Not sure how Dan found this place, or how we decided that we’d drive four hours from Toronto for a one-night weekend trip, but I’m glad he did. Maybe it was on the list of our National Parks card eligible national parks to visit. It’s a pointy bit of land in Western Ontario, not far from the Canadian city called Windsor and the U.S. city of Detroit. I bit the bullet and drove, right out of the hire car bay under the Marriot Hotel on Bloor St, and had to turn left onto Bloor Street. In Canada turning left is like turning right in Australia. You have to negotiate both directions of traffic. It was made more complicated by being in the wrong side of the car and consciously having to drive on the wrong side of the road. Driving South down Jarvis St, to get to the Gardiner Expressway was as thrilling as a rollercoaster ride, except I was driving. Being on what subconsciously was the wrong side of the road made me hyper aware of every oncoming object, every sign and light, every other vehicle. It was overwhelming. It took an hour or so to get over it.
The National Park had all these trees along the roadside that had ends of branches wrapped in what looked like spiders’ webs. The leaves inside were all dead. We wondered why spiders would eat the leaves, or were they sucking the sap to get moisture? I haven’t known spiders to eat either leaves or sap, so imagined that they must be very large and very deadly spiders. When we accidentally parked under some of the webs I was reluctant to get back into the car. We later found out that the webs are for caterpillars, not spiders, which explains the contained leaf destruction. The central dead leaves aren’t dead birds. No giant spiders were dropping on our heads. I did have a tiny 10 mm spider jump on my chest at the picnic table at lunch. The family at the table near us probably wondered why the two Aussie young men were screaming, and I was standing on the bench, Daniel 1 metre from the table. We ate our lunch standing.
There are a lot of signs at Point Pelee warning against wading or swimming at the point. People drown every decade or so. It wasn’t until we were on the shuttle bus back that I’d realized that taking your shoes off to stand on the point as the gentle waves lapped across the sand constitutes wading and we were probably being quietly tutted at by the families of Mennonites behind us.
At the gift shop I bought a handful of cute plush key rings: a bear, a beaver and a moose, each wearing a mounty hat. I bought Dad & Aunty Ella and Michelle key rings at Niagara so needed to get Mum and Miranda one too. I bought myself a cap, as we seem to have only brought one hat with us from Australia.
I used the 90 minute ferry ride to Pelee Island to read two more articles: one breast MRI article and one dynamic contrast-enhanced ultrasound perfusion study article.
Glen's Travel Blog 