The Destinators

Toronto – Drumeo live meetup

The event of the summer for us was a live meetup of a group of people from Drumeo, my online drum program. Drumeo provides a plethora of video lessons and workshops, live-streamed or online. We, the students, post videos of ourselves demonstrating our new learnings or a new tune on the Drumeo website forums, and we share feedback with each other. We also have the option to post our videos for a Drumeo instructor to critique and make recommendations. Of course we’ve met some Drumeos on past trips, however, a live get together with 14 students is a rare thing. And outrageous good fun!

Brampton, ON

Sue, Iris, Doug

Our last stop before we arrive in Toronto was Brampton, ON where we enjoyed getting together with our musician friend, Iris. Of course, it was an opportunity to jam!

Manitoulin Island

Lake Manitou from the Cup & Saucer cliffs

Look at any map of Ontario, and there’s a curious island at the north end of Lake Huron. It’s Manitoulin Island and we’d never heard of it. And it has a dotted line attached to its southern shore. Ferry! This needed some research.

It turns out Manitoulin Island is the largest island in a freshwater lake in the world. Interestingly, Manitou Lake (in the photo above) is the largest freshwater lake on an island in the world. The population (13,000) is a healthy mix of people of indigenous and European descent. Politically and culturally, the island is in North Ontario. Geologically – the Niagara Escarpment runs through it – it’s an extension of South Ontario. There are only 2 ways on or off the island – a swing bridge from Little Current to the mainland, and a ferry to and from the Bruce Peninsula that runs only in the summer. It sounded to us like a unique place worthy of exploration…

SW Ontario, part 2 – Owen Sound

There’s a strategy for travelers facing busy, tourist-filled areas during peak season. It’s called: Zig where others zag. We employ this strategy often, and it’s been quite effective!

SW Ontario, part 1 – South and West

We spent some quality time exploring Ontario in 2018. We headed east through North Ontario in May, and returned via South Ontario in October. The difference between the two is striking. North Ontario is nearly 1 million square kilometers of arboreal forest and many, many lakes on the rocky Canadian Shield. With <1 person per square kilometer, there are more moose than people. South Ontario is just under 100,000 square kilometers of farms, wineries and orchards with 5 big lakes, 3 of them great – Erie, Ontario and Huron. Canada’s largest city, Toronto, and the capital of Canada, Ottawa (on the northern edge of South Ontario), drive the population density to 120 people per square kilometer. The dividing line is the nearly 10,000 square kilometer Algonquin Provincial Park, home to 12 million* beavers.

There was one area of Ontario we had yet to visit – Southwest Ontario. This is an area within South Ontario that touches Lake Ontario and Lake Huron. Half of this area is north of our 44° home latitude, half is south.

Family & friends

We’re heading to a music event in Toronto. That’s an 11-hour drive from home, but think of everything we’d miss if we drove directly to Toronto and back! So in our usual never-take-the-direct-route way of getting anywhere, we found we can visits friends and family, explore a few corners of Ontario we’ve not yet been to, and attend our event all in 3 weeks!

Greetings from the Fourth of July Capital of the Universe!

Honest. Our tiny town of Warren, Vermont (pop 2,000) bills itself as ‘The Fourth of July Capital of the Universe.’ The entire celebration revolves around the Warren Parade – a unique, quirky, often political and always hilarious event that typically draws a crowd of 10,000 from New England and beyond, in the absence of a pandemic. After slightly smaller crowds over the past 2 years, the Warren Parade was back with a vengeance…

Elmore, VT

Our good friends Patti and Milo, whom we first met years ago out on the ski hill, are also RVer’s with a sense of adventure and a penchant for hiking and biking. Over dinner one night at the end of the ski season, we mentioned that we were thinking of exploring places closer to home in our RV this summer, and that, ironically, we’d never spent a night in our RV in Vermont except in our own driveway. That conversation evolved into a plan for a meet up for the four of us at Elmore State Park, just a bit north of where we all live in the Mad River Valley.

Stump Sprouts v. 35

Since 1987, with a scant handful of exceptions, a wonderful group of friends have gathered on Memorial Day weekend for a same-time-next-year event at Stump Sprouts in the Berkshires. Though we’re charter members of this group, due to our summer travels (up to 2019) and COVID (2020-2021), we’ve missed this annual rendezvous for the past few years. Since we’re in New England for this spring and summer, we were filled with joy when we learned the MemDay SS Weekend was on this year, and there was room for us to rejoin!

Variations on adventure

Early May is when we usually leave for our summer adventures. After missing 2 adventure years due to covid, we took a deep breath, put our least emotional and most rational hats on, and decided to sit out one more year. Covid uncertainty abounds in New England right now and projections about if, when and where new waves may occur over the summer are up in the air. I also had another shoulder surgery in late March, for which a solid few months of physical therapy will improve the outcomes significantly – and that’s much easier to accomplish at home than on the road.

So instead, we have a different kind of adventure this summer. We are planning to do some short trips to explore New England and hang with local friends and family. We’ll be responsible adults and take care of some much-needed, deferred maintenance on our home. And of course, music will continue. Stay tuned…