We’re off to Kingston & Gananoque today.  Highlights of PEC:  The Lavender Farm was lovely and while I felt their products were all good prices, $8/person to walk through the fields seemed a bit stiff.  Fifth Town Cheese Factory was, well, interesting.  Lots of good and unusual products and an intriguing set-up for their shop (including a $5/head tasting fee – now that was worth it – they had every one of their cheeses, olives, jams, and sauces open for sampling).  It was just very far and rather hard to get to.

The Crêpe Escape in Picton was very nice – good prices and great fillings – the crêpes were a tad thick, more like a thin pancake than a lacy, wafer-thin French crêpe (but still yummy).

Another memorable moment: staying at Casa Dea, we’d seen several military plans & helicopters – CFB Trenton is nearby.  But what will stick in my head is being strafed last night by two military helicopters, flying 30’ above the ground, at 2 in the morning.  Dear God, the noise!  The vibrations!  What possibly could they have been doing at that hour?  Night manoeuvres?  Scoping out American incursions into the wine region of Ontario?

Only PEC regret: we didn’t get to Wellington.  We drove through it on our way off the island, and it looks lovely – but somehow it hadn’t been on our radar.  I would recommend to anyone heading this way in the future.

The annual Ontario winery guide shows about a dozen or so wineries in PEC, but that isn’t accurate.  Every road we drive along has at least 3 wineries of varying sizes (some as small as a two-room shack) – the place is littered with wineries, cideries, breweries, and distilleries.  We’ve stopped at several of them: Huff Estates, Norman Hardie, Rosehall Run, Lake on the Mountain Brewery, and Casa-Dea.  And many of them have a patio restaurant attached.  Our lunch at The Lake on the Mountain was excellent: paté and smoked salmon with rosti; and the next day we had what was possibly the best pizzas (and smoked trout) I’ve ever had, at Norman Hardie winery. 

*As we were leaving Norman Hardie’s, a young sales clerk leaned over and quietly asked me, “is your sister a comp sci prof at Western?” and then fanned on LR for the next 10 minutes.  Cool.  That may be why I ended up buying two rather pricey bottles of wine there, when I had intended on buying only one at most. And tomorrow is brunch at Crêpe Escape in Picton – their menu looks fab.

We parked at the back of Casa Dea, and set up for two nights of boondocking.  Early evening another motorhome pulled in, with an older couple & their cute dog.  The winery had closed, so the husband came around to our side of the RV to ask if he was in the right spot, and we assured him he was (seemed nice enough).

A bit later we saw a deer feeding in the field beside us, and being city girls, we got all excited.  I went over to tell our neighbours so they wouldn’t miss it, which they appreciated.

When you book a Harvest Host, you have to check what they do and don’t allow at each property.  Many don’t allow pets, or slide-outs, or ask that you not run your generator after a certain time. Casa Dea has the last rule: no generators after 11pm.  No prob.

We did need to run my generator for about a half hour or so, so I started it up at 8:20, planning to let it run until 9:00, while we played Rummikub.  At ten to nine, our neighbour came over, and asked me to turn it off as it had been running for an hour (?).  I told him that at 9 o’clock I would turn it off.  He did not seem pleased.  Now to be clear, they were parked about 40’ away, were sitting inside their rig, and were not yet going to bed (I know that, because at 9:30 they sat outside watching the sunset).  The generator is not that loud, and the winery allows it until 11pm (which you can see in its HH profile).  Honestly, something as small as this can put a damper on an evening and we all felt it – very disappointing.  (MW may have given him a nickname after this, but this is a PG blog, so I won’t repeat it here.)

*Update: yes, I am petty, what’s your point?  The next morning, the neighbours left Casa Dea before the winery opened – in other words, they never spent any money.  (The whole idea of Harvest Hosts is that you are expected to purchase something at each venue, usually around the $20 – $40 range.)  So in my mind, this is their 2^nd HH transgression.  Well then, what does a petty, wanting-to-get-even girl do?  Does she take the high road and let this go?  No, Elsa, she does not.  Instead, that morning, when I went in to buy my two bottles of wine, I very disingenuously asked, “What is Casa Dea’s generator policy?  Really?  Oh dear, I think last night’s other guests – you know, the ones who left before you opened – must be new to HH, because they came over before 9pm to complain.  It was most disappointing – I hope they don’t make reference to it when they give Casa Dea its HH review.”  Meow. 

I don’t care – you play the game right, or go home, dammit.

One of my sisters has become so used to having her (lovely and incredibly well-organised) husband arrange every aspect of all their travel, that when she & I flew to the UK many years ago, we got off the plane and she turned to me and asked, “Did you bring some UK cash for me?”  Um, no.  You’re 40 years old, with a successful career, and I don’t want children of my own.  (We found a cash machine later that day.)

And my younger sister is so go-with-the-flow that, I swear, if I suggested that we would spend the afternoon weeding the vineyards here in PEC, she’d just shrug and say, “sure”.

But LR did have one good idea – each of us was to be responsible for one dinner in the RV.  Excellent.  So far I’ve had an amazing club sandwich dinner with a blue cheese wedge salad (thank you MW – and they were toasted without having a toaster in the RV), and a delicious lemon chicken orzo with a yummy gooey feta topping (thank you LR – pastas are pretty much made with the exact same ingredients, but somehow orzo just tastes the best).  I’m doing salmon in a lemon dill sauce with new potatoes and a chive creamed spinach tomorrow night.

It was sheer chance that my Remember This Day feature in Google Photos popped up this morning with the photo below, just as I was driving up the lane at Casa Dea Winery (Harvest Host).  It seems that nine years ago, to the day, my two friends and I were taken our very first RV trip, and stayed at this exact same winery.  I had taking our dogs for a walk and got this pic of them in front of the vineyards back then, so I had to do the same with my sisters today.  Sadly, they are both no longer with us (the dogs, I mean.  My sisters are just fine.).

