Wow, who knew that 5 weeks could go by so fast!  We were so happy to have had amazing weather (not sure the local farmers thought the same!) hot and sunny almost everyday of our stay.  It was fun being a tourist in Niagara after all the years of just visiting and 19 years of living there.  There was a long list of things to do and we only got through half of it because we found so many OTHER things to do! With over 860 km on our bicycles, there were not many roads that we did not see.

All the way from Grimsby Beach to Niagara on the Lake to Port Colborne and many vineyards in between.  Of course, almost every ride included a hill or two, the joys of living 2/3rds of the way up the Escarpment.  A big thank you to Kate a

nd Mike for being along for a lot of those kilometres!  Also to Eva and Guy for making our stay enjoyable.

We had fun spending time with our niece Danielle as she starts her adult working life.  We even got to embarrass her by taking a picture of her on her first day of work.  Our stay started with the ALS Walk in St. Catharines for our friend Shelley who’s husband Rob has been fighting this awful disease now for 5 years.  Shelly had suggested we bring  our “house” to her “after walk party” so we spent the night at their beautiful property outside of Fort Erie.  After moving back into the campground we set up and started to explore.  We explored the Welland Canal from one end to the other and got to see a replica of a 1000 year old Viking ship that came across the North Alantic to Canada.

We explored the vineyards as we cycled past them, talked to an owner (Marcus) about the work involved ( and there is a lot )and even enjoyed a movie night by seeing The Martian outdoors in the Trius vineyard on a clear night with the planet Mars in the sky above the screen.  The last night in the region we went to see Colin James perform at Jackson and Triggs, thank you Marcus and Linda!

Did I talk about the wine!  Amazing sparkling wine, amazing ice wine, amazing wine!!  We really appreciate

d the hospitality from Sue Ann Staff Wineries as we were regulars there to say hi and pet their Bernise Mountian Dog named Brix.

We enjoyed visits from Peter and Dianne, our first overnight guests in the RV.  An excellent dinner at the Lake House  for Peter’s birthday, one of many dinners there.  They have reported that maybe 1 night is enough on our pull out couch!   Lynn and Julie brought  their own camper and were our “neighbour” for 2 nights.  Some more wineries were visited, this time we had a vehicle so we took full advantage of being able to buy many bottles of wine! Our first and only campfire was enjoyed with them as a fire ban happened the day after they left.  All of this and we have not even mentioned the Falls yet.

We got to see amazing fireworks over the Falls, we took a helicopter ride over the Falls, we walked behind the Falls, we walked above the Falls, we jet boated the rapids below the Falls and even cycled past the Falls.  Then there is the Bruce Trail which ran right beside our campground, even though we did not hike a lot of it we covered around 20 km of it.  We even saw the waterless Balls Falls due to the lack of rain.  All in all, it is hard to put into words all that we packed into the 5 weeks.  Thanks to everyone that was part of it!

 

(to see more pictures go to our picture section or click here)