Road Tripping: 2 countries, 5 states, 4 days

I know. I just said that I usually like to only schedule one major event per day three posts ago. However, that’s when I’m in charge of the itinerary. I’m not usually in charge of the itinerary, for various reasons. Most of them being that I occasionally sometimes often have a different definition of fun than my traveling companions do. See: hiking 17 miles in a day with no practice or training, ripping all the skin off my hands, and walking around in snowstorms, for just a few examples. On this most recent trip, I was not responsible for any of the planning and was mostly along for the ride around Lake Erie through Toronto, Niagara Falls (New York), Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio.

We set out for Canada after church on Sunday. Normally, coming from New England, we cross the border at or near Niagara Falls. Even when it’s busy, I don’t remember sitting in line for more than 20 minutes. Wherever we crossed in Michigan, we got stuck for close to an hour. Eventually, we made it to Toronto, with a stop for Tim Hortons on the way. Because donuts.

In the morning, we set out to see some of Canada. We first walked to the Kensington Market/Chinatown area to look at the shops and eat a bit. We had dumplings in Chinatown, and poutine at Kensington Market just because I’ve never had poutine despite having been to Canada at least four times up to this point. It was fine. The cheese was good. The gravy wasn’t too salty and had somewhat herbal notes (rosemary, I think). After our breakfast/snack/lunch, we returned to our lodgings to pick up the car so we could drive to the beach. We went about half an hour up the lakeshore from Toronto to Bluffers Park along the Scarborough Bluffs, which run along Lake Ontario for about 15 kilometers total.

The Scarborough Bluffs

We walked around a bit before going to the beach. There, we discovered that they were banning/very strongly discouraging swimming or wading in the water due to high E. coli levels. I hadn’t been planning to get very wet anyway, so I wandered around some more. It wasn’t a great beach to sit around on. The sand was hard, and it was kind of crowded and noisy, but the bluffs were nice. We left a little after that to explore the lake back near where we were staying. We ended up walking through Coronation Park and the Toronto Inukshuk Park to get to Trillium Park where we saw some nice views of Lake Ontario. These parks are also right by Exhibition Place, which hosts shows, concerts, conferences and other events of that nature, and BMO Field, home to MLS’s Toronto FC, who are right in the mix of teams in the eastern conference playoff race along with the Montreal Impact, Chicago Fire, Orlando City FC, and the one and only New England Revolution.¹

View of Toronto from Trillium Park

Anyway, Trillium Park was very nice. It just opened in 2017. It has walking paths, play areas, a restaurant/café, a Cinesphere where you can watch movies, and a concert stage. Overall, it was a pretty good day in Toronto. I ate some food I hadn’t eaten before, saw some things I hadn’t seen before. I will admit Toronto’s not my favorite city (and my least favorite subway system). I don’t know why, but it isn’t. It’s reasonably bike/pedestrian friendly, with plenty of people doing both, but the roads are also very busy, and things can be a little spread out. If I make another trip to Toronto, I think at this point what I’d want to see is a Revolution game at BMO Field, the Hockey Hall of Fame, and maybe the Royal Ontario Museum. Other than that, I’ve been up the CN Tower, been to Casa Loma, eaten at Chinatown, seen the University of Toronto campus, and now explored some of the lakeshore. On this trip, this was our only full day in Toronto, and the following day we’d be off on our way back to the good ole United States of America.

¹As of writing. As of posting, the Revolution clinched their playoff spot with a 2-0 win over NYCFC last Sunday. It was a fantastic game.