12 - Ontario, Canada. - July/August 2022

Entry 12 – Ontario, Canada. – July/August 2022

We left New Foundland’s capital of St John’s by plane. This provided a caption picture of our thoughts for Canada after driving through the Canadian country side for over 10,000 kilometres. “A landscape covered by lakes.”

It was a flight of around 3 ½ hours to Toronto. Not a bad day for a flight. We provide a couple of photographs of our decent, about to enter through the cloud bank and of Toronto central business district in the back ground as we approached Toronto airport. We collected our hire car and headed to one of the seven natural wonders of the world; Niagara Falls.

We had previously been to Niagara Falls in 2017, where we were in awe of its magnificence. With a return to Canada in 2022, another visit to Niagara Falls was on our wish list. In 2017 we spent four days exploring the Niagara Falls area including the boat ride into the falls mist. In 2022 we added a new experience by participating in the “Journey behind the falls.”

This involved travelling to the base of the falls by a lift, located in the table rocks nearby the horseshoe shaped falls. You walk along a tunnel from the lift location to an open area where you can stand near the edge of the falls base. The ferocity of the large volume of water landing creates a permanent rain effect, often feeling like heavy rain whilst we were there. It was an exhilarating experience looking up at tonnes and tonnes of water falling down from the top of the water fall.

The provided photographs were taken with our phone. It was extremely difficult to obtain good pictures as the lens view was constantly being struck by water. Steve would wipe the lens dry and attempt another picture as he was removing the cloth from the lens edge. There were many failures and thankfully he was able to capture some photographs of the setting.

We then walked along a tunnel running parallel behind the falls where you could deviate up a couple of side tunnels with openings into the falls water. It was a wet, awesome and different experience.

Just to see the magnificence of Niagara Falls in person was worth the effort to get there. It is a popular location, crowded with people.

We were very content just to have viewed Niagara Falls for a second time. Sadly, it felt like every time we changed direction, we were expected to hand over money, something to do with the saturation of commercial enterprises taking advantage of the phenomenon of Niagara Falls. Thus, a few hours hovering around the edge of the falls was suffice for the enrichment of our well-being.

We started heading north, back into Canada away from the border of America and Canada. The border was located down the middle of the water channel flowing from Niagara Falls. We could see people moving about on the American side of the falls.

Our next stop was for a night at a “farm stay.” The farm stay was complements of a lovely couple we met on one of our walks whilst in New Foundland, walking one of the trails in Gros Morne National Park. They were walking in the opposite direction and we both just happened to stop to catch our breath at the same point on the track. Naturally we greeted one another and before we had caught our breath we were invited to stay at their home when we left Niagara Falls. We exchanged phone numbers and the rest is history.

Linda and George lived on their cattle farm near Palmerston, located about hours’ drive west of Toronto. We arrived early afternoon and George had just started mixing cement for a concrete block he was building. Steve was invited to help out, keeping him occupied for a few hours.

Linda provided a lovely evening meal and we catered with an Australian sweet experience, some Tim Tams. = evaporating Tim Tams!

George had been operating his dairy farm for nearly 40 years and recently cut back on his work load, moving to beef cattle. The picture below shows one of his paddocks after some attention from his cattle over the last week.

During his dairy farming days, he would grow corn for his cows. Once the corn was harvested it was blown up the outside chute of the silo for storage. George remembered the delivery of the silo. It arrived in a kit form on a semi-trailer. Four men completed the assembly of the silo on the same day.

We enjoyed our Canadian farm experience.

Our next stop was at North Bay where we spent time with our daughter, hubby and hubbies’ family. It was a busy period with lots of socialising. We shopped and shopped, purchasing a tent and various camping items.

We continued planning for our love of experiencing the beauty from nature locations. We were in the province of Ontario and there was a large selection of parks to visit. In the current times, the authorities preferred option for obtaining a camp site at Provincial Parks (Australia = National Parks) was to make bookings via the internet. We focused on Provincial Parks around a couple of hundred kilometres from North Bay and we were delighted with a great selection. We made several bookings, packed the car and were on our way, naturally wishing for good weather conditions.