They have some very good and very different wines at Casa Dea.  Along with the standards (Pinot Grigio, Pinot Noir), they are the only Canadian vintner to make Pecorino, a, Italian white wine from Abruzzo that I had just discovered this year.  They also make a Melon de Bourgogne, also not very common in Canada.  So for the second day in a row, I bought twice the wine I had intended.  Ah well.

I’ve always liked visiting museums and art galleries.  That’s what my boss arranged as a going away party for my retirement: a tour of the Ismaili Centre and the Aga Khan Museum (I strongly recommend).  And my travel buddy LL knows I like these so kindly goes along with me when we travel (pretty sure she enjoys them too, don’t get me wrong – but I don’t think they’d be her first choice as a rule).

But just recently I’ve had the opportunity to visit a couple of galleries with my youngest sister (Cork Ireland and Georgetown Ontario), and it’s very interesting.  She’s an artist, so she looks at art (paintings in particular) in a different way, and I’m really enjoying it.  So when both she & sibling #2 independently found and suggested the Oeno Gallery in Bloomfield I was delighted.

Wow, what an amazing venue!  We really enjoyed the spectacular outdoor sculpture garden – it’s huge, different, interactive (in places), and they even have a sister piece of metalwork wolves to the one at 13^th Street Winery (see Scout below a few years ago at 13^th St with her new friends). And the work inside the gallery was equally interesting.  I discovered a new artist whom I really admire and cannot afford: Pat Service.  In fact all the paintings were noteworthy, IMO.

Then off to Slickers in Bloomfield.  I don’t really like ice cream (I don’t dislike it – it’s just meh) or sweet foods, but nine years ago I had a Campfire ice cream here and it has stayed in my memory ever since.  And I had it again today – it tastes exactly like burnt marshmallows – so so good – well worth the re-visit; siblings agreed.  Then a few boutiques, and home to what the Brits call a picky tea, and our Mum’s favourite meal, a little bit of everything.

Wow, did my sisters need this getaway.  I didn’t know either of them could even sleep in that late!  I’m not complaining – I like my mornings to myself and thoroughly enjoyed sitting outside, reading an excellent book (The Correspondent by Virginia Evans), drinking my tea, and listening to the birdsong (grey catbird, robin, song sparrow, goldfinch, blackbird, and gulls).  But they really slept.  I’m so glad – exactly what holidays are for.

Meals are going to be interesting this week:  youngest sister skips breakfast & lunch and eats a big dinner; middle sister eats a healthy breakfast, little to no lunch, and a decent dinner, and I eat a light breakfast, big lunch, and next to no dinner.  Hmmm.

And again with the “whatever you want, I’m fine” feedback, but eventually I got commitment – yay!

OMG, I’m going to kill them. 

First:

We pulled into the Big Apple at Grafton.  I wanted a coffee (it had already been a looong day), I thought there might be something we could pick up for dinner, and it’s just a cool place to stop – if you’ve never seen it, it’s, well, it’s a giant apple on the side of the 401, with a petting zoo, a burger shack, and a country store.  Between the two of them, over the course of the 18 minutes we were there, they each said at least three times, “Why are we here?” “What are we getting?” “This is overwhelming.” And my favourite: “Whatever you want, Elaine.”

Fine, on to Sandbanks Provincial Park.  We parked, I set up, I poured myself a glass of wine, and then I said, okay, so what are some of the things you might like to do.  You know that look teenagers give you when they really can’t be bothered to contribute to a conversation?  Yeah, well, that’s what I got.

Don’t get me wrong – it’s not that they’re not easy to please – they are.  It’s not like they don’t find different places and learning new things interesting – they absolutely do.  It just that they had not put, and were uninterested in putting any thought or decision making into anything (including dinner).

I did get one piece of input: when I asked them earlier in the week to do some investigating of the area, it seems LR did ask her husband to look into things, and he did come up with one good restaurant idea.  HE came up with it.  She just repeated it.

Sororicide is a thing.

I just picked MW up with her suitcases (yes, plural) and her son & dog.  The son & dog aren’t coming on the trip, they’re just joining us as far as the Georgetown train station, then they’re walking home.

We’re waiting in the station parking lot for LR’s train.  Years (and years) ago, I took VIA from Toronto to Georgetown (it must have been after the last GO train of the day had left).  We stopped in Brampton, then, just at Norval I gathered my stuff, stood up, and moved to the door, ready to disembark.  The train seemed to still be moving quite quickly when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the conductor look over at me, jump up with a start, grab her walkie-talkie, and start running towards me.  It seems they had forgotten they had a passenger for Georgetown, and were barrelling right though town non-stop.  She managed to get the engineer to stop the train just past the station.  She walked me to the very last door of the train, apologising profusely, and I had to jump down onto the track and walk 20’ back to the very edge of the platform and climb up.  Not really VIA’s finest moment.

Well, the train seemed to be coming very quickly into the station, but it did indeed stop this time, and eventually LR arrived on board the Reid Sisters’ Sunseeker Express.

Let the fun begin!

My very first RV trip nine years ago:

One week until we leave.  I’ve taken on a lot of the prep for this trip because (a) it’s my RV; (b) they’re both still working; and (c) that’s how we’ve always rolled.

But we’re getting down to the wire now, and I have to admit – ladies, I’d like a little input, please. But why would they bother, when they can get me to do it? Not helpful!

I’ve suggested to them that maybe it wouldn’t hurt for them to look up things to do in each of: PEC, Kingston, and eastern Ontario.  We’ll see what comes out of that.