Sun. July 26, 2020
After a lovely breakfast with the Poultons, we planned our trip to Peterborough and beyond to include some cross-country travel to accommodate our starting point south of Ottawa. It took us through some of the varied landscape of the province–the suburban housing, fertile farmland, marginal farms, limestone outcrops, and granite of the Canadian Shield–each with its own vegetation and settlement patterns. In many ways, it is the particular geology and geography of the places through which we travel that guides and excites me as we make out way across the country. I thank the “Ecotour” series of the Canadian Forest service for introducing me to these aspects of our travel and the vision of Canada they provide (https://cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/series/read/27).
A good example it the style of fences one finds along the way. When we started to see the triangle system for “posts” we knew we were in rocky or boggy ground since postholes were impossible to manage under these conditions. The shift from birch and deciduous trees to spruce and evergreens marked another change–often accompanied by the bogs and lily-pads of the Shield country.
As we approached Peterborough for our visit with Kathy and Jim we were well into the rounded granite of the Shield and the beautiful striations of rock exposed by the many road cuts through the rock.
Our visit was a wonderful catch-up with the usual–too many topics, but not enough time– quality that so often occurs with friends. We left with the ache of laughter and the hope that the internet will once again provide the means to continue our conversations.
Our night-time resting place was a VOA campground near Seguin–one of our 32 NRE sites (http://nre.concordia.ca). We backed into our site as we were greeted by our neighbours from Brampton (and their 2 dogs), enjoyed a brief chat with them before heading off to our RV bubble for a bite to eat and bed.