A Ride on the South Simcoe Railway

A few weeks ago was my father's 84th birthday and to celebrate we took him for a ride on the South Simcoe steam train and then out for dinner. It was a very fitting expedition as my Dad is quite the train buff. My father's father worked for both the Canadian National and the Canadian Pacific Railways as a locomotive foreman and was in charge of the engine repairs. The railway was always part of their lives.

This wasn't just any old train ride though. No sir, this was a ride in a vintage coach pulled by a 130-year old steam locomotive. Not only is the engine historic, but it is also famous having appeared in several TV shows and movies including (after adding a different smoke stack and numbers) The National Dream back in 1973.  Anyone else remember watching The National Dream TV series that was narrated by Pierre Berton and dramatized the building of the railway that joined Canada from sea to sea (or am I just showing my age that I remember sitting down as a family to watch it)? 

Heritage Canada

The South Simcoe Steam Railway is about an hour north of Toronto in Tottenham.  It is well worth the drive as the train is such a lovely way to travel through the countryside. The entire trip lasts about 50 minutes and is narrated by an interesting and informative conductor.  

One of the things that really caught my eye were how many apple trees were growing along the train embankment. They were loaded with huge apples and had me dying to go back and pick a bag or two of them.  

And of course there was cake and of course it was decorated with something train related. Everyone needs a caboose pencil sharpener, right?  Happy birthday Dad!

Summer is winding down (sniff, sniff).  I still have one more trip to the cottage planned for next week and then it is home to help the middle and youngest pack for university and take them to the airport (double sniff, sniff).  I still have a few summer posts planned so I'm going to write them even if school has started, the leaves are starting to turn, and the temperatures are dropping.  Okay? Okay.

Living on the Edge

Well maybe not the actual edge, just a healthy distance from the edge of cliffs, that is. That's what a girlfriend and I did this past few days.  We packed our bags, said goodbye to our families, and rented a cabin in Letchworth State Park in New York State.  I've lived less than a four-hour drive from this gem for almost my whole life and have never heard of it.

We started out making plans to visit Buffalo to see the art gallery and some Frank Lloyd Wright homes, but since the weather was supposed to be three perfect sunny summer days I thought we should take advantage of it and do something outdoorsy.  I began looking at parks in New York state and stumbled onto Letchworth State Park.  What a fantastic treat to find.

The park is long and narrow and follows the Genesee River as it winds through deep canyons, some with cliffs up to 600 feet high, and three waterfalls on its way to Lake Ontario.  

The park was founded in 1910 and there are beautiful historic buildings, including the home of Mr. Letchworth which is now the Glen Iris Inn - a gorgeous wooden hotel decorated with a wrap-around veranda and William Morris wallpaper.

There are miles of stone walls and beautiful bridges and wooden picnic shelters and cabins built by the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corp) during the depression in the 1930s.  

We went white water rafting which was lots of fun, but the water was a little low so it took 4 hours to raft down the section of river that usually takes 2 hours as we kept getting stuck on rocks. We had some good runs and it was a beautiful way to see the scenery from the water level. I so wish I could have brought my camera with me, but I couldn't risk damaging it in the rafts.  It was quite the workout and we were mighty hungry by the time we got back to the starting point.

My friend and I also went on some of the hikes and visited many of the lookouts and sketched and painted and took a bazillion photos - oh, wait a sec that was only me taking all the pictures.  

It was a relaxing few days away and I love discovering new places, especially ones as amazing as Letchworth Park.  Have you ever stumbled onto a wonderful place to visit when you were really planning on visiting somewhere else?  It's a great feeling, isn't it?

Linked to Travel Photo Thursday at Budget Travelers Sandbox

An Easy Craft and Summer Updates

I've finally caught up on posting reviews of my summer reading and need to finish some more books before I can do any more.  I'm pretty proud of myself to have read four books so far.  Yay me!

