Wheatley to Toronto, Ontario – 3 May 2023
Lambton Shores, 3 May 2023
Rain continued as we moved to Rock Glen Family Resort in Lambton Shores for a couple of nights. When we got there we were sent to the bottom of the campground which was very waterlogged. We had a hell of a time trying to get the Fifth wheel into place on the pad – the road was just too narrow so as we turned to get onto the pad our RV’s wheels got stuck in mud. Luckily the owner was able to pull both our truck and the RV out with his truck but we left huge gouges in the grass all over the place.
The following day we drove to Thedford to meet a customer who had purchased one of our dog wash buildings. He had a very small car wash in what looked like a world war 11 hanger. The dog wash building looked great and very eye catching. We got to meet the owner Charlie who took us back to his house and gave us a couple of bottles of honey from his bee farm. Charlie’s house was across from the Pinery Provincial Park which we had planned to visit, so that was convenient. The sun came out and we parked at the visitors centre and walked along a couple of the trails till we came out at a beautiful sandy beach on the shores of Lake Huron. The Park had extremely biodiverse and rare Oak Savannah and was filled with the sounds of birds everywhere. Apparently there are over 300 species here. Lake Huron was the first of the Great Lakes to be discovered. A fact I didn’t know is that Lake Huron has a Salt Mine under it. The Goderich Mine, which is the largest salt mine in the world, partly runs 1,800 feet under the Lake. On the way back to our RV we drove through Grand Bend a lovely seaside town. Most of the restaurants were closed because it was still out of season. Its a pity we were moving on the next day as the area was really lovely near the Lake and I would have liked to have spent more time exploring it.
Toronto, 5 May 2023
On Friday we moved to Milton, Ontario to Milton Heights Campground. We were pretty pissed off with them as we had hoped to send one of our packages here and they refused to accept it. We even offered to pay them for it but there was no flexibility at all. The campground seemed quite nice though we were warned if we drove over the grass we would have to pay! We had several customers we were planning to visit in the Toronto area and as Milton was about an hour away from them, we decided to leave the RV in the campsite and book into a hotel closer to downtown Toronto for a couple nights. In the morning we visited a customer with a laundromat. Steven and Naomi his wife, were there to greet us. Such lovely people. They had partitioned off one end of their laundromat and added two of our dog wash machines. Everything looked very well cared for and clean. I took some videos and then after a cup of coffee at the coffee shop next door to Steven we left for the Don Valley hotel in Toronto. That evening we met Ryan and Diana Chong, who own Dirty Pawz dog wash, at their second brand new dog wash store location in Adelaide street, Toronto. As expected it looked modern, fresh and clean. Great location for them with a nearby dog park and lots of people living in the area with dogs. After taking some videos we walked to a nearby Italian restaurant for a wonderful meal together.
The following morning Derek left bright and early to meet Ryan at his first location in Queen Street, Toronto for a scheduled servicing of his three machines. In the meantime, I took Jax for a walk to the Abu Khan park. Unfortunately there was quite a bit of construction going on in the grounds with the shallow pool in front of the museum empty and cordoned off for cleaning. I took a few photos of the outside of the museum and then walked back to the hotel as it started to rain. I ventured out a little later to take Jax on one of the Don Valley trails but the rain was coming down so hard I decided to turn back, not wanting to get totally sodden.
One of the downsides of being on the road all the time is trying to schedule and receive packages. We try to give plenty of time for something to be delivered but it is inevitably late. We had been waiting for a large box to arrive containing a bunch of spares which we needed for the dog wash servicing that Derek was doing. This was scheduled to be delivered to Rock Glen but of course it was late. When we followed up we were told it wasnt just late but it was totally lost. Such a pain as we now had to go through a claim process and of course we didnt even have a spare washgun. We had this problem with the delivery of coffee when we were in Mississippi when it did not arrive at one of the campsites, we then redirected it twice to a UPS depot and it ended up going back to the coffee shop, then we had to reorder again and redirect again. Sigh ….
