We had a cool night surrounded by fog from the St. Lawrence. The wifi didn't work at all here at "Rayon de Soleil" so nothing got uploaded on the blog. It was a nice bright sunny day, however, and we decided to push on past Montreal. By late morning we were crossing the St. Lawrence on a huge bridge, looking at the city of Montreal....but we continued on past it, heading for Ontario. We made a short stop in Cornwall, on the Ontario side of things, where I managed to find a barber and get a haircut which was badly needed - I was really getting into a "Bushman Look". Then on to Kingston, where we cruised along the waterfront, and made a quick lube stop (third oil change for the car so far). From here it was a short drive into the picturesque mill town of Spencerville, where we were able to track down a gt-uncle, Bert Jarrell, who was buried here, along with his family. Genealogy duties complete, we treated ourselves to an ice cream cone - the weather was definitely feeling summery (actually, quite warm and sunny) - and then continued a short distance to Mallorytown, where we pitched our tent for the night. From here I was able to contact some friends, Heinz and Marie, who live in Oshawa, and organized a visit for the following day.
In the morning, it was still summer, and threatening to continue for some time! We continued our westward trek, stopping for a memory-lane-moment in Port Darlington, Bowmanville, where we'd spent our first days together on our first boat, "Bronwen", a 37 ft Alberg which was our first home together, for 3 years. The place has changed a lot....not enough water for sailboats, and beer in the patio lounge priced for the upper-crust crowd (we had two draught beers for $16.00). Then it was a short hop into Oshawa, to visit our friends Heinz and Marie, who we'd first met in our Pt. Darlington days, and since remained good friends.
Heinz is showing us his woodwork.....Marie had already left for work.
We had a very nice visit into the night, and camped on their living room floor for the night. We saw Marie off to work in the morning, said our goodbyes to Heinz, and continued on through Toronto and around the Horseshoe at the end of Lake Ontario, into St. Catharines, to my brother John's home.
Pool cleaning and family bonding - brother John and myself.
This became our "base of operations" for the next few days, with visits with my brother and his partner, and my niece. My mom also lives in St. Catharines, so we also got in some serious family visiting time there. One evening, while walkiing the dogs (4 dogs at my brother's place), we had a "skunk encounter", and had to do a bit of dog-washing.
Brother John, Niece Elyse on de-skunking duties
My sister Marg, and her family, are going through a very rough period with Albert, my brother-in-law, and friend, being quite ill. We were able to get in a couple of short visits there, and nephew Jonathan managed to squeeze in a family dinner get-together for one evening which gave us a great chance for a catch-up and visit with much of my sister's family. Through these four days summer continued hot and sunny, and we managed to get a lot of quality family time in. As well, we managed to find Linda an outfit for the coming wedding, which we'll be attending next weekend in Pt. Colborne. And we also managed to get some preparation time in for our genealogy trek back to Toronto, to visit the archives.
Tuesday morning we headed back into Toronto, and found the Ontario Archives waiting for us at York University. It's a very modern and new building, and took us awhile to familiarize ourselves with the details of doing our research here. Due to the huge numbers of records here (Births, Marriages, Deaths, Wills, Property records, and County Histories) everything is indexed on microfiche, and to find anything takes a process which is a bit time-consuming, but reasonably efficient. We managed to find a number of our ancestral records, but left by early afternoon because of the rush hour traffic. About 45 minutes west of the city we set up camp near Milton, in a KOA Kamping Kabin (possible thundershowers and we needed more room for organizing the records than a tent could provide). Having another blown budget for the week, we decided " What the Hell" anyways, and had our dinner at a local pub, before adding up our final figures for the week:
Distance driven: 1487.9 KM Gas: $ 153.47 Food: $ 418.50 Accommodation: $ 90.01 Other: $ 91.29 Total:$ 753.27 Another over-budget week!
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