Long Point and Point Pelee

London - Long Point (Sept. 2nd)

We had a late lunch in London downtown after dropping Margaret at her dorm. The restaurant selection was a bit of a bummer because only one place that looked reasonable the rest in downtown London was mostly closed because of Labor Day holiday. "The Works" offer a reasonable selection of burgers.<br>

Afterwards we drove to Long Point Provincial Park. We arrived there at about 6pm. The camp ground office was already closed but a sheet of paper simply advised to pick a site and register the next morning. There were a number of superb sites available (definitely post season after Labor day). I think the Long Point camp ground was the best car accessible camp ground I've seen in Quebec/Ontario. Basically we had the dune with the beach behind in front of us and a big marsh behind us.

 Above picture shows our camp ground. It was the very last one. No others were beyond it on the right side of our picture. You can see through the trees a portion of the marsh area. Gongyu was happy after she figured out how to upload files from her laptop via her cell phone.

Here is the view from the top of the dune towards the marsh area. Our camp ground is just behind the tree on the left.

This is the view from the top of the dune towards Lake Erie west-ward. It is possible to walk along the beach for the next 10 to 20km. It is just a protected wilderness area. We had a walk in the evening of our arrival of about 3 to 5km one way. It was beautiful.

More beach walk impressions and views from the top of the dune. The night sky on Sept. 3rd was one of the most beautiful I recall seeing. I was standing on top of the dune and had a view over Lake Erie and the marsh field on the opposite site. It was a moon less and crystal clear night with a tremendous amount of stars in the night sky.

Long Point - Point Pelee - Long Point (Sept. 3rd)

On Sept. 3rd after dealing with the camp ground office (they opened late and we were asked to move our camp site to another beach site) we drove to Point Pelee mostly along the Lake Erie Waterfront. The drive was enjoyable. The area has a lot of different crops and orchards. We bought apples, appricots, peaches and cucumbers on the way. We had lunch in Port Stanley restaurant near the harbour. Gongyu's soup of the day and my Lake Erie fish were good. Finally we arrived at Point Pelee. Initially Pelee doesn't look like a National Park at all with its galore of cottage beach houses. But ultimately the nature is a bit protected (they removed over 300 cottage houses from the park in the 1970's or so according to info provided at the park center). We took the "train" towards the tip of the peninsula and walked the remaining 10min to the very tip.

The tip is beautiful and according to other visitors changes after a few monthes because of strong currents. There were a lot of birds and we also so Monarch butterflies heading south. The tip was also full of dragon flies. Afterwords we headed for the Marsh walk.

The path is easy due to the wooden plank walk way. It offers nice views in various forms of the marsh. There is also a tower offering a view over the whole area. The marsh offered all sorts of green colour. Around 6pm we were heading back to Long Point. Unfortunately the fruit stands were closed and we also had difficulty to find a place for dinner (my trip preparation could have been better in that regards).<br>

Next time I would try to make it to Delhaven Orchards in time. We also want to visit Rondeau Provincial Park in the future and possibly do the full walk along Long Point beach to its tip. Figuring out possible places for dinner would have been good. The restaurants weren't obvious along the trail. I mostly relied on the Lake Erie Water Front and Southwest Ontario web-pages for ideas and information.