Peckish Travels

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.

Yesterday, our outing with Jack was basically a review for us of some of the local smaller groceries in the area. Jack just rode along and got his usual neighborhood walk on our return.

Our first stop was Antipastos, an amazing small specialty shop selling mostly Italian pastas, ingredients, desserts, and ready meals. They also have a deli for pizza slices, salads, and sandwiches. It’s a great place for a perusal and some treat items. We picked up anchovy stuffed olives (a favorite of ours from our visits to Spain), pizza dough (for Bob to concoct a homemade pizza), a pizza slice for Bob for lunch, and some lemon tarts.

Then, we were off to Farm Boy (always reminds Bob of his bro-in-law who was literally a farm boy), a grocery store that we like for their ready made salads, fresh salad bar, and bread/bakery items. We picked up a couple of salad bowls for dinner.

Finally, we stopped at Harvest Barn, a large farm-stand-appearing, market. They also have a small salad bar area and some bakery items, and I think we had purchased some produce there on our last visit. We didn’t get anything on this trip except a small case of the giggles when we saw this item.

Today, we attempted an outing to the Riverbrink Art Museum, which is located in the former country home of Samuel E. weir, a lawyer. While their winter hours are posted as Wednesday through Saturday from 10 to 5, they were closed today in preparation for an event. Some nice woman working in the garden told us, as this wasn’t noted out front or on their website.

However, we did get a walk in with Jack along part of the Great Lakes Waterfront Trail that runs through the lovely Queenston neighborhood and along the Niagara River Parkway.

A bit cooler temps today, perhaps fall weather has arrived.

In looking at the tourist info and maps that our homeowners have as well as other info that we have picked up, we realized that we hadn’t yet visited Port Colborne, a small city of about 20,000 at the southern end of the Welland Canal. We decided to check out a park and trail along the canal as well as a beach in Port Colborne today.

This was a longer outing, about a 30 minute drive from the house to the Lock 8 Gateway Park in Port Colborne. The trail, at least the part we walked, wasn’t that long but it did have some points of interest.

After we finished at the park, we decided to drive a few blocks south to visit one of the many beaches along Lake Erie. Nickel Beach was the closest, and lies along Gravelly Bay.

As you can see, another beautiful day here. We have been spoiled, but cooler weather is coming.

73 degree Fahrenheit day near the end of October? Yes please, and I’ll gladly take more, although I fear it’s probably not the best thing for the planet. Bob and I took Jack the dog for a morning outing to keep him from feeling the hottest temps of the day. We took a short stroll around Port Dalhousie, which is east of us but before Niagara on the lake. It lies along the coast. We have visited before, but never at this time of year. Lovely to see the Lakeside Park area with its fall colors on.

On the way back to the house, we stopped at a small community park along the Green Ribbon Trail. We had enjoyed this park last year without Jack, so forgot that the bridge in the park is not really dog friendly, so our trip today was brief but colorful.

We have had a leisurely but productive couple of days re-bonding with the charming Jack as well as getting caught up on laundry, making some future travel plans, picking up a few staples, and just enjoying our lovely borrowed home and the community.

First, Jack.

Jack is a very good boy, who does like his food (don’t we all) but also enjoys his walks, and can cajole you (with a paw tap or several) into as long a petting session with him as you’re up for. It is hard to resist.

After some long days on the road, it was great to have some relaxed time with the homeowners before they left for some fun in Portugal and Spain, and we’ve been mostly in/out side the house yesterday and today except for some errands.

Today though, we also went to the St Catharines Museum and tourist center to scope out any additional travel info that might be of use for our visit and walk a bit of the Welland Canal Path that we remembered from our last visit. We lucked out and arrived as a long barge was going through the lock.

I just looked up ball hockey on the web, and it says that it’s patterned after ice hockey, but no skates, no ice, and a ball is used instead of a puck. But otherwise, very related. . .

This has definitely been the best fall for us in a long time in terms of seeing the trees change color.

More blogs logging more active days ahead.

After a couple of days visit with my mom, Bob and I headed back into Canada, but with a stop in East Lansing, Michigan on the way. We had a bit of a tense drive around Chicago in heavy traffic and lots of rain, but clear skies in Michigan.

We spent the night at a Marriott Hotel but walked a couple of blocks to see the Graduate Hotel, a brand of hotel that we like to frequent or visit whenever we have a chance. There are 28 of these hotels worldwide (basically USA and UK) that are located in university cities and are themed correspondingly. East Lansing is home to Michigan State University. We have stayed at or visited six other Graduate Hotels, in Iowa City, Columbia, SC, Cambridge, UK, Nashville, TN, Indianapolis, and Minneapolis.

The East Lansing hotel did not disappoint. We especially liked the entrance and the views from the 10th floor bar.

We spent Tuesday night in East Lansing and drove into Canada on Wednesday. We didn’t have any problems at the border crossing in Port Huron, MI, so Canada is stuck with us for the next five weeks.

After crossing, we drove just a couple hours into London, Ontario, for the night. We had a room upgrade to use with our Marriott membership, so we used it at the Delta Hotel in London, and were given a suite that I would have been happy to move into. The hotel is also located in the old armory (armoury) building, so we enjoyed exploring the building before going to a Manager’s reception and then the free lounge offerings for Marriott members. Aren’t we just all that!

We are currently at our next housesit having a lovely get together with homeowners/friends and their dear dog, Jack. We sat for them in the spring of 2022.

We’re back. . .on the blog and in the USA. We left Chemainus, British Columbia, on Tuesday and have driven approximately 1,900 miles over the past 4 days (not counting Tuesday as we didn’t do much driving) to arrive in Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin (commonly referred to as The Dells).