I wanted to share a couple of things with you.

My daughter and her cousin had a craft session, but were only able to find crayons and paper to use so they got creative and made these treasures.  

This one started with crayons arranged randomly across the top of the page

and ended like this.

The other one started with the crayons taped along one side

and ended like this.

It was a lot of fun, but definitely not a craft for younger children as the wax was messy and the blow dryer hot.  The finished products are now proudly framed at the cottage.

We spent a few days at our family Georgian Bay cottage and we had a little bit of every kind of weather in those three days - a rain storm, clouds, sun, and a beautiful sunset. I hope to pull together a post next week to show you the flower display we had. In the meantime here's a few of the amazing skies.

I hope you are enjoying summer. I haven't had much time to blog this year as there isn't any internet at the cottage and I've been busy, but I'll be back visiting everyone soon and I have several posts I need to write up. 

I love summer and it makes me sad that there are only a few weeks left (sniff, sniff).

Summer Reading - Walden

Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4

Dear Mr. Thoreau,

I recently read your book Walden and wanted to thank you for sharing your experiences with us. Did you know that you would inspire millions of readers to want to re-create your experiment and build their own cabins to live in? There is just something so appealing about the simplicity of your life on Walden Pond.

Your cabin is perfect. I love the the small, but workable size; the windows on both sides to let light in all day long; the wood shingles covering the outside; and the pretty fireplace at the end. I must commend your great eye for purity of design.

I was looking over your furniture list (in your chapter on Economy) and may I be so bold as to make a few suggestions.  The three chairs would indicate that you could easily and happily entertain two guests, but you only have one cup and two forks and knives.  You need to have a set of three of all your dishes and cutlery. I know you don't drink tea or coffee, but do your guests not want at least some water or cider? You did mention that you rarely feed your guests or give them something to drink, but it just seems the hospitable thing to do especially since your guests will have walked at least a mile to visit you. I would urge you to be more generous in this regard.

You mention the solitude you experienced in your cabin, but I hate to break it to you that being one mile from town is not really that remote. Let's be honest a mile is a nice saunter, a daily constitutional, not a long bush-whacking hike into the deepest darkest forest. Also the fact that you are able to have your mother do your laundry and you could join your friends for dinner just points out how not remote you really were. And between you and me, I think you should do your own laundry. It's really not that hard.

Your chapter on clothing really got me thinking.  You mentioned that you like to wear comfortable, worn, drab clay coloured clothing and even things that are patched.  It seems that this is more something a man would write than a woman (or at least this woman).  True, in the woods having old, comfortable clothes feels just right so you don't worry about getting your outfit dirty or ruined in any way.  However, as soon as I have to mingle with other people in an urban setting then I no longer feel comfortable wearing old and worn clothing. In order to not feel self-conscious about my appearance and thus relax and enjoy interacting with other people I need to be wearing something that is comfortable, flattering, and classically stylish. I think it is a mark of maturity to know what to wear in different situations so your clothing suits the occasion. 

While I thoroughly (see what I did there - I crack myself up) enjoyed reading your book, I do think you go on about things too much.  Take the first eleven pages - I had to skip read them as they were just too dull. I totally agree that simplicity in living is a good thing and reading to educate yourself throughout your life is a worthwhile endeavor yadda yadda yadda, but do you need pages to tell us about it? I think you should practice writing a little more succinctly. Maybe more of your time at the cabin could have been spent editing your written work. I hope I didn't offend you with that. I'm just being honest and you seem the type to appreciate that.

While I had to skip read the parts where you rant about things, I loved your descriptions of life on the pond, building the cabin, and observations about the seasons. In fact, I think you should expand these sections of the book. To help you out I made a list of some topics you might consider including in the book. What about discussing how you spent your days at different times of the year (you did mention during bean-growing time and a summer morning, but what about during the winter).  Also more details on what you ate would have been really interesting. I was fascinated about your rye and Indian corn bread and would have loved more details on how you made it. I also enjoyed reading your description of winter on the pond with your observations about ice and your notes about the first signs of spring. I bet you didn't realize how important those records would be to scientists years later studying climate change. Good for you for being so thorough (hardy har har). I would love you to include chapters on your observations of life at Walden Pond during summer and autumn too. I bet the pond is beautiful in the fall.

