Peckish Travels

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.

After a rainy Tuesday, today was warm and windy, with a high of 72 F. Lovely day for exploring. We headed out to the Decew House Heritage Park to walk a section of the renowned Bruce Trail. The full Bruce Trail is over 550 miles long, and there are another 250 miles of associated side trails. It runs through Southern Ontario from the Niagara River to the tip of Tobermory, Ontario.

We followed the well-signed trail that ran along Lake Moodie. While we didn’t photo them, this portion of the trail was being used by a fair number of others while we were there.

On the walk back to the park, we noticed this, the importance of which was explained later.

As mentioned earlier, the park is named the DeCew House Heritage Park. This structure below is the source for the name and sits at the park entrance. It is the remains of the home of Captain John DeCou (later DeCew). The home served as the headquarters of the British outpost during the War of 1812. The troops were alerted in June 1815 to the American advance by Laura Secord (see above). So, a little history with our walk today.

After our stop at the DeCew Park, we continued down DeCew Road for a short stop at the Mel Swart Lake Gibson Conservation Park. This is a cute little park, with a short circular walking trail as well as a boardwalk that juts out into Lake Gibson. Mel Swart raised his family in Thorold, the community where the park is located, was a nature lover, and served 21 years in municipal politics.

We went back to the 13th Street Winery today for a closer look at the outdoor art. There is also an indoor gallery on the grounds. Here’s the pics.

In our continuing quest to see various parts of the impressive 25 mile Welland Canal Trail, Bob, Jack, and I ventured to the town of Welland today for another lovely walkabout. The temps have cooled considerably. It was a brisk 38 degrees F this morning when we got up, so the walk both looked and felt like fall.

The canal seems to split and then come together in a number of areas. We walked on a section of the trail on Merritt Island in Welland, with the canal on both sides. The city of Welland has a population of about 55,000.

While we were in Welland, we decided to check out another local park, Chippawa Park. It is at the end of a lovely residential street. It was a great park with gardens, memorials, and a pretty pond.

Another lovely excursion, and Jack’s nose appreciated the abundant scents.

To say that we have landed in a wine region would be quite an understatement. Our Wine Country Ontario brochure states that “Located between 41 and 44 degrees North, Ontario is situated in the heart of the world’s finest wine zone.” That same brochure then goes on to list the 150 wineries in the 4 appellations in Ontario. Just in the Niagara Escarpment Area that includes St. Catharines, there are 56 wineries, and there’s another 37 in the Niagara-on-the-Lake Area, which is just down the road from here. Crazy!

So today, we thought we’d spend a couple of hours this afternoon just checking out a few of the wineries near us, ending with having a glass at one of them. We met some nice people along the way and got some great photos. Jack went along for the ride and had some short walkabouts.

Our first stop was the very close 13th Street Winery, which also has a bakery/gift shop and art gallery as well as outdoor sculptures. We remembered the shop from last time, so had to check that out again to find a little locally made gift for our next homeowner.

The next winery was Flat Rock Cellars. This winery opened in 2005 and has a great view of the surrounding area.

After our photo visit to Flat Rock, we headed to Sue-Ann Staff Estate Winery, located on a 200-year old estate that previously had just supplied their grapes to other wineries.

We stopped at one more winery as a research/photo project. That was Calamus Estate Winery. They were hosting a wedding in their barn, but their tasting room was open, so we scoped out the wines to be sold and chatted with the nice host. The winery overlooks the Ball’s Falls Conservation Area, so a couple of their wines have the name Ball’s Falls.

Finally, we decided that we’d have a glass of wine at our last stop, which was Domaine Queylus. This winery focuses on a select number of grapes — mostly Pinot noir, Chardonnay, Cabernet franc, and merlot. We tried a glass of the Cabernet franc and cab franc blend with merlot. The host was very nice and gave us a number of recommendations for other wineries and restaurants to try.