Forty Mile Creek. A helpful sign discussed the park’s history and that it is currently used for local festivals.

After visiting the downtown, we drove to Murray Street Park along Lake Ontario. It was small but stunning.

Bob, Jack, and I found a new trail to walk today. It’s in the Rockway Nature Conservation Area, less than three miles from the house and across the road from the Rockway Golf Course and Rockway Vineyards. It was a cloudy but relatively warm walk (in the 50s) with a few sprinkles of rain during our outing.

While the trail was well marked, there was no map of the trail at the trailhead we started from, so we didn’t know how long it was our where it might go. However, having had a quiet day yesterday, we were all ready for a walk, we had the trail to ourselves, and we got a fun surprise at the end.

Yesterday, Bob and I revisited a lovely park near Brock University for a walk with Jack. We returned to the Glenridge Quarry Naturalization Site, a former limestone quarry and then municipal landfill, which has been transformed into a naturalization site with a trail system as well as a children’s play/education area and memorial garden.

Happy November! It has turned much cooler here. As I write this, the temperature is 51 F, but the feel-like temp is 38 due to the wind. However, the upcoming forecasts seems to indicate that we may not be completely done with the warm weather. We’ll see. We’ve had nothing to complain about so far.

We did another short walk on the Bruce Trail with Jack yesterday. Today, we drove to the nearby community of Jordan for our first walkabout there for this sit. When we were here two years ago, there was some street closures due to road refurbishments, so it was nice to see the results. It’s got a very cute few block shopping, dining, hotel area.

After our short tour in town, we drove out of town just a bit to a small green space, that the community seems to have big plans for.

We then drove back towards St Catharines but stopped in Jordan Station, a smaller community, to reacquaint ourselves with the Upper Canada Cheese Company. A cute store that sells their cheeses along with a number of locally made and other specialty products.