I hope my suggestions are helpful. I did find the book inspiring and have been dreaming of how I would make a cabin in the woods for my husband and myself. Since there are two of us, our cabin has to be a little larger so I'm working on refining your ideas and possibly adding a sleeping loft. I'll let you know when I have pulled my ideas together.

Yours truly,


Linked to Literary Friday at Art @ Home

Summer Reading - The Great Gatsby

I recently read The Great Gatsby (by F. Scott Fitzgerald).  I feel like I have joined the ranks of the well-read now having completed one of the great American novels.

I'm glad I read the novel, but I can't say I loved it. Watching the Crash Courses (that I have posted links to at the end of the post) actually helped me understand and appreciate The Great Gatsby a lot more.  

I thought F. Scott Fitzgerald was wonderful at describing the setting of the novel - everything from the parties at the mansions on Long Island, to the desolate smoke and dirt in the valley of ashes, to the smoldering heat of summer in Manhattan.  By the way, I have always wondered what New York City was like before air conditioning during a heat wave and now I know - yikes!

I enjoyed reading all the details about the Jazz era - everything from the houses, and parties, to the cars, and the details of life back then. The 1920s were a glamorous age and it was fun to picture what everything would have looked like.  

I haven't seen the movie yet, but I did a collage of some of the things I imagined while I was reading the novel, like I did for the previous two books I reviewed (here and here).

Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4

If you really want to understand the Great Gatsby and its significance you should watch the Crash Courses that I have linked to below.  It helps you understand:

• how The Great Gatsby is a novel about the American dream 
• the importance of the colours gold, yellow, and green in the novel
• how the characters are obsessed with changing time in the novel

Have you read The Great Gatsby?  Did you like it?  The characters are interesting, but not very likable which can be a problem in liking the novel.

 

Summer Reading - The Garlic Ballads

I finished reading The Garlic Ballads (by Mo Yan) a few days ago and I'm here to tell you not to read it. It may have won a Nobel Prize for Literature in 2012, but it was such a bleak and depressing and yes, brutal, view of China that I didn't like it. 

When I first started reading the book I thought it must be set back in some ancient dynasty as life was very primitive with most of the farming being done by hand and the peasants being terrorized by the people in authority.  I was surprised to find out that the book was set in 1987.  The Garlic Ballads is based on a true story about an uprising by the farmers in Gaomi Township in Northeast China.  Although the government encouraged the farmers to plant garlic there ended up being a glut on the market resulting in the government not buying the garlic and the farmers rioting.

Although The Garlic Ballads was well written and the story was interesting, it was just too brutal. Is China really that brutal?  I have no idea, but I can't imagine there isn't kindness and love within families or between neighbours. I wasn't surprised that the officials and the police and the jail wardens were aggressive and brutal, but the villagers and family were fighting and mean to each other as well.  

Like I mentioned in my review of The Help, the book needs to have hope for it to be enjoyable for me.  I read A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry and I felt the same way I did about The Garlic Ballads.  I ended both books upset that they were just endless retelling of lives full of misery.  

So, while I can't recommend that you read this book, I did find it interesting to read about the homes in Northeast China.  I did some hunting on the internet and have become a recent expert in kang beds.  I've pulled together some visuals to illustrate what I think some of the images (the more pleasant ones anyway) from The Garlic Ballads looked like:

Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

So what do you think? Can you read difficult books, books that are depressing or brutal?  Or do you need a little hope and kindness in the lives of the main characters in the stories you read?

Linked to Literary Friday at Art @ Home