Nate Meyer's Weblog

Tessa and I finally bought a house! I now own a piece of earth on Earth!

We get the house Feb 14th

First, you can see my full review of the park here.

This was a last minute booking. There wasn’t a spot free at any provincial park for like a month previous to this weekend. I decided that I wanted one, bad, so I used a refresher extension for Google Chrome, and kept refreshing the OntarioParks webpage until one came available. I then immediately booked it. Site 306 at Rondeau park was the one site available.

We decided to go here for a couple reasons. First was because it was near a beach, and felt we needed some beach time. Second, we havn’t been here before, and we want to try to get to every provincial park in the area.

We left London at 5pm Friday, and after some brief stops, we arrived at the park. We new the site wasn’t going to be amazing, but in this circumstance, we couldn’t be choosey. We got a site close to the beach, but it had a paved road directly behind it, and a pedestrian beach trail directly beside us. But we decided to ignore that, and enjoy our weekend.

From 29 – Rondeau Park

The weather was awesome! Every day was 30 degrees, so we spent 3 full days on the beach. It was great to sit, read a magazine, and venture into the water ever 10 minutes. Afterwards, we would come back to the site, and relax some more, then cook supper, and prepare our campfire.

Great weekend! (however, won’t return to Rondeau)

From 29 – Rondeau Park

From 29 – Rondeau Park

From 29 – Rondeau Park

From 29 – Rondeau Park

From 29 – Rondeau Park

From 29 – Rondeau Park

Well.., we call this the engagement photo shoot, but the engagement happened so long ago, so it seems. I see it as the “Getting to know the wedding photographer shoot”. Here are some of the shots.

From Engagement Photoshoot

From Engagement Photoshoot

From Engagement Photoshoot

From Engagement Photoshoot

From Engagement Photoshoot

From Engagement Photoshoot

From Engagement Photoshoot

From Engagement Photoshoot

From Engagement Photoshoot

From Engagement Photoshoot

From Engagement Photoshoot

Park Entry

This provincial park Is kinda an odd one. The park shares it’s land with the local cottages, or the other way around, I don’t know. The entrance is pretty typical, with the main office directing you to the sub check-In offices for each campground. I will say that checkin only took about 2 minutes which is amazing. Usually it takes 5 minutes. After the checkin, the campsites immediately start, and your at your campsite within minutes

Park Layout

Unlike other parks, this park doesn’t have campground names. It’s basically one big park, divided by a paved road, with small gravel roads looping around. There seem to be enough bathrooms to go around, and seems to be accessible to every site. There is a paved cottage road between the campsite, and the beach, with access trails going to the beach. Basically, the park is surrounded by paved cottage roads.

They have 2 other beaches that are far larger then the standard beach (access 1-9). They are a 5-10 minute drive down the park road. Beach 11 is the dog beach, which is huge, but alot of gravel the first 4-5 feet into the water. The sand is also filled with small pebbles.

Overall Park Quality / Privacy

Well, this park is one of Canada’s oldest parks, so you’d think quality of things are poor. Which they are. They have a mix of vault toilets (mostly by the beach), and full flush toilet / shower buildings. I think there are 3 flush toilet buildings in the park, and a few vault toilets near the beaches. All the campsites are grass, which is kinda nice. Things don’t get so dirty (socks, bare feet, tent). Basically, the campgrounds is one large grass field, with the occasional tree the provide shade, not privacy. I’m sitting here typing this review, and can see all 5 of my neighbors. So the quality of sites are kinda nice because of the grass, and they are fairly large, but they offer zero privacy. Make sure you read the description of each sit before booking, because alot of them have steep slopes, which make it difficult to place a tent on.

From 29 – Rondeau Park

From 29 – Rondeau Park

It also seems like there alot of new campers here. Inexperienced campers. Newbies. I don’t now why, maybe all the experienced campers know not to come here. It seems like people come here for the beach, but to be honest, it’s one of the worst beaches i’ve seen on Lake Erie. It consists of ALOT of grass, and 5-6 feet of sand before the water.

The beach is not even a good beach. There is barely any sand, and lots of dune grass. And the sand isn’t even clean, there’s peddles, sticks and other stuff in the sand to make it not comfortable to walk on Once into the water, it’s nice because its fairly shallow for a good distance before getting deeper.

