(Goderich, Ontario, Canada)

After reluctantly saying goodbye to our turret in London, we took the scenic route to our next destination of Lake Huron…a lake that neither one of us has ever visited.

We started with a quick look at the University of Western Ontario (which now seems to prefer the name Western University of Canada):  it was essentially unrecognizable to me, as it has been more than 20 years since I last visited.

We pressed on to the small town of St. Marys; it is also known as “Stonetown” due to the limestone quarries and huge cement plant.  Many of the older buildings reminded us of Kingston, as many of them were built from the locally quarried limestone.   It’s a relatively busy place, even though it is not on any major highways, and is even the home of the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame!  For some reason, St. Marys seemed happier than most of the other places we have visited so far on this road trip.

Next up was Stratford.  Like London, Ontario (which is located  on the Thames River), Stratford is naturally located on the Avon River.  It also is the host of the Stratford Festival – an annual theatrical extravaganza that focuses mostly (but not exclusively) on the works of William Shakespeare.  There is even a village named Shakespeare a few miles to the east.

Not surprisingly, Stratford caters to a relatively affluent crowd.  I’m sure our ridiculously cheap lunch in St. Marys would have cost us substantially more if we had ordered it in Stratford.  We looked into seeing a theatrical performance here, but nothing really appealed to us.  After wandering around the downtown core, we headed west on Highway 8 to our next destination.

Highway 8 was a pleasant drive through a series of small towns (Mitchell, Seaforth, Clinton) that I knew little about, other than suspecting that they were probably heavily into hockey and curling…and therefore worthy of my respect.  Due to road work in the middle of Mitchell, we selected Seaforth as a place to get out of the car and walk around.  It had some grand buildings (see photo at the top of this post) and an unhurried pace…so unhurried, in fact, that many shops and services were already closed up even though it was only 4:00 p.m. in the afternoon!

We arrived in Goderich, our home for the next two nights, just before dinner.  I’ll be writing more about Goderich in future blogs; for now, I just want to say that our dinner at West Street Willy’s was excellent.   It wasn’t a Thai restaurant, but somehow I found a “Thai Beef Salad” that has to be one of the best and most refreshing salads I have ever had.  This Thai thing is clearly getting out of control but I am enjoying it while it lasts.

We’re staying at the Colborne B&B:  it is an impressive Victorian home perfectly situated in the downtown core.  We don’t have a turret but there are plenty of turrets elsewhere in this fascinating town on Lake Huron.  Stay tuned for more details!