A quick run through southern Ontario

Stephen and I had a bit of a local holiday last week. We rented a car and went south to Lake Erie.

The water in the Great Lakes has been extremely high this year, and in many places there just wasn't any beach!

Here, for example, is Stephen at the very end of Canada, at the south point of Pelee Island. Usually it looks more like this.

But we liked going through the woods, looking at the marshes, tasting wine, sitting on the porch of our B&B, and trying to remember stuff about the War of 1812.

We took a tour at Fort Erie and watched them fire off muskets (thinking, "that would be a good summer job for our kids!").

Here we are on Queenston Heights.

We couldn't spend a week in the area and not visit the Falls.

Someone long ago carved my name into the wall.

Everyone needs a sign to stand in front of these days. (You can see that we didn't end up at the falls on the nicest day of our trip!)

When the weather is no good, it's always possible to shop indoors.  We went to the village of Jordan, which was marketed to us as a quaint and chic, oddball, little town. But really it is a big winery, a big hotel, and a few little shops. We enjoyed a drink and a snack at the bakery and happened upon the Dye Guy in his shop, where I just had to buy some yarn to make socks for the kids.

For Elaine, Confused Hydrangea:

Arthur gets Deep Sea Shrimp:

We stopped at many wineries over the days.

We enjoyed a couple of bottles on the trip, but brought home about a dozen more!

At our first B&B down by Point Pelee, we had a house to ourselves and we would drive out to dinner in town and then come home for a bit of wine and cheese and crackers on the porch. One night we sat in the dusk watching fireflies, which is not a thing that happens in downtown Toronto!

The second B&B was right in Port Colborne and we could walk to dinner, but really only had our bedroom to sit in at the house, so we would just have a cup of tea and read our books!

On our last night we went to Lake Erie's Long Beach. It is pretty long, but it ain't BC's Long Beach!

Way out there near the horizon, you might be able to see three little heads. We walked a way out into the nice warm water, and believe those folks are sitting on the bottom. This beach would be much more impressive in a normal year, but with the lake so high, most of the wide, flat beach is under water. 

Now, time to sort out the house, get Elaine back from camp, moan about the dang squirrels eating our attempts at sunflowers and all that late-summer stuff!