From 29 – Rondeau Park

From 29 – Rondeau Park

From 29 – Rondeau Park

Here is the dog beach.

From 29 – Rondeau Park

From 29 – Rondeau Park

From 29 – Rondeau Park

If your a roller-bladder, bring them. The roads that go to the end of the “peninsula” are paved, and would be a great roll!

Park Attractions / Activities

They have a visitor center 5 minute from the campsites, but I didn’t go in there so no idea what goes on. While I was there, there was a “Prey Bird” demonstration, and some other cool kids “seminars” which teach them about fossils and other beach creatures. I did see alot of younger families here with children, so it seems they cater to families

Also, the camp store is great. Has alot of stuff, including a full lunch and breakfast menu. Also has ice cream, and other camping things.

There are alot of hiking trails here. I didn’t go on any of them, but if you look at the activity booklet, looks like there’s 5-6 hiking trails. Again, the main roads are paved, so going on a nice bike ride to the end of the peninsula would be a great ride!

Pro’s

- Close to the beach (however beach isn’t that good)
- Hiking trails, paved roller-blading paths
- Good camp store
- Grass sites

Con’s

- Beach isn’t very good.
- TICKS (however, our dogs only got 2 ticks, but we didn’t go hiking
- There is no privacy on 99% of the sites
- Sites are very close together, with only small row of grass between
- You share the land with cottagers, who probably hate us campers coming and driving on the roads
- People seem to be very grumpy here. We had 3 people complain about our dogs walking “toward” the beach, and weren’t even going to the beach.
- Dog beach has flies that bite your ankles
- Lots of traffic if on the outskirts of the grounds

Best Sites

- I would NOT book sites 1-169, 291, 300-306. (However, sites 306 is the closest to the beach, but is very close to your neighbours, has alot of vehicle traffic, and pedestrian traffic by a trail RIGHT beside you
- I would NOT book sites 170 – 201
- I didn’t go look at sites 202 – 258, but there seems to be more tree’s in this area, and maybe some privacy?

Conclusion

I will not return. I came here for the beach, and the beach wasn’t great. I also came here because I wanted to try each park once. So now I tried it. I liked the grass base on most sites, but I enjoy privacy more. And this didn’t offer any privacy, and the sites are so open, and close together. I also didn’t like the people in general here, they seemed overly grumpy. The park store was great.

I say Transport Away!

They seems to be advertising it everywhere. They say “Don’t transport firewood”. It’s because of the Emerald Ash Borer critter, which destroys the tree’s in the area. They also say they will fine anyone that brings firewood to the park, and want you to buy THEIR wood that they sell in the park. They sell these small bundles of wood for crazy high prices.

Now, I get what the Ash Borer bug does. And that transporting from, and into certain area’s is not great for the trees. But what the parks (IMO) fail to advertise, is that if your already in the area, your free to transport wood as you please. I think they leave this bit of info out, so you buy their firewood for crazy high prices.

Lets look at the Ministerial Order, describing the by-law against moving firewood around, and see what it really says.

First, we need to understand what “”infested place” means. They describe it as “an area described by an item in the Schedule”. If you look at the schedule, item 1 is grouped together as one item, which is everything in the map below highlighted yellow. So yellow equals the infested place.

Next, lets look at the term “pest”. Pest means “the Emerald Ash Borer (Agrilus planipennis) in all its life stages”.

And last, the term “regulated article” is defined as “firewood of all species, as well as trees, nursery stock, logs, lumber, wood packaging or dunnage, wood or bark, wood chips or bark chips of the genus Fraxinus (commonly known as Ash), other than ash seeds”.

So, now lets read the order. “No person, except an inspector, shall move or cause the movement of the pest out of an infested place, unless the person is authorized beforehand to do so in writing by an inspector under a Movement Certificate and the person complies with the certificate“.

So, it doesn’t say you can’t transport firewood. The order says, you can’t transport firewood OUT of the infested place. And the infested place is the yellow in the map above. They don’t mean each individual county is the infested place. Since they grouped all counties as Item 1, in the schedule, they mean the infested place is item 1, which is the yellow area.

So if your IN the yellow area, and are camping IN the yellow area, transport away! Just don’t leave the yellow area with your firewood. If your OUTSIDE of the yellow area, according to this order, you can transport anywhere. It doesn’t say you can’t transport firewood INTO an infected area.

