Chatham and Mitchell's Bay

We looked over the area of Chatham today and made contact with a realtor we had spoken with in June. I suggested we meet for lunch at Tim Hortons because I really needed a “double-double”. This is when I learned something today about Ontario. The Tim Horton's chains across Ontario do not accept payment by debit or Visa, they only accept payment by Cash, Mastercard or by pre-paid Tim's card. It was a good thing I had cash on me. The manager explained to us that all Tim's, across Ontario, are just now getting debit machines in. I told her, "You've got to be kidding me. We've had them in Calgary forever." She said they were behind Calgary when it comes to getting things into getting these things. We were not happy and I said to Brian, "Well, maybe we should reconsider moving to Ontario and specifically Chatham if Tim Horton's is not up to date with the times! Maybe I should write a letter". The manager said, "Oh you don't need to do that, we're definitely will be getting the debit system anytime now, it just hasn't happened yet."

We sat down to eat when the realtor, a local resident, arrived as planned. I told him about the debit and Visa thing just as the manager came over and handed me a complimentary $25.00 Tim's card hoping this would get us off to the right start. Obviously I thanked her and was more impressed by the way she handled the situation. Of course, I felt like crap about it, but hey, it got me set up with free coffee and donuts for awhile, didn't it? Later when I read up on the situation I found a blog about it written by Steve Thoms commenting on how Ontario’s backwards ways. Neither Brian nor I ever heard anything about this but it seems there are a lot of places in Ontario that don’t take debit or credit cards. This really surprises me.

As we drove across Southwestern Ontario we noticed a lot of trucks carrying tomatoes. Leamington is known as the “Tomato Capital” of Canada -- they even have a Tomato Festival every year. The tomato is the largest vegetable crop grown in area. They also grow corn and we noticed lots of fields across Southwest Ontario growing tobacco. The moderate climate and soil are perfect for growing tobacco even though the government is trying to control it and offered farmers $300M to quit growing tobacco.

We drove as far as Mitchell's Bay today where we camped for the night. Mitchell's Bay is a community of about 350 year round residents located on the east shore of beautiful Lake St. Clair. Their website says they are well-known throughout the entire Midwest for great fishing, boating and camping and has some of the best smallmouth Bass and Pickerel fishing to be found anywhere in North America! I guess people come from as far away as Great Britain, and many travel from Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky and Texas to enjoy the world class fishing!

It must be true, because we met a guy from Ohio, named John, who pulled his fishing boat to Mitchell’s Bay. He didn’t have a camper and just slept in the back up his pickup. John said he takes off several weeks at a time to just get away and fish. He was a heck of a nice guy. He and Brian chatted for quite some time and then Brian asked him over to our motorhome for a beer or two. We had an interesting evening chatting with him for a long time. Brian kind of needed the socialization with someone other than me. We had some issues with the campsites around us -- set up strangely for non-seasonal campsites with the electrical plugs 75 feet from the water taps. We got out and started setting up camp in the pouring rain when we discovered we needed to add on the extra water hose extension just to get it to stretch far enough to reach the tap. Even then it STILL didn't reach. Another camper offered to loan us her extra hose when we found our electrical plug in wouldn't reach anyway so we had to unhook and move the motorhome off the gravel parking sideways on the grass just to get it to reach. When Brian went to the office to pay, he told them about it and how difficult that was. An older gentleman there said, "well, you know this place was built back in the 70's". Brian said, "and this is now 2010 so don't you think you should upgrade the accommodations?" The owner was real nice and drove over to the site so Brian could point it out to him. We were stunned that nobody ever complained about the stupidity of this before. It all worked out but we sure thought that was the strangest set up we ever saw.