A Tale of Two Lake Drives

Hi Blog.  Today is Monday, July 28, 2014.  Our time in Stouffville, Ontario, Canada, is running out fast. We have one more trip scheduled tomorrow to commute to downtown Toronto to visit the family.  So, today, we decided to go a little further afield and explore the area to the north of our campground. While in the Toronto area, we heard a great deal about cottage country. We wanted to see for ourselves what all the fuss was about.

We decided the nearest big cottage country to us would be Lake Simcoe. There are a number of beaches which attract visitors from the GTA (Great Toronto Area) as Lake Simcoe has a reputation for cleaner and warmer water than the GTA's Lake Ontario beaches. We learned there was a 50 km bike trail that winds along Lake Drive adjacent to the shores of the lake. Here is Kathy at the "trailhead."

What exactly is cottage country, you might ask? Well, we learned that cottage country is a common name in Eastern Canada for areas that are popular locations for vacation properties such as cottages and summer homes. Cottage country is socially, culturally, economically, and politically distinct from the surrounding rural areas in that it is populated by a higher concentration of urban vacationers who have an affinity for the outdoors in contrast to more traditional rural populations that are largely absent of "city folk". So, cottage country is basically any place that folks want to vacation - beaches, lakes, rivers, mountains or woods.

Apparently, city folks aren't the only ones that like cottage country. We ran into a group of vacationing geese enjoying the abundant green grass before they have to head south for the winter.

We started our bike ride on Lake Drive South. We found many of the cottage to be quaint and well kept.  Here is an example. It seemed that even folks of modest means can enjoy a lakefront cottage on Lake Drive South.

As we headed further north along Lake Drive, we biked through a number of beach communities with names like Miami Beach, Pine Beach and Keswick Beach.  The further north we went, the larger the homes.

Some of the communities were founded in the early 1900's.  Here is a cute little Anglican Church dating from those times.

While most of the lakefront was developed for vacation homes, there were still a couple farms across the road.

Once we turned onto Lake Drive North, it was hard to call these palatial estates "cottages."

It was difficult to even see some of the homes as the owners surrounded them with high hedge rows and massive gates.  We thought "Moongate" was a particularly unique name for one of the cottage properties:

When we did come upon a view, it was just spectacular.

We reached our turnaround point at the Island Grove Marina. We learned there are several small islands that you can visit - Snake, Fox and Georgina. If we get back up to this area, we may decide to take our bikes over to tour one of the islands. However, we just don't have enough time today, so we headed back. The weather started to turn on us. The winds picked up and the sky turned dark.  We sought refuge at the Orchard Beach Bar and Grill for a quick pint and nosh to allow time for the squall to pass. Here is the view from the deck.

While the winds never died down, the darkest of the clouds passed by. We continued on our return trip. We stopped briefly to watch some folks cast out their lines from a public dock.

Now you don't see this everyday.  These folks just park their plane at the end of the dock.

Before long, we were back at the truck loading the bikes and heading home.  I think we expected to see more quaint little cottages with gingerbread trim and flower boxes under each window. While there were a few of those, what we found the most of were typical vacation homes like you see at the Jersey Shore.