So there you have it! Print out the Order, and carry it with you in case someone makes a stink that your transporting firewood. Don’t pay those crazy high prices that the parks try to stick you with!

We we survived the first camping trip of 2011! A couple weeks ago, I pulled the camping trailer out of the corner of my yard, and popped it up to make sure everything was dry inside, and there was no animals living in the trailer. To my surprise, since we had SO much snow, the trailer was completely dry inside, and everything seemed to be in working order. Tessa and I popped up the roof, and folded out the beds, and made sure it was stocked of all our camping necessities, and of course it was. The only problem we had was with the propane fridge. I think the burner tube was a little dirty, as the flame was backfiring through the breather tube. But after a nice clean-up, it was good to go! That was about all the maintenance we did on the trailer before taking it out.

From Drop Box

We left Friday right after work, and had a beautiful drive up to The Pinery. The weather the first day was great, with about 5 minutes of light rain. We got everything setup in record time, then enjoyed our night. We had a couple nice bike rides, and a great campfire, then off to bed.

From 06 – Pinery Campgrounds

From 06 – Pinery Campgrounds

From 06 – Pinery Campgrounds

From 06 – Pinery Campgrounds

From 06 – Pinery Campgrounds

From 06 – Pinery Campgrounds

From 06 – Pinery Campgrounds

From 06 – Pinery Campgrounds

From 06 – Pinery Campgrounds

From 06 – Pinery Campgrounds

From 06 – Pinery Campgrounds

The next day, and the following, were absolutely beautiful! 15 degrees, and not a cloud in the sky. After a huge breakfast, we went to Grand Bend, and took a walk on the beach. After that, JP left to go home, and Tessa had the campsite to ourselves. We went for a nice walk, then started the campfire, and supper, and relaxed the night away.

It was a great trip, and went off without a hitch!

From 06 – Pinery Campgrounds

From 06 – Pinery Campgrounds

From 06 – Pinery Campgrounds

After a long and grueling winter, we had a nice day, and a Saturday! Got my 350z out of the garage, and changed the oil and took it for a boot. Of course, it was a short ride down the road before going back into the garage.

From Drop Box

Since getting my electric guitar back, and buying a VOX amp, it was time to decide what I would use for guitar effects. At first, I was quite content with the overdrive / distortion built into the amp. However, since I didn’t have a foot switch to turn it on and off, it stayed on constantly, which limited the variety in my sound. I also wanted to add a delay pedal to my mix, and that’s really what started my quest to build a pedal board.

So that got me thinking. Do I want an All-In-One type board, or do I want individual pedals. My previous effects always included all-in-one effects, line BOSS GT-3, Line 6 POD XTPRO, etc, etc. The problem IMO is that you / I can never master the sound of each effect, cause there are SO many of them. I don’t do well with options. I really like to keep things simple. So I decided to keep things simple, and only buy an effect if I need it for a particular song. That leads me to my first purchase, which was a MUST IMO.

BOSS TU-3 Tuner. This was a no brainer, and no need for further explanation. The second pedal.

A Boss DD-20. Let me tell you the reason I bought this pedal over a simple DD-6/DD-7 pedal. I started researching all the sounds that a delay pedal could make, and realized that this pedal does more then just repeat a note x amount of milliseconds later. You can set up the repeat to happen in 1/4 notes, 1/8 notes, dotted 1/8 notes and many more options. You can create a reverb type effect by setting the delay time a certain way, and the even create a modulation, tape and analogue delay type effects. I wanted to take advantage of these options, and wanted a pedal with a couple different presets, so I could switch between them easily. With the DD-6/DD-7 pedal, you’d have to physically change the knobs each time you wanted to switch your delay. I started looking at the DD-20, which has 5 presets where you can save your favourite delay sound. Yes, the pedal looks like it has endless options, but once you play with it for an hour it really is simple.

The overdrive / distortion on my amp (VOX AC15VR) worked great for me for a few weeks. The problem with it was without a foot switch, I couldn’t really turn it on and off. So that left me with 1 effect. I also wanted to use the clean channel on my amp more frequently and instead of buying a $30 channel switch, I decided to research overdrives / distortions, and find a relatively cheap overdrive pedal. I started researching the difference between overdrives and distortions, and I tested a couple of pedals out, and realized that I was more into the low gain type overdrive pedals. After some research, I bought the below pedal.

The Digitech Bad Monkey. This pedal does a decent job of mimicking the sound of a Ibenez TS-9, which is another overdrive pedal. I really like how you can adjust the cut on the bass and treble frequencies. I use this pedal over the clean channel on my amp, and when engaged, it gives the amp a decent boost, and with the gain set to 9:00 on the pedal, it gives it a slight overdrive sound. Also note: throughout my research, alot of people think that the modern day overdrive pedals are simple boost pedals, which are 100% transparent, and which boost a tube amp into natural overdrive. They say these pedals do not work on a solid state amp, because obviously you can’t push a SS amp into overdrive. I disagree. These pedals aren’t transparent. Meaning they aren’t just volume boost pedals. They have their own emulating sound, and IMO they are to emulate the sound of a tube amp being over-driven. If you want a completely transparent pedal, which pushes a tube amp into overdrive, buy a boost pedal, or turn up the volume on your guitar. This pedal did the trick for me. It allowed me to have a different sound when engaged and not engaged. But I was still missing a sound that I wanted. I liked this level of gain, but wanted another level of gain. Not quite like a distortion pedal, but maybe a medium to high gained overdrive pedal. I did some more research, and found that without breaking the bank, the below pedal was a real gem.

The Boss OD-3. This pedal is labelled as a overdrive pedal. But I found the range of gain is plenty. I run my bad monkey OD pedal into this pedal. So when playing rhythmic chords, I’ll use the BM, and if I need a boost of sound, or a boost in gain, I’ll flip on the OD-3. The OD-3 can also be run on it’s own, to provide decent in-between gain.

So between these 2 overdrive pedals, I can have 3 different levels of gain, and really maximizing the sounds I can produce. With the DD-20 delay pedal, I can have 5 different presets, also maximizing the variety in my sound. I also have a CryBaby WAH pedal, that I’ve modified for true by-pass, and also changed out a couple caps and resisters to give it more of a vocal sound. But I think it’s dying on me so I havn’t used it recently.

What’s next? No idea. I havn’t really came across something that I need yet, so havn’t done any more research. However, I do need a pedal board to put my effects in, and a decent power supply to power them. So I guess that’s next!

Things have been fairly quiet in here. A few posts here and there, but it’s time to get caught up on some of the things that I’ve been doing. We’ll have to go back to November to start!

November 27th – 28th – Engaged!

During this time, Tessa was fairly down in the dumps, because of all the unfortunate things that have been happening to her. She was in the hospital in Toronto having surgery. I decided to stay in Toronto, and visit her 2-3 times a day. Little did she know, I also decided to propose to her on Sunday November 28th. We went out for a nice “walk” around the compounds, and went down to the river. That’s when I asked her. You can read the full story HERE. Almost immediately, we started planning the wedding! Good times!

From Engagement / Wedding Photos

From Engagement / Wedding Photos

From Engagement / Wedding Photos

December 11th – 30th Bday Party

Tessa really wanted my 30th bday to be a time to rememeber. It’s a fairly big milestone in peoples lives, and she did a great job of planning it! It started with a privately rented room at Oscar Taylors. I entered the restaurant and all my friends were there to surprise me! We had a great time chatting together, and eating the prepared food. After that, a few of us went across the road to Barney’s and finished the night there. What a great night to hang with my friends. Thanks Tess!

From 30th Bday

From 30th Bday

From 30th Bday

From 30th Bday

From 30th Bday

From 30th Bday

December 25th – Family Christmas

This is my favorite day of the year! Tessa, the boys, and I were able to have our very own Christmas in the morning, before going to my parents house for our family Christmas. Tessa and I put on some nice Christmas music, started a nice warm wood burning fire, and opened our stockings. Then we had a nice breakfast, then opened our gifts. We had a great time together! After that, we went to Tessa’s dad’s house, and we had a small Christmas lunch there, then went to my families house for our family Christmas. It was a busy day, but enjoyed being around people I love.

From 25 – Tessa and I's Christmas

From 25 – Tessa and I's Christmas

From 25 – Tessa and I's Christmas

From 25 – Tessa and I's Christmas