Capturing the Art of Nature
Day 4 - October 15
From Grimsby to Port Stanley the long way.
Category
Ontario Adventures
2006
Click on image to view gallery
October 15 was a beautiful day to be out taking photos. It ended up being the best day of the whole trip – too bad I didn’t know this in advance! This was the day we were leaving Grimsby for Port Stanley; so much of our time was used up driving.
We wanted to take in scenery, so our choice of roads kept us off the main highways in favour of the smaller roads and the shoreline road along Lake Erie. This of course slowed us down and took most of the day for the drive. I enjoy driving through the farm lands of south-Western Ontario; the landscape is so different from that in BC. I find the vastness of the open spaces to be quite over-whelming; farms just keep appearing mile after mile after mile. There are so many farms; it makes the puniness of the BC lower mainland look like a joke in comparison. Some how this open vastness stirs a sense of adventure in me which is very attractive and draws me back again time-after-time.
The tiny little towns every few miles are also quite novel, they seem to often be just a few buildings at a road crossing. Both my wife and I find the notion that these cross-road towns have been given a name to be somewhat comical. Why does a run-down building at the corner of two roads deserve its own name on a map? I suppose it just adds to the adventure of being in a different environment.
Our drive out of Grimsby began in the late morning, drove south straight to the Lake Erie shore. The drive had a few moments of confusion as we tried to find ourselves on the map, but we got to the lake without much delay. The countryside was charming but not as colourful as I was hoping for.
As we drove along the shoreline I was dreaming of living in one of the homes which dot the water. The area is so beautiful and seems so remote, that with the cold wind that was energetically blowing and the starkness of autumn, I was instilled with a sense of remoteness that teased me with a way to get away from the toils of life. Oh to be back there curled up with a book staring at the sun setting over the lake while sipping on a cup of hot … you get the idea.
I found the moods of the shoreline beach to be quite varied; the places of most interest to me were those with the rugged flat-topped rocks that speckled the lake’s shore. The high winds were whipping up the waves creating some huge splashes as they were slowing beating the granite down to sand. I took some photos at the same place outside the town of Selkirk as I did last year; unfortunately the colours were not as spectacular this year. We then moved in-land a bit to enjoy lunch at the Sunflower Café in Selkirk.
As we drove further west we came through Port Burwell where we encountered one of Canada’s largest wind farms. In operation only since April of this year, it has 66 turbines each with an 80m tower! They feel incredibly massive when one gets close to their base, very intimidating to such a tiny creature like me. The area around the turbines was energized with a deep bone-chilling and almost sub audible throbbing that your whole body could feel – not a place I would want to stay in for long.
The rest of the drive to Port Stanley went quicker and had little of interest to me – it seems the long drive had taken its toll and I just wanted to be done and to put my feet up for a while.