Orangeville, ON

Primrose Park (Aug 1)

Orangeville is halfway between Toronto and Owen Sound, and near the resort where Daniel and Caleigh are getting married. Fortunately, we were able to get a campsite over the August long weekend.

Although Orangeville is a familiar name from my childhood, I think it is a place I have driven through, rather than stopped at. In any case, it is centrally located for a number of outdoor attractions, including the Bruce Trail, which is less than a mile away and the Dufferin County CP Rail Trail, a 77 km bicycle trail from Owen Sound to Dalkirk (wherever that is). While the scenery was here 50 years ago, the trails and parks are mostly new (except the Bruce Trail) so perhaps it is not surprising that we never really visited during my childhood.

Once we were set up, we took a walk around the perimeter of the campground, which includes a wooded area. I do not know what they were, but many bee-like bugs were clinging to Rumple when we emerged. It took several minutes to get rid of them. Rumple did not seem to be bothered, but we will be avoiding that area of the campground.

On Thursday, Chuck had a very brief phone meeting for work, after which we headed out to Elora Gorge. The gorge was cut by the Grand River, through a piece of the Niagara Escarpment. We started in the cute town of Fergus, which has built a short but pretty riverwalk along a low piece of the gorge and ended in the town of Elora,which also straddles the river. Both towns were founded by Scotsmen, and Fergus in particular continues to play up the Scots connection, with Tartan on the bridge, a Scottish goods boutique and a chainsaw carving that resembles the Braveheart statue in Sterling.

 

 

 

 

 

We took a nice hike along the rim of the gorge in Elora Gorge Conservation Area. This is not as spectacular as the gorges in Ithaca, but is a very nice walk through a cedar forest. A popular feature is “Hole in the Rock” which is a pathway through a natural hole in the cliff.  The trees have interesting roots that grip the cracks in the rock. You can take an inner tube through the rapids below. We were tempted, but our visit was cut short by an intense, although relatively brief, thunderstorm.  We went into the town of Elora for ice cream instead.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Whether it is the season or the campground, it is very buggy here in the evenings. There are a few mosquitoes, but mostly it is gnats nipping at our ankles. This has impacted our picnic dinners. We are back to eating dinner indoors for the time-being.

 

 

 

One thing that I have noticed both in Toronto and here are many RVs flying the flag of Newfoundland. (I did not recognise it, at first, and thought it might be some type of gang symbol 🙂 ).These folks all have Ontario license plates, so I imagine they were part of the great emigration due to the lack of jobs in Newfoundland. There are also a fair number of Quebec flags and license plates – but then Quebec has a large population. In the photo, the Newfoundland flag is below the small Canadian flag on the right, and the Quebec flag is below the larger Canadian flag on the left. The other flag? Cape Breton Island, which is part of Nova Scotia.

Campgrounds have character. For example, as I mentioned there is a quilting group at Heron Point. At Indian Line, we had the hanging basket folks – most of the seasonal sites have gardens full of flowers. Here we have the garden statuary group!   Garden gnomes appear to be particularly popular.

We took advantage of a rainy Friday to sleep in and get some work done. Rumple got me up so early, that I was able to go back to bed after his walk and get in several hours of sleep. Most of the day was too wet to spend outdoors. In the evening we drove out to the Mono Inn for dinner.

Saturday the campground had a garage sale. We managed to sleep in again, and found things well underway when we awoke. I donated a hand-knit hat and scarf set to their charity table. However, within an hour the rain set in again and the sale had to close down. We did manage to grab a some burgers and sausages off the sale grill and scarf them down before the weather chased us all indoors.

   In the afternoon, it was a bit chilly, but things dried out. We took a walk along the Bruce Trail at Mono Cliffs Provincial Park. This lovely trail goes along the escarpment through old growth cedar forest, old apple orchards, secondary deciduous forest, abandoned fields, etc.The view is not good – too many trees – but there is a large variety of plant life. Mushrooms were plentiful, including this tiny bright red mushroom and this nerf-ball sized coral mushroom.

 

Towards the end of the hike we met a professional drywaller, amateur photographer, and had a nice conversation about what is interesting in the park (just about everything from his perspective, which was refreshing) and the effects of immigration on his profession (lots of low-priced competition).

Just before returning to the parking lot, we came across an amazing sight – a monarch butterfly tree, just like the photos you see o the trees in Mexico where they hang out in the winter. In this photo, the 3 specks are monarch butterflies. The tree branch was covered with dozens of butterflies (but this is impossible to capture on a phone camera). We had seen a lot of butterflies during our walk. But we were not expecting this sight, which is something I have never seen north of southern California.

One thing that was odd was that neither Mono Cliffs nor the campground had many birds. Except for a flock of grackles that landed occasionally, we saw almost no birds at all.

On Sunday the sun came out. We took a short bicycle ride on the CP Rail Trail. This turns out to be primarily an ATV trail and is maintained by the local ATV and snow mobile clubs. The surface was a bit rough for touring bikes, and the straight flat trail is probably too dull for your typical mountain biker. The ride was pleasant enough, through primarily farms and a bit of forest.But if we come back, we will try some of the trails the border one of the little lakes nearby.

 

On Chuck’s right in the photo to the left, is an old-fashioned windmill.  Not long ago, every farm had at least one of these wind-driven water pumps.  The remaining ones are mostly decorative – I guess it is cheaper to use electric pumps now.  Speaking of which, on Chuck’s left are Ontario’s new crop – wind generators.  We saw these everywhere between Orangeville and Owen Sound.

 The wedding was in the evening in the Hockley Resort, which is in lovely Hockley Valley. The escarpment forms a sort of bowl here, so that you are surrounded by the forested hills. With the blue sky and perfect temperatures, it was a perfect setting.

 

Dan, the son of our friends Kathy and Salomon, and Caleigh got married in the garden. The service was beautifully done – a merger of Jewish and Christian, modern and traditional, with a lot of personalization. One element we particularly liked was that the JP had asked each of them to write a short piece about what they loved about their new spouse. This was really beautiful and something I think every married couple should do frequently, in keeping with my philosophy that we should focus on what we are thankful for. (We might even try it.)

Kathy and Salo (the folks on the right in the photo) and I were graduate students in Statistics together at U. of Toronto in 1978 (although I actually became friends with Kathy years earlier when the University of Toronto offered enrichment lectures to high school math students). I got quite a shock at the wedding to be greeted by another classmate, Jose, and his wife Lucia, whom I had not seen since I left the program in 1979. Once Jose graduated, they returned to their native Mexico, where Jose took up a number of important positions. Salo has family in Mexico and so he and Kathy visit there relatively frequently and have kept in touch.

We were seated for dinner at a rather interesting table, which included Jose and Lucia, other Mexican friends whom they knew, a Toronto couple who had gone to Mexico with Kathy and Salo and met Jose and Lucia there and the person who led the service, and his wife, who has been volunteering with Kathy on resettling a Syrian family. It was really an inspired seating from my perspective, and some interesting conversations were held.

It was also nice to see Kathy’s sister Susan, whom I have not seen since about 1979, and have a quick chat with her.

There were many nice touches to the wedding. The chupa (wedding canopy) was a quilt made by a friend, with supports built by Dan and Caleigh from branches cut on her mother’s farm. The “guest book” was a canoe paddle which we all signed. (The bride and groom as big on camping, canoing, fishing, etc). The place-card holders were little pieces of birch branch with a saw-cut to hold the cards. And the party favors were little jars of honey (nicely symbolic of the sweet life ahead) bottled by a friend from her own hives.

And with this happy event, we ended our visit to Orangeville.