Yesterday my husband and I did a short road trip to the Grimsby Beach Village. This area next to Lake Ontario was originally a Methodist Camp in the 1800s and people came from all over Ontario and New York to spend part of their summers here.
In the early 1900s the tents were replaced with cabins and a couple of hotels were built to accommodate the growing number of tourists.
Today the homes are all privately owned but the community has decided to continue painting and decorating their houses in bright colours.
“Guard well your spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds. Discard them and their value will never be known. Improve them and they will become the brightest gems in a useful life.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson
I love this quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson. During COVID so many of us have had more time on our hands because commuting was no longer necessary to get to and from work because we were able to work from home but how many of you made use of that extra hour or two to do something for yourself. I’m painfully aware of this after I spend too much of my day binge watching TV.
One of the best things that my husband and I have done since January is to put aside one day a week, in the middle of the week, get into the car and drive somewhere where we can be in nature and go for long hikes and not worry about crowds of people. We’ve had a wonderful time and each week we become a little more organized. This week we even packed a picnic lunch and some weeks we had dinner cooking in the slow cooker so that when we got home dinner was ready.
Here are some of the wonderful places we have visited since January. These are our ‘brightest gems’ in our lives this year.
Last week we took another day trip to take in some more waterfalls. We headed toward the Niagara region where the world’s most famous waterfalls reside, the Horseshoe Falls and the American Falls wihich make up Niagara Falls.
The falls are fed by the Niagara River and the force of this powerful river and subsequent falls powers a huge section of Ontario and New York State.
Niagara Falls is not the tallest falls in North America but the width and volume of water that flows over the edge makes it the largest falls. Worldwide it is only the ninth largest falls but it is probably the most famous of all the falls and the city is considered the honeymoon capital of the world.
Today my husband and I did one of our nature hikes outside of the city but the conditions were less than ideal. Although it was a beautiful, sunny and mild day the melting snow had turned to ice and walking was somewhat treacherous. After visiting a couple of waterfalls near Hamilton we decided to drive into Dundas and walk down the main street and take in the shops. Here are just a few of the interesting doors we observed on our stroll through town.
On Wednesday my husband and I got in the car and headed north west to Halton Hills and the Limestone Conservation Area. The conservation area is an extension of the Niagara Escarpment and three trails run through it. One of the trails is the Bruce Trail. The highlight for us were the Lime Kilns that once produced limestone blocks in the 1800s and ceased production in 1917.
This time of year the trails are not maintained and can be somewhat treacherous because of the ice. This was especially true near the stone arch bridge. A new bridge has been built parallel to it but the steps were very icy and it took me quite some time to safely navigate this slippery slope. I thought that the barrel style structures were a different style of kiln but after doing some research I discovered that these building were the powder houses where the explosives, used to blast out the limestone, were stored. Black Creek is the waterway that surges under the bridge and with the snow and ice I found the setting very picturesque.
In the town of Limehouse sits an old church which is now the Limehouse Memorial Centre. Limehouse was first settled in 1820. By the 1840’s limestone quarrying and “burning” of limestone in kilns to make lime, had begun. The Grand Trunk Railway built its line through Limehouse in 1856 which required 200 workers and their families to settle in the area.(from Wikipedia)
Today about 800 people live in Limehouse. There are several farms in the area where racing horses and wild boar are raised.
Walking through the old neighbourhood close to St. Joe’s Hospital I couldn’t help but notice how many of the old homes had new window put in as well as undergoing some major renovations. Some of the windows were clearly new but had kept the charm of the older house. Others were a complete departure from the older architecture.
Mama Cormier 