(pix when i get a better 'net connection.)
my first good night's sleep in many days, and even though i don't feel rested, i am ready to go. our first stop in hamilton is small diner near downtown: steve's open kitchen. there's continual reference to “peameal bacon,” but for the life of me, i can't remember what it is … i ask the mildly over-tasked waitress and then i remember … this is essentially back bacon and it's where we get the american term “canadian bacon” which is very similar, but not exactly the same.
i order a peameal and cheddar omelet, my accomplice gets peameal and scrambled eggs. and of course in a country like this you order “brown,” not “wheat” toast.
yummy food and on the way back to the car we stop by an art gallery that was promoting “the arctic experience.” in this part of the world, natives are known as “first nations” and there's far more attention and seriousness paid to the “indians” of canada by the country of canada, than those of the united states by the country of the united states.
the gallery is a strange mix of semi-impressionist paintings (mostly of meadows in bloom) and hardcore eskimo-like carvings. i made an endless stream of arctic experience jokes to the cute and tolerant gallery attendant until the manager couldn't bear it any more and came out and talked to us as well.
back on the road and we continued to make our way around the lake. we spotted a couple of wal-marts and on the third one i pulled in to grab my much-needed set of headphones.
as long as we stopped, i just had to get that staple of canadian junkfood, tim horton's. i don't like their damn donuts but in canada, goddammit, you do what the canadians do. i got a raspberry bearclaw like thing and my accomplice got a buttermilk donut (that looked suspiciously like a glazed old fashioned). were they crappy? of course they were.
back on the road we stop off at an obvious tourist trap, “the big apple.” there's a big fricken apple out front with a sadly pathetic miniature golf course and a closed go-kart track to the side. the main spread is a factory/cafeteria where they crank out apple pies.
you'd think, “a place like this has gotta have bad apple pie. or at least not good apple pie,” and you'd be right. we chase our may-or-may-not-have-machine-grease-on-the-crust pie with a crappy cup of foam-like vanilla ice cream. as you would guess, chasing bad pie with bad ice cream actually makes the whole experience better, making it worth the stop for pure grandma-touristy reasons only.
(fittingly, the apple was closed and you couldn't go on top)
needing nature, we continue to push forward until we get to sand banks provincial park. we're starting to run low on light, but still have enough to make a quick hike through dunes near an inlet that was cut-off by sand bars to lake ontario long, long ago.
panoramic shot from the lake ontario beach
back in the car we're trying to get as far as kingston, ON to keep tomorrow reasonable. the quickest way from where we are is to take a ferry, but it's not clear how much the ferry's gonna cost. really if it's anything, we'll just backtrack and go the longer, non-ferry route.
as we get close we start getting instructional signs of which lane to be in to board the ferry and eventually get to a point of no-return … still, with no indication of whether or not we have to pay, but i'm guessing the answer will be "no."
in fact i'm right. a dozen cars roll on and we take the smoothest of smooth rides across the tiny channel.
on the other side, we still don't have a room and after running around kingston a bit (as well as haggling with, then abandoning, an inn keeper), we call and get a room in the nearby motel 6. a bit pricey at C$80.
we stop at a chinese place that's open late for some better-than-you-would-guess food and then it's on to the motel.
(this is canada -- of course the chinese fortune cookies [invented in the US] are in french)
once we get to our room we realize why it's a tad pricey for an M6 -- they're using the new euro-style design here, and hey, something's gotta pay for cool tool racks.
check out here is 11:00, instead of the standard american noon for this chain. i could use the extra hour's sleep and 'net time, but i won't be getting it.
the drive, so far, has been fine -- i just wish the weather were a bit better ... and i still don't feel rested.