Our first stop was at Grundy Lake Provincial Park. As we were just starting to erect our tent it started to rain. Our tent had an open mesh screen roof. Prior to the placement of the water proof roof, there was a need to fit all the support poles first. By the time we were able to slide the water proof roof into place the inside of the tent had been coated by a light sprinkle of rain, Grrr.

A short time later the cloudy skies opened up, dumping lots of water onto us. We were happy with our tent selection, keeping us dry from the constant rain for the next few hours.

Around dusk the rain stopped and we wandered about inspecting our setting.

Grundy Lakes Provincial Park provided a great selection of different camping areas. There were 9 different camp grounds, some with power for trailer sites, some radio free, generator free and dog free. There were around 500 sites with a primary usage by families when we were there.

There was also a selection of 4 hiking trails ranging from 1 to 3 hours to complete. This was one of our main criteria for selecting Grundy Lakes Provincial Park.

For the 3-hour hike we added 40 minutes one way (plus return) walking to its start point from our camp site to one of the other camp grounds where it commenced from. We left early morning and the Canadian weather information site showed at the time, humidity was 100 % with a temperature of about 17 degrees. The first two pictures show the setting not far from our camp site. Early afternoon on our return we immersed our bodies into the lake’s waters, cooling our hot bodies.

Canada is a very green location. Something to do with the constant rainfall. Whilst at Grundy Lakes it rained a lot every other day. All the walking trails were based around the perimeter of different lakes. The landscape is covered by so many lakes, they are just a part of the Canadian countryside.

Many of the lakes are occupied by beavers. Below the red dots on the next two pictures indicate a beaver home. We did see many beaver homes on our walks.

After four nights at Grundy Lakes, we relocated to Mikisew Provincial Park. Just another green setting. Our first couple of days at Mikisew P/P the weather improved with day time temperatures in the mid 20’s. We even spent time, “at the beach,” in the lake water.

Our time at Mikisew coincided with a weekend and it became very crowded during the weekend time line. Mikisew was about hour’s drive from North Bay and we were delighted with a visit from our daughter, hubby and mother in-law. We all participated in one of the walks, finishing with a cool down in the lake water.

It was reiterated again and again why Canada was so lush and green. Something to do with the constant rain. Our first day and a half at Mikisew the weather was cooperative allowing us to move about unheeded. Though, we were getting accustomed to sudden weather changes.

On arrival at our allocated site at Mikisew one of our assessments was signs of water flow over the site. It appeared water did flow from the roadway into the middle of the site. After experiencing unwanted water flow issues through our camp at Grundy Lake, Steve decided to erect a dam wall across the front of our tent and down its sides in case there was a water issue. This consisted of a few sticks and sand, supporting a dam levee wall.

When the rain showed up and there was some water ingress from the road, Steve’s levee was appreciated, deviating water around the tent. Unfortunately, after a while the rain disappeared to be replaced by buckets of water falling from the skies. It wasn’t long before it felt like a tsunami of water inundated us from the road. The below pictures show our levee banks being breeched.

A few hours later when the rain eased, Steve decided on a more aggressive approach before the return of the rain.

Yes, the rain returned, thankfully not with a tsunami impact but it was still a substantial amount of water and Steve’s more aggressive approach provided a more positive result, deviating the water flow around us.

Mikisew Provincial Park was another lovely location. We still managed to complete a walk on each of our days at Mikisew PP, working around the weather conditions.

After four nights it was time to relocate to another Provincial Park. Enroute, we stopped at North Bay to replenish our food supplies and obtain some more equipment to help combat weather conditions, “whilst living in a tent.” And naturally we had a “Tim Hortons,” hot chocolate fix, where we utilized the shops access to internet to upload this edition.