On Saturday morning, we were up bright and early and straight out onto the road to make the most of our time with the car. We’d found a few listings online for some campers so we plugged them into the GPS and headed up to just west of Brampton to take a look. Unfortunately, it seems that rust is a rather large issue in Ontario – locals have told us it’s due to the humidity and the salt used on the roads during Winter and believe us when we say, we’ve seen vehicles with more rust than anything back home! Due to not wanting to buy a rustbucket, we accepted our losses for the day and made the short drive up the road to Silver Creek Conservation Area.
Silver Creek has a number of hiking trails to enjoy including part of the Bruce Trail, which is the oldest and longest marked hiking trail in Canada! Armed with a fresh can of bugspray and excited to get out into the Ontario countryside, we ended up walking for hours and got eaten alive by bugs but it was definitely worth it for the awesome views we got!
As it was a saturday, we headed back to the hostel for BBQ night up on the roof. This was the first BBQ night since being in Toronto that Dan finally learned his lesson and didn’t over-eat (although that also short-lived)!
Sunday morning was also an early start and we deciced to head north of the GTA to check out Lake Simcoe and also some dealerships we had found along the way. Once we reached the lake, we were able to drive right alongside the shoreline and grew increasingly jealous of the people who owned the houses that backed onto the lake… most houses had their own private beaches with a jetty and boat and in this kind of heat we imagined how awesome it would be!
After driving around the edge of Lake Simcoe for over half an hour, we felt like we were at least halfway around so found somewhere to stop for a walk and a wander called Sibbald Point Provincial Park.
Whilst at Sibbald Point, we got a chance to check out the camping situation and see what we would be up against in a few weeks. The campgrounds were well equipped with toilets and washing facilities and each site had a picnic table and a firepit and we couldn’t wait until we were doing this ourselves! That is, until the torrential rain started!
We decided it was time to head back down to Toronto and upon checking the map, we realised that we had barely even gotten a third of the way up one side of Lake Simcoe, so we decided to head back the way we’d came. Driving south, we saw some very impressive lightning/electricity storms ahead of us, where the black skies would light up completely and flicker before being plunged back into darkness! As we were driving we saw an electricity pyloon get struck about 100m ahead of us (sparks everywhere!) and also had lightning strike the field right beside us which was enough to shake the car!