We have spent much of our drive on I-94 across the states of Washington, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, and Minnesota before reaching Wisconsin. If you have to drive a great distance across the north US, we highly recommend this section of I-94 for its beautiful scenery and relatively low traffic. We have seen the beautiful green forests of Washington and Idaho, the different mountain ranges across Washington, Idaho, and Montana, the buttes and mesas of Montana and North Dakota, and then the prairies, rolling hills, and farmlands of North Dakota, Minnesota, and Wisconsin and lots of trees with their fall coats on.

In addition to admiring the scenery, there have been plenty of billboards and road signs to read, and we also have taken the opportunity to learn or re-educate ourselves on various matters through Googling the answers to various questions that arise, usually based on our surroundings. For example, I found myself wondering about whether I should be describing the changing scenery as changes in geological or geographical features. I initially resolved this by just saying topographical, but finally looked up the definitions of geology and geography to realize that usually I am referring to geographical changes.

We also learned, much to our surprise, that the US has more than one continental divide. Bob and I had both been taught (or at least both remembered) that The Continental Divide in the US was in the Rocky Mountains, and we had crossed it both by bike on our cross country ride as well as by car in prior travels. So we were very surprised to see a road sign in North Dakota that said “Continental Divide, elevation 1,452.” Say what? That immediately spurred a Google search to see if the normally staid North Dakotans were having some fun with the tourists. No indeedy, and we learned just how much we didn’t know about continental divides through an article at http://www.dmr.nd.gov, North Dakota’s Department of Mineral Resources.

We also had a couple of “cultural” memories on the road. Driving past a sign for Three Forks, Montana, reminded us of a Two Ronnie’s Four Candles skit that we have seen in the UK, and that we find highly amusing. Also, at the end of one long drive, Bob began reciting something about two dead boys getting up to fight. Turns out, it was a poem he learned as a kid, and after having read it, it seems like the one poem that he would remember. You’ll need to Google it, it’s “Two Dead Boys,” by Tyler Rager.

And that is a lot of nothing, but shows you the stat of our minds after this many days on the road. Tomorrow, we head to Janesville for a couple of days with my mom.

It’s crazy to think that we will be leaving Vancouver Island on Tuesday to begin an 8-day drive across the US before driving back into Canada in Ontario, a little Canadian province swap with a US filler.

In the meanwhile, we are taking in the last days with the wiley Ws. Wall-E and Willow are sweet cats, who love their food, their naps, and chilling with us in the evening. We will definitely miss Willow’s curiousness and Wall-E’s thoroughness in ensuring all food bowls have been emptied.

Yesterday, we spent a couple of hours poking in and out of the downtown shops, walking down towards the water, and picking up toppings for a red fife (new grain for us) pizza dough that we had bought at the great bakery in Cowichan Bay.

Today, we drove out to Stocking Creek Park to do a couple hour hike on the very impressive 101 kilometer Cowichichan Valley Trail. We walked from the park in Saltair back towards Chemainus.

The following are some pics of the great walk on a beautiful fall day (low 60s F).

Bob and I left the house last night for a planned dinner and theater show at the Chemainus Theatre. We loved our experience last year, so had bought tickets for this year’s show and chose to do dinner at the theatre as well. It was a great evening, enhanced by our ability to be clean when we went, which is a whole other (now funny) story involving a lack of hot water, two American wussies who don’t enjoy cold showers, and a local plumbing company who insisted a new water tank was needed to resolve the issue before finally sending a technician who fixed the issue by pushing a reset button on the water heater (which we now realize is behind insulation in the panel on the tank).

Today, we ventured out to a local park to see a waterfall, check out a small bay community south of Chemainus and some seals, and stop at a couple of farmer’s markets.

Our first stop was Stocking Creek Community Park, which is located in the community of Saltair and has a network of nature trails through a rainforest and provide viewing access to a small waterfall. The park also runs alongside the Cowichan Valley Trail, which I run on in Chemainus.

We then drove about 35 minutes south to Cowichan Bay to check out the waterfront there. This is a fishing community, but we had also read about Steller Sea Lions from California that hang out on the docks in the fall on their migratory journey.

We stopped at two farmer’s markets. The first between Cowichan Bay and Duncan, which was hopping and where we found food for dinner tonight, and a second one close to Chemainus which paled in comparison.

Today, we traded Vancouver Island for Salt Spring Island, at least for part of the day. This morning we drove five miles south to the community of Crofton to catch the 10:10 ferry for the 20 minute ride to Salt Spring Island.

Catching the ferry was super easy, as we just paid from the car and then drove into line to await the arrival andthe loading. It was a beautiful day (mid 60s F) for the excursion.

Salt Spring Island lies between mainland British Columbia and Vancouver Island. It is 70.5 square miles and has a population of about 11,500 people. It is known for its artisan community, numerous parks for hiking, and its agriculture, including produce, cheese, and grapes/wineries.

We started at Mount Maxwell Provincial Park for a hike to Baynes Peak.

After the hike, we thought we’d check out one of the local wineries. Mostly, we wanted to see what was on offer and to check out views from there. We had a very brief and somewhat disappointing stop at Salt Spring Winery, limited parking, very few wines, and not terribly friendly staff.

From there, we drove to Fulford Harbor, another ferry terminal on the island, and a cute community with a few shops. We popped into a local grocery for some sodas before heading on.

One of the big draws for us was the Salt Spring Cheese store. Salt Spring Cheese makes artisan handmade goat cheeses. They are sold in round packaging, which shows off the herbs or other flavorings added to the cheese. We ended up having lunch at the farm with some unexpected guests.

Finally, we headed to Ganges, the main community on the island. It was cute, but very busy with limited parking. Neither of us were sure how they deal with bigger crowds during the summer.