A few days in Clinton

This week we were mostly house-sitting for our Clinton friends while they took a short holiday trip to Wisconsin.

Clinton is a nice little town about 20 km east of Goderich Ont. No beaches here, but the Lake Huron shores aren't far away.

On Thursday we took a walk around town on the warm summer evening.

 An interesting house on a nearby street

The local library building

A neat water fountain, dry right now

A tribute to Alice Munro

The local Clinton Pipers band was having a practice session:

 Here's a little video to watch if you enjoy piping:

Friday afternoon we went to Bayfield for their regular Farmer's Market. Pretty small really (especially if you're familiar with the St Jacobs / Waterloo market) but it's local products, and well-attended.

Bayfield Friday Market

Some produce from the local Berry Farm

Heading to Cambridge and Waterloo for the weekend, visiting kids and their driveways.

Another week of progress at Bayfield

After a Friday and Saturday night spent mooch-docking in our kids driveways in Waterloo and Cambridge, we headed back towards Bayfield for a Monday morning meeting with the Mews builder.

We decided to spend Sunday night at another fine spot courtesy of Boondockers Welcome:

Nice parking pad, from an old grain bin

The site is on a pleasant farm property near Lucan, north of London Ont. It has been a dairy farm in the past, but no cows now. Across the field a couple of machines were busy cutting hay on a large field, back and forth:

 Monday morning we had a meeting at the Bayfield Mews with the builder, with a walk-through of an almost-finished unit similar to ours. Mostly this was about floor choices, wiring locations etc.
Definite signs of progress on our block under construction at the Mews:

After the foundations are all filled up and packed in, final plumbing and in-floor heating is added, then the floor slab is poured. Once that happens progress will be more easily seen.

Then in the afternoon on Monday it was back to Port Elgin for Cathie's dental surgery. This was to repair an old root canal that had gone bad. Not fun, but the procedure went well, and seems to be healing as it should.

Monday and Tuesday nights were spent in yet another driveway, this time friends in Southampton. Thanks again for your hospitality and the great turkey dinner Sherry and Don! Then on back to Clinton for a few days house-sitting for our friends there.

On Thursday Cathie attended a welcoming knitting group that meets weekly in the Bayfield library. Especially good timing for her, as one of the ladies brought in treats from her daughter that day:

On Friday afternoon the Mews had a little get-together to welcome us newbies, and allow us to meet some of our new neighbours-to-be. Very nice, and the weather cooperated for the backyard gathering.

The latter part of this week and next we're once again camped in the driveway of our Clinton friends. They left us in charge of their house while they are off on a short vacation. The gardens here are lovely right now:

The above pics are of their dog-friendly back yard. Lucky dogs eh!

It's still cool this week, but quite nice overall. A great spot to boondock. :-))

Oh yes, this week we also discovered a large crack in our laptop screen. Ugh! Likely a legacy from last year, when the computer slid from it's poor storage spot and smacked on to the van floor while we were underway, with no visible damage at the time. 
Fix or replace? It's still working for now, so rather than go without a computer we have ordered another laptop, and will likely replace the cracked screen later on.

In and around the Bayfield area

A different pace this week. Monday morning we were in London picking out lighting for the new place. They were kind enough to let us stay in their parking lot Sunday night, so we were there bright (?) and early Monday. The overnight stay was pleasant, very few bugs or traffic noise, except for an extremely loud motorcycle very close to us briefly in the wee hours. 

After the lighting it was on to flooring choices. Then in the early afternoon we stopped by the cabinet builder with the flooring choices, to firm up cabinet finishes etc.That visit was the last for the day, thank goodness.

We were pretty tired by that point, and wanted to set up for the night. It happened the cabinet builder is on hwy 21, almost beside the Pinery Provincial park. We hadn't been there for years, so decided to try for a site for the night. Luckily they had one for us, and we settled in on this beautiful day.

Of course we had to take the short hike to the Lake Huron shore:

From the boardwalk, crossing the dune

Not a really sandy beach right here, but very nice anyway

It was so nice here at the Pinery and the weather so good, we signed up for another night. We had to change sites on Tuesday because of incoming reservations, but changing sites with the van is pretty simple.

After a couple of beautiful days at the Pinery and a visit to the Bayfield Mews Wednesday morning, we headed back to our Clinton friends for Wednesday and Thursday nights. and then Friday in to Waterloo to stay at our older daughter's place for Friday night. A pretty relaxing week overall.

First week in the Bayfield area

This has been a busy week, but we've now spent our first week in our new area. Our house sale closed successfully; not without a last-minute glitch or two, but it's all done now. We're officially houseless; not homeless though, thanks to our travel van.

We camped several nights in the driveway of friends in Clinton, about 20 km from Bayfield. A week of more small moving decisions etc. We now have a storage unit in Goderich where we'll leave our car for the summer, with room for other off-season items like snow tires. 

We did take time for some sightseeing around Bayfield too. One of the nice features is a town park called Pioneer Park, overlooking Lake Huron:

Nice newer steps down to the lakefront from Pioneer Park

Erosion control from about 20 years ago, at the base of the steps

The rocks on the right are from a recent bank stabilization project

  

Note the high water levels. There's no easy path right now along the shore to the main Bayfield beach.

Although it looks like a path for the agile, right on the concrete "silos"

 

This nice lakefront park is about a 40 minute walk at our pace from our new place. It should be a good walk destination (and there are benches!).

Wednesday and Thursday nights marked our first stays courtesy of the Boondockers Welcome group (link here). We recently signed up with this group. Hosts offer a 1-2 night parking spot on their property, usually at no charge. This first stay was with a host just around the corner from our new home, very convenient, and excellent hosts. Thank you folks!

Our first Boondockers Welcome site

House clear-out

The movers came yesterday as scheduled, and took away most of the contents of our present house. They showed up pretty well on time, and in a few short hours had cleared up our house immensely. It went from this:

...to this:

These 2 chairs that we usually carry in our travel van are the only seats we have in the house now:

Fortunately we do still have our Internet connection for a couple more days.

This is the first time we've ever had professional movers. There's more prep time as we did most packing ourselves, and everything had to be well packed, but moving day was a LOT easier for us than in past self-moves. Hopefully they will be able to find all this stuff when it's time to move in to our new place. :-)

Today we had dropped in to a neighbor's garage sale, when a different kind of customer pulled into their driveway:

This local Mennonite took quite a few things away with him. Some of these things used to be in our house (Thanks Norm!). We resisted any purchases at the garage sale.

Our house sale closes this Wednesday, when we'll become homeless for the summer and early (hopefully!) fall. Off in the van we go! 

Here's what our new place looked like recently:

Not much more than a hole in the ground as yet, but on schedule. Thanks for the picture Al.