The Silver Lining to a Cold Land

You may have read a dire-sounding warning in The Old Farmer's Almanac, "Beware the pogonip!" It shows up nearly every year in December. The expression "pogonip" is an anglification of the Shoshone word for cloud (payinappih). It names the atmospheric condition and effects of freezing winter fog, commonly formed in mountain valleys of the western United States, particularly Nevada. Apparently, the myth still persists that icy particles in the fog can be injurious to the lungs; this ironically in a state with a relatively high proportion of smokers.

Picture of the Moment - Follow the Yellow Brick Road

When you come across a sign for the Yellow Brick Road, you follow it. We didn't see any munchkins, and these Oz friends are obviously disguised as homo sapiens from the "Red Green Show," but we did see a little bit of gold over the rainbow. And I discovered an affectation for show tune choreography.

Looking westward, in the far distance you can see the headframe of the David Bell gold mine. A staking rush after discovery of the Hemlo Gold Camp in the early 1980s was Canada's largest since the Klondike. Taxes from locally-derived gold bricks have paved plenty of roads in the thirty years since. I visited here in September, 1994 as a stowaway with the Queen's University Minex program's annual field trip to major ore deposits of the Canadian Shield.

While the rest of the group were busy looking at rocks, three friends and I organized an impromptu homage to a different kind of treasure. If memory and character placement serve, I'm the Scarecrow on the far left. The other two gentlemen were Best Man and a groomsman at my wedding two years later. I've only bumped into "Dorothy" once in the ensuing twenty years. The name of the poor photographer is lost to history.

The Yellow Brick Road is located near the Hemlo gold camp, about 55 km east of Marathon, off the Trans-Canada Highway (17), halfway between Thunder Bay and Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario.

Picture of the Moment: GPS in Cottage Country

These days there is technology available that keeps you from getting lost in the woods.

Pictures of the Moment - Niagara Falls

A "Maid of the Mist." The Canadian side has gone over to Hornblower Cruises and red ponchos, which sounds jarring considering 168 years of history. But the next generation won't know any better. If only there were only boats.

Niagara Falls is a natural wonder spoiled. It's a challenge to take any picture of the falls that doesn't include a high rise or a casino, let alone a wax museum, though well-positioned mist helps.

Pictures of the Moment - Grand River Country

The mighty Nith.

You can almost see the real Canada from Toronto. For me, the authentic experience means getting off the main motor route between Detroit, USA and Montreal. My own little bit of Canadian paradise is in the orderly farmlands of southern Ontario. To find this treasure, just exit Highway 401 anywhere in the greater district of Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge, set your GPS to avoid highways, head opposite of any signs leading to box stores and explore.

Pictures of the Moment - Highlights of Big Nickel, Sudbury

The largest city in northern Ontario, Sudbury is a city of superlatives.

I'm in town for a few short days on a business trip to Laurentian University.

One of the local features I immediately sought out was a first hand view of shatter cones resulting from an extraterrestrial impact approximately 1.85 billion years ago. These horsetail-shaped, shock-related geological structures only form in bedrock proximal to meteorite craters or underground nuclear explosions, radiating outward from the source of the shock-wave in concentric patterns. The Sudbury Basin is the erosional remnant of such an impact crater, the second largest on Earth. A catastrophic global-change event even larger than that responsible for the Chicxulub crater in Yucatán, Mexico (which is widely believed to have wiped out the dinosaurs), the Sudbury impact was directly responsible for the metal-rich impact melt that now makes Sudbury one of the word's largest mining centers. Mines of nickel and lesser copper have operated continuously since the beginning of the 20th Century.

This Apple Will Keep the Doctor Away for a Lifetime

There's another Big Apple. It's located in Ontario...and it really is a big apple! The Big Apple in Colborne is a highway landmark east of Toronto and the biggest "red delicious" in the world. It's one of those curious, over-sized monuments to a local specialty that are particular to North America and Australia. After two decades of regularly driving past this landmark on the way to Kingston and the 1000 Islands (and my parent's home in upstate New York) and back, we finally stopped today to try one of the apple pies.

Along with a country-style cafeteria and gift shop, the enclosed bakery floor has large windows that allow visitors to watch the pie assembly. While my wife looked through an assortment of pies, the kids and I wandered the country store and and looked at displays of antiques.

Outdoor activities were obviously curtailed during our early-spring visit, while we were still under the thumb of the polar vortex. However, the website lists complimentary outdoor attractions including 18 holes of mini golf, shuffleboard, bocce, ping-pong and a kid's train ride. There is also a picnic area and a petting zoo featuring an assortment of farm animals. There are public restrooms, including a family washroom, inside the main building.

The Big Apple in Colborne, Ontario. I photographed from the back to capture the way it used to look. Now there's a big smile on the front side.

Open all year from 8:00 a.m, - 6:00 p.m., the Big Apple is located about an hour east of Toronto on Highway 401, just off the freeway and exit 497. It would certainly be a good rest stop heading eastbound after a hectic drive through the greater Toronto area. We enjoyed the apple pie!

The Weekly Snack Run

Every place I live -- and there have been many across this continent and beyond --  we always seem to establish that one weekly ritual stop for a taste of the good life. When I was growing up on Long Island, it was Family Deli in Bohemia. There always seemed to be a good reason to stop there after church. These days in the Toronto area, our go to destination is the Monastery Bakery in Oakville, Ontario.