Cornucopia

Few places that I have experienced have a greater diversity of commercial crops than the portion of Ontario along lake Erie. Today we saw tobacco, wheat, corn, soybeans, oats, alfalfa, apples, peaches, cherries, blueberries, raspberries, grapes, tomatos, potatoes, asparagus, peppers, cucumbers and various other crops that we didn't recognize.

Grapes. We need to stop at a winery to sample some local wine.

We were temporarily confounded by a wispy plant that perhaps was a gigantic form of dill. A quick smell test informed us that it wasn't dill. But what could it be?

We did not have to live in ignorance for long. A man was working in the yard of a house next to the mystery field. He explained that it was asparagus. Early in the year when the first tender shoots appear, they are harvested. But after a few weeks the asparagus starts to take on it's branched and wispy form. The farmers let it go to seed. The following spring, when last year's growth is all dried up, they cut it down to an inch or so above the ground and the cycle repeats.

Today was another windy day. We passed numerous wind farms. Because we were following the shore of Lake Erie, most of the wind coming off of the lake was an innocuous cross wind, or even a cross/tail wind near the end of the day. We felt we deserved a helpful wind because we had a few bonus miles going around a detour where a bridge was out.

We might have made the mistake of taking our chances when we saw the detour sign (we've made that mistake in the past), but Dave, a friendly local cyclist, happened to pass us just before we reached the point of no return and told us that the bridge really was impassible, and what route to take to get around the closed bridge.

If you want to build a wind farm in Ontario, do it next to the great lakes.

Just to prove that we don't always follow detour signs, we ignored a different detour we encountered later in the day.

Gee, it says road closed. Do you think that means the road is closed to bikes? Wait - there goes team S down the closed road, we have no choice but to follow.

We took a break in the town of Port Burwell, home of the rusting hulk of HMCS Ojibwa. Although we are supposed to be touring the rust belt, and few things are rustier than the Ojibwa, we decided not to stop for a tour.

The Ojibwa. Rusty? Yes. Worth $17 for a tour if the submarine? Maybe not...

Did they run out of paint, or run out of ladder?

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