A Drive Across Rural Ontario

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I guess most people don’t bother going the way I decided to go.  Leaving Toronto at mid-afternoon, I needed to get back to Detroit for the final night of my short vacation.  There is a fast way to cross southern Ontario: the 403 and 401 freeways would have provided a 4-5 hour trip.  But, I had read that the landscape was quite boring along this route, and I wanted to touch a third Great Lake on this trip.

So, from Toronto, I took the freeways to the Cambridge/Kitchener area, then trusted my GPS unit to find the best way to Lake Huron.  I traveled on a variety of roads, including Ontario 7&8, County 20, and County 83, which made for a more-or-less straight route to the resort town of Grand Bend.

This corner of Ontario is mostly picturesque farmland.  The landscape rolls just enough to give you a look at where you’re heading — which normally includes a couple of silos and barns, and a mysterious clump of trees, surrounded by crop fields.  It’s beautiful for a while, but gets tiring.  None of it is ugly, but I still struggled to find places that were worthy of a stop for photos.

This old, abandoned barn (somewhere on Route 83 west of Fullarton, I think) caught my eye.  It was at the end of a short dirt road…

… which also led past this old farmhouse.  The front door was open, and I could see inside, but obviously no one had lived here for quite some time.  It made me wonder what kind of stories the old house held, how many children had grown up there, and why they all are gone now.  Do they know that the door to their old home is wide open?  No doubt, animals have moved in, and the place is falling apart.

I didn’t dare to walk inside.  I’m sure I wouldn’t have found the answers in there, only more questions.

Drivelapse Video

Here’s the time-lapse, dash-cam video of the drive from the Cambridge/Kitchener area to Fullarton, Ontario…

… and from Fullarton to Lake Huron, ending at Grand Bend:

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