Continuing from the previous post on our vacation to Lake Huron.
While vacationing, one must eat for survival, for simple reasons: If you don’t eat, you don’t shit. If you don’t shit, you die. Dying tends to ruin ones’ day and is a tad permanent.
Food is one of those things that motivate us, not just for sustenance, but for the luxurious pleasures of the table. Combined with travelling about in the area, one seeks out places to dine, if only to find that one undiscovered treasure that only the locals know about. We eschew chain establishments, if only because they are consistently adequate, or are at a minimum, non-toxic.
One place we hit on the out-drive was Butchie’s in Whitby, just outside of Toronto. Andrea Nicholson from Food Network owns the joint and it is named after her Dad. Meat and Three is the staple, so you know the sides are going to be excellent and the meat will make you smile all the way up from your toes. Brisket, done right, no garish sauces, just salt, pepper and smoky low-temp time. Mac and Cheese, perfect and actual french fried potatoes that started as a fifty-pound bag of potatoes, fried and seasoned properly. Burger? Excellent, as expected, char, seasoned, toasted bun, correct condiments and very good coleslaw. Worth a stop if you have to go through the 416.
We use fries as a rudimentary yardstick. If the fries suck, so will the rest of the meal, or at least will have significantly lower expectations. We are of the Belgian or Twice-Fried persuasion when it comes to the humble side. They should never be frozen, but start as whole potatoes. Cut into the size that you desire, fried once at 300 F to almost fully cook the potato, then cooled for a bit to stabilize the starches. Then, cooked to order, (a la minuit) at 370 F to finish cooking to turn the outside into that Golden, Brown and Delicious (GBD) crunch. Seasoned, usually only with salt, as soon as they come out of the fryer then rushed to the diner, hot enough to burn your palate. What to put on them is a longer post with much potential for argument.
Relaxing during vacation time is an imperative. Gazing off into middle-distance, or leafing through your ‘summer’ book is one of the reasons you are on vacation. There is no expectation of profound revelations or astounding intellectual banter. Sometime the most one can hope for is a mumbled apology for farting or grunting if asked if they want another drink. One grunt, “yes” two grunts “no”. This is especially easy when surrounded by friends whom with you have traversed most of the Rideau Canal in a 32 foot cruiser over several days.
Sunsets? Heavens be, we had some glorious ones, facing due west. FYI, these are camera originals, only converted from .NEF to .jpg, no colour correction. There are several dozen more, but these will suffice for give you a taste.
Daytrips are always a fixture. We rambled about, Sauble Beach, a tourist town in summer, home to a sand beach more than seven kilometers in length with delicious white sand. Tourist shops of course, including an old Airstream trailer done up as a coffee bar. Southampton is a charming village town a touch further
south along the peninsula, with a break for lunch. Other trips included an abandoned stone homestead from the earliest days of the area originally built by a prosperous family, but now fallen into disrepair.
A boat tour took a pleasant piece of a whole day, sailing from Tobermory around the large spit of land around the Flower Pot islands and other geologic features peculiar to the area. The Bruce Peninsula is the site of several Parks Canada preserved areas for their geologic uniqueness as well as their wilderness habitat.
Then there were restaurants and brewers. Someone decided that strong cider would be a sound choice, so we did visit a couple of brewers near Thornbury. On the return home, we posit that half the weight of the car was cider in many forms and formulations.
Rambling is one of the lost arts of travel. We’re so invested in getting there, seeing the things on our list and hustling to the next destination that we forget to look out the window and see whatever the hell is out there. In the day we called it following the hood ornament. Since the vast majority of cars no longer have hood ornaments, this is an archaic term, but the concept is to go in that direction, or this direction and whatever shows up, shows up. If we want to stop, we will, or if we’ve discovered a patch of rust belt toxic landfill, we will keep moving. We choose.
As an example, the portrait to the left was done by a high school art student in Wiarton, on found media, specifically a piece of a cardboard box. We had no idea the gallery was hosting a display of the students’ creations, some primitive but showing promise, or this piece that is the result of many hours of diligent study of the form. We didn’t search it out, or Google up “Art in Wiarton”, we just walked into it and spent a few moments enjoying the display.
More highway, more beach and more sand, which sums up rambling. More to come later.
RoadDave 