AEDM ~ Day 10 ~ Ghost Town...

After getting lost a couple of times this summer while trying to navigate from one back road route across Ontario to another, I got totally fed up with my ripped and tattered, years out of date basic Ontario road map and treated myself to 2 new back roads map books…one is from the Backroad Mapbook Outdoor Recreation Guide series…and is the Cottage Country Ontario one…the other is from MapArt Publishing and is the Ontario Back Road Atlas…

The MapArt map book shows ghost towns…and while Cariño and I were heading back to LT’s to retrieve my forgotten laptop on October 31st…we figured what better day of the year to visit a ghost town than on Halloween?






















































































Balaclava is an interesting little ghost town because there are still 2 inhabited houses…how spooky would it be, I wonder, to live in a ghost town…it is just a short distance north of Dacre and used to be a lumber mill town…





















Ron Brown has written a number of interesting books about Ontario…I decided that I needed his one entitled Ontario’s Ghost Town Heritage…this could make for some fun outings!...I picked it up at one of my favourite stops when I pass through Orillia…Manticore books…

November 6th to 9th…

I had started writing this post about a week ago...but hadn't had a chance to get it finished and posted...I have a few of these almost finished postings...I haven’t had any time for painting these last few days either…but I feel some coming up...

Late Fall Drive…

This year I have driven back and forth across Ontario more times than in any other year…I have been crisscrossing the province via a number of different routes…I realized on one of my last trips across that I had never done it at that time of year before (October 24th)…so I was seeing things that I have never seen before…most spectacular were the tamarack trees in their full fall glory…

On the route that I was driving, most of the leaves from the deciduous trees had fallen by this time…the height of the fall colours having passed a couple of weeks prior…I was driving across the province then as well, but couldn’t stop because of time restrictions…I did take a couple pictures of the beautiful fall colours...taken out of the van window as I drove…but wasn’t able to stop and photograph...































I left Ottawa on that Saturday morning, a few weeks ago, in the misty rain…it was really quite beautiful even so…there was a lot of ground fog…so lakes were mostly soft grey blurs, revealing only the outcroppings of trees and rock close to the road…the rest of the scene strangely missing in the foggy haze…swamps meandered, snaking back and forth between the landscape forms, disappearing into the mist…the dead trees showing as stark black lines against the muted golds and browns of the dying grasses…the water reflecting back varying tones of grey…the mostly leafless birch added their bright white highlights to play against the beautiful, rich dark greens of the pines…then the shock of the yellow tamaracks…


















































































I wanted to stop so many times…but I wasn’t set up for photographing in the rain…and while beautiful in real life, my simple camera would not have been able to catch the subtleties of the colours and the light…the depth and mysteriousness of the landscape would have been lost…

I drove along in awe…relishing the fleeting sneak peeks at mostly hidden lakes and swamps that disappeared around the outcroppings of rocks and the stands of trees…the back roads that I take to get from Ottawa to near Midland or to the cottage are so magical…Ontario is such a beautiful province…

When I reached LT’s, there were still some deciduous trees with their leaves still clinging…we walked the dogs on some paths near her house...part of the network of the Simcoe Forest County Trails…it was a beautiful world in bright yellow…looking up into the trees…and the path blanketed with leaves…





































































I would love to, someday, do a number of photography trips through the back roads of Ontario...so that i could concentrate on the photography and not just snap pictures as I fly by…I would have to go a number of times...in the different seasons…I have since bought myself a couple of really good back road map books…that was how Cariño and I ended up at the ghost town of Balaclava…

November 5th…

As the nature of my job would have it…it was 2pm before I managed to get out of Ottawa yesterday and head to LT’s…which meant I spent a portion of the drive in the dusk and the dark…and, it being hunting season, the deer seem to be on the move…a pick up in front of me at some point west of Bancroft narrowly missed hitting the second of 2 does running across the road and then later on, just east of Sebright, I had to brake hard as a big buck charged his way across the road in front of me…close calls like that always make me want to slow right down and just creep the rest of the way…

On both my drive yesterday and my return trip today, I kept seeing herds of burly men in florescent orange coats and groups of pick up trucks parked by paths leading into the woods…hunting season…

The weather doesn’t seem to be cooperating with me lately…it seems that the times that I have to spend inside working are the sunny times and my drives back and forth across central Ontario are the rainy ones…so my drive yesterday didn’t yield any photo ops…

On my return trip to Ottawa today I drove in and out of periods of wet snow which left a beautiful white frosting on the fall coloured landscape…all shades of browns, tans and rusts interspersed with the various coniferous greens…the wild reds, oranges and yellows now a couple weeks gone…even the stubborn oaks have given up almost all of their beautiful burnt orangey-brown coloured leaves…the black lacy skeletons of the tamaracks have only a few golden orange needles left clinging to their branches…

Here is one of the stubborn oaks...














Tamarack and evergreens...


















I met Jake just west of Norland…I found him standing in the middle of the road a few miles before the town…looking lost...I was worried he'd been dumped on the lonely back road… what could I do but stop and see what was up… he had no collar…he barked at me when I got out of the van…but then came over wagging his tail and looking silly…I opened the sliding door and he hopped up in…our van smells like dogs even to people…so dogs must be able to smell us coming…he jumped right up onto the front seat beside me and looked at me with his clear brown eyes…a beautiful young male black lab…we need another dog like we need multiple holes in our heads so I drove around to the farms and homes in the area and thank goodness the last place I tried was his home…silly puppy…but it was a fun diversion for a little while…

I regret, now, that I was so worried about finding Jake’s home, that I didn’t take a single picture of him…

In-between the bouts of snow I took pictures of tree silhouettes…and thought about how beautiful they were and how I might try to capture some of that beauty in my full moon paintings…

Here are some of the more picturesque ones…most are just reference shots...and the power lines get in the way…

This majestic lone birch stands before a backdrop of pines…















This is a very odd shaped tree...mostly hollow...I wonder if it will survive this coming winter's storms...


















This tree skeleton is so graceful looking...I wish that i could get a better picture of it...but it is in a swamp and I can't get closer to it...


















Various tree silhouettes...














































Snow and getting dark...

November 4th…

Today, after my morning computer job, I am heading back to LT's to return the rental car and pick up the van...it is a nice sunny (so far) day...so I hope to get away in good enough time so that I can stop and take some photos...that will be my creative activity for today…another drive on the wonderful back roads of Ontario!…I won’t have Internet access until I return tomorrow…so I won’t be able to post my photos today…

This Friday evening Cariño and I will be going to the opening party of the 260 Fingers show…a wonderful pottery show…

Nov 3rd…

This morning I was able to slip up to my studio…if only for an hour or so…it has been over a month since I have had a chance to be here…and for the few months before that it was very crowded…but my elder daughter and her beau have found a place of their own and have moved most of their stuff out…so I have breathing room again up here!