Storyline: Advantures in our back yard
We were woken up by a car motor just before 6am. Already? Did they even stop visiting? I heard motors running in the early hours too. Looks like Port Stanley is a popular escape place for Ontario. Or could it have been locals?
The sky was absolutely stunning, with the sun slowly flaring the clouds and blazing across the frozen lake. There were people with balloons on the beach being photographed in the darkness of a suspended wintry morning.
Alex grabbed his camera and ran out, while I enjoyed the view from the warmth and comfort of our cozy home, sipping my cappuccino.
Other photographers joined in. Two VW campervans arrived for the dawn show as well.
Apparently, they had spent the night at the paved marina parking lot across a field from us, not knowing if it was OK to boondock where we did.
After breakfast we headed for Dresden. In hindsight we should have dropped it from our day 2 itinerary, because it was so out of the way from the rest of our itinerary. On the top of this, Alex took one of his dad’s shortcuts which doubled the time I had planned to reach it (but it was worth it – A).
This however gave us the opportunity to observe maple sap gathering. It is that time of the year. For those of you unfamiliar with maple syrup production below are some facts: Canada produces about 75% of the world’s supply of maple syrup.
About 90% of it is produced in Quebec and only 4% in Ontario. It’s made from the sap of the sugar maple tree. In spring when the temperatures are below freezing overnight, water from the soil is absorbed into the tree.
The warmer daytime temperatures create pressure that pushes water down making it easy to collect the sap. About 40 litres of sap produce one litre of syrup.
After we left the picturesque shore route, lined with sugar maple trees, we drove through Melbourne, Glencoe and Florence. None of them were in my first cut of the itinerary.
Glencoe’s first settler was William Sutherland who in 1853 established Mosa Station that was later renamed after Glen Coe in Scotland by surveyor A. P. Macdonald.
We couldn’t find information about the origin of Florence’s name or time of establishment, except that the nearest post office for Oakdale, Rutherford and Shetland is in Florence. It is the largest hamlet in Dawn-Euphemia township with approximately 150 people.
And if you think Melbourne’s name origin comes from the popular city of Melbourne Australia, you are wrong. It actually is named after Melbourne England, a town in Derbyshire. The name has a meaning of mill on the brook (mel=mill and bourne=brook). This name was given to it in 1882, after the place that appeared on the map in 1832 and had been renamed a few times to this, its final version (for now, at least – A).
…and:
Finally: Welcome to Dresden! Do you know what is Dresden famous for? We’ll tell you in a minute. This small community is perched on the Sydenham River and was founded in 1825 by a lumber merchant who saw (no pun intended) great promise in the local forest. At the time it was named Fairport. Similarly to many other small Ontario communities, the post office had a say in its naming. In 1852 when the post office opened it was renamed Dresden. By 1872 it was a village and ten years later received town status. By that time the trees were gone and the town became an agricultural centre. These days, automotive parts production and food processing are the main industries.
Our main attraction though wasn’t in Dresden proper. Instead, we headed out to the house of Josiah Henson, a former slave who had escaped to Canada in 1830, bought 200 acres near this location and with the help of abolitionists opened a vocational school for fugitive slaves who came to Canada via the famous Underground Railroad. Later, Henson became the protagonist in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. His former house and other buildings are now a museum.
What were we thinking though? We forgot that it is Covid time. The museum of course was closed for the season and with workers wandering outside unmasked we didn’t find it appropriate to even walk around the museum. Drove into Dresden, filled up with gas and headed north to our next destination, Shipka.
The road took us through oil country. Here near Sarnia was where the first oil in Canada was discovered. So, we drove through Oil Springs, Oil City, Petrolia, etc.
My plan was to have lunch in or near to Shipka. But it was already late. Alex located a nice spot just north of Parkhill at the Parkhill Commemorative Woods and Scenic Lookout. Picture and lunch perfect.
Welcome to Shipka! “Shipka who?”, you say. Well, this is one of the two Bulgarian connections during this trip. Shipka is a small town in central Balkans in Bulgaria, however this is not why Shipka holds a dear place in the heart of every Bulgarian. It is the Shipka Pass through the Balkans that carries significant historic importance. Basically, it is there, where the Russo-Turkish War (1877-1878) was won with the help of over 5,000 Bulgarian volunteers.
If you are old enough to remember the times when there was no Internet and TV, you probably knew by heart a long poem or song before you could talk. In Bulgaria this was the ode by Ivan Vazov, “Oh Shipka”, dedicated to the fallen solders and volunteers. How this Ontario community was named after Shipka is not known.
The name first appeared on an 1879 map. This was just after the war, and in the absence of advanced communication technologies, either someone local knew about the battle or a European settler brought in the knowledge. It is a small settlement now, near the Lake Huron beach town of Grand Bend. Its most notable structure is the Starlight drive-in theatre.
Next stop nearby is the heritage village of Zurich, in Bluewater. Zurich, was founded by Swiss-German Frederick K. Knell in 1856. Only 10 minutes away from Lake Huron, this pretty village deserves more of our attention. We had one more community to visit and we were eager to check into Pinery Provincial Park and do some hiking before dark. Thus, we only drove through a place where we’d love to spend a lot more time.
Our last stop before Pinery was Varna, another Bulgarian connection. It was founded by Scots who arrived there in 1831. However, the settlement had no record of community name until Josiah Brown Secord arrived in 1854, and named the place after the Bulgarian fortress-seaport used at the time to embark soldiers going to the Crimean War. The original Varna is now the third-largest city in Bulgaria and is a popular Black Sea resort.
Had we skipped Dresden we’d have had plenty more time to enjoy these pretty little communities.
We breezed though Varna and sped up along road 24 to our camping spot. It was sunny, though not as warm as we expected.
The hope that we’d be hiking one of the many trails in Pinery was dimmed by the fact that snow had melted and then had re-frozen, creating ice rinks of the trails.
And so. we used 6 km of the park’s paved roads instead and managed to reach Lake Huron before sunset.
We loved the vastness of this park, enjoyed our evening and decided to return to this, one of Ontario’s three most popular Provincial Parks, when the snow/ice is gone.
Back within Doranya’s comfortable embrace, we enjoyed a nip of scotch to warm ourselves, had a leisurely dinner and were soon asleep.
It was very peaceful, although I missed seeing the stars on a clear night. This concluded a long second day of our tour of Europe without leaving Ontario.
Join the conversation around our e-Table