To wrap-up our “Toronto” trip, we decided to get out of the big city for a couple of days and explore more of the Ontario “countryside”. I was perusing Google maps for ideas up towards Georgian Bay and Lake Huron when I spotted a town name that seemed familiar – Collingwood. I couldn’t quite place where I’d heard of it before until I looked it up and then remembered that a Canadian blogger that I follow had lived there. So, I went to her blog (https://roseandtedsexcellentadventure.com/) and searched on “Collingwood” and read all her entries. Yep, it sounded just like the kind of place we’d like to visit!

We picked up our SUV rental Sunday morning and headed in that direction. There are a couple of wineries in the area, and I decided that the timing would work out perfectly for lunch at The Roost Wine Company on the way to our hotel at Living Water Resort and Spa. Ok, so it’s not in the most direct path to the hotel, but it’s on the way if that’s where you are going!

The Roost Wine Company

This stop couldn’t have been more perfect. The tasting room appears to be in an old barn, but the interior is very modern. The patio terrace has a variety of tables and chairs with a screened roof blocking direct sunlight surrounded by representative grape vines and flowers. There is additional lawn seating in Adirondack chairs under arbors with fabulous views from the winery’s elevation on the Niagara Escarpment.

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Dave thought all the wines should pair with pork chops, his favorite meat! He did add some alternative suggestions though, chicken with the whites and steak with the reds! I tried to be more creative, pairing the Sparkling Rosé with strawberries and brie, the Chardonnay with halibut in a cream sauce, and the Baco Noir with venison, for example. As far as figuring out which specific wine we were drinking, let’s just say neither of us will be passing a sommelier test any time soon!

It was a lovely, though windy day, to sit and enjoy the wine, cheese, and charcuterie. There were no large, rowdy groups. The customers were mostly couples, including a well-behaved dog or two. We enjoyed all of their wines – noting once again that it is the winemaker’s style of wines more than the varietal or even the terrior which impacts whether we like the wines at any winery. We bought a bottle of the Marquette (a cold-climate varietal we first found in Vermont a few years ago and really liked) to take with us for a picnic lunch the next day.

Living Water Resort

We got checked into our hotel for the next two nights and with the size of the suite we had, we could have stayed a week!

Since we had a full kitchen, we decided to go to the Loblaws grocery store and pick up items for breakfast and lunch the next day. I had commented on Rose’s blog that I’d decided to spend a couple of days in Collingwood after reading her adventures there, and she replied that we had to try the butter tarts and that the ones she liked best were usually available at the Loblaws. We found plenty of options for cheese, crackers, salami, and the butter tarts to go along with the fresh cherries we’d gotten in Niagara-on-the-Lake (NOTL) and our wine from Roost.

For dinner, we opted to eat at the hotel restaurant, Lakeside Seafood and Grill. It was highly recommended by a couple of different people we’d talked to and had good online ratings as well. Service was initially slow; I think a wait staff person might not have shown up for their shift. However, the food was great.

Sunset from the Rooftop

The hotel has a great rooftop with a walking track and some benches. We went up around sunset to check out the views.

Keeping an Eye on Hurricane Beryl

Back in our room for the evening, we checked in on the news from the Texas coast to see what was happening with the approach of Hurricane Beryl and where all my family in the area planned to be as its apparent path would impact not only our house, but also where my mom lived, my sister and brother-in-law, and one of my nephew’s family.

The next morning, we immediately checked on everyone’s status as the hurricane had come ashore and was making its way through the greater Houston area. I’d gotten an alert that our power had gone off around 6am, and we were bummed out about that a little. We installed a whole house natural gas generator following the big freeze a couple of years ago. However, this week when it ran its weekly test, it failed and wouldn’t restart! We called the company, but they were overwhelmed with calls and wouldn’t be able to get by and check on it before the storm hit. Oh well, it is what it is and we couldn’t do anything more about it from Canada.

Collingwood Museum and Waterfront

It’s a cute local museum, located in the old train depot station, near the center of town. They had a lot of local artifacts and history of the area, especially about the ship-building industry which was so big there until the mid-1980s. They had videos playing of some of the ship launches which were done sideways as the area they launched from was so shallow. Those were interesting to watch.

Following that we walked over to the area where the shipyard had been. It’s now condos and apartments along the waterfront, so we had to use our imagination (and what we’d seen in the videos and pictures at the museum) to envision it as it used to be. The walkway along the harbor had some pretty flowers to admire, too!

Change of Plans

We walked back to our car and drove around the town checking out a couple of restaurant recommendations for that evening, then headed back to the hotel. Originally, we were going to go for a drive further north along Georgian Bay, but the hurricane changed our plans! We started watching the coverage from the Houston news stations on our iPads and decided to just eat our picnic lunch at the dining table in our suite so we could keep up with the reports on storm damage and check in on friends and family.

Later in the afternoon, a neighbor checked around our house for any damage from the storm. There were some trees down in our yard, but nothing close to our house. We were relieved to say the least.

Afternoon Walk Around the Marina

I took a break from hurricane coverage to take a walk around the marina for the Cranberry Yacht Club at the resort and enjoyed watching the geese and ducks while taking in the views around Collingwood Harbor.

Dinner in a Bank

After reviewing several restaurant options for our last dinner in Ontario, we opted for Prime Seven Nine located in an old Art-Deco bank. The décor and atmosphere were very nice. We ordered a Malbec wine and then the grilled octopus for an appetizer, reminiscent of our Portugal trip! Dave got the steak frites and I got the market fish, but don’t remember what it was now! Maybe someone will recognize it below and let me know! I had the option for head on or off, so decided to request off, but it would have been okay either way as it tasted great! The sun hadn’t quite set when we finished dinner, so I got a couple of more pictures of the cute downtown area.

Return to Houston

The next morning, we drove back to the Toronto airport, taking a slightly different route to enjoy more of the Ontario countryside. We half expected to find our flight delayed due to all the cancellations the day before from the hurricane; but we had booked a late flight back and it was actually on-time. However, when we arrived at the airport in Houston, it was a madhouse!

While the airport was operating on emergency generator power, most of Houston was without electricity. Flights were playing catch-up from the day before, so it was like two days’ worth of people all arrived at the same time. Between traffic lights being out, not enough shuttles to the offsite parking lots, and all the construction around the airport, everything was backed up! I suspect many workers had not even been able to make it to work that day. It took almost 2 hours before we were able to get on a shuttle to our parking lot! Standing in the heat with all the exhaust from the shuttles and cars, was exhausting (no pun intended!).

By the time we arrived at our car, it was dark. No electricity at the lot, meant no lights, and they were exiting everyone via a different spot than normal which was unfamiliar – especially in the dark! The only good thing about it was they couldn’t charge us since there was no electricity to run their machines!

Let There Be Light and Air Conditioning!

When we arrived home – over two hours later than we expected – and in the dark, the first thing we did was grab a couple of flashlights and head out to the generator to see if we could get it reset and running. Thankfully, the reset instructions worked – and the power to our house was re-enabled!

As the power had been off for about 40 hours by the time we got the generator running, I ended up throwing away the few things we had in the refrigerator. Luckily, though, the freezer contents were all still frozen, so that was a blessing.

The next morning, in the daylight, we were able to assess the status of the yard and the work to be done to clean up the trees that were down (See Note 46). We also were able to see that several of our neighbors were not so lucky and had downed trees clobber fences and, in some cases, cause damage to their houses as well. Such is the nature of living in a hurricane-prone zone of the country! Ironically, the remnants of Beryl travelled all the way up to Toronto and caused major flooding there a few days after we left.

Trip Wrap-up

I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to finish writing about this trip, but here we finally are over a month and a half later! We really enjoyed the time in Toronto, Niagara, Niagara-on-the-Lake, and Collingwood. We obviously didn’t do justice to Collingwood and that part of Ontario due to the hurricane distracting us. So, I’d really like to go back some time and visit that region more thoroughly – just maybe not during hurricane season along the Texas coast!

Post-Script for Note 46 and Hurricane Beryl: Today, August 21, all of the storm debris piled along our street was finally picked up by the city/county! So, it’s only fitting that I complete the final Note from our July trip to Ontario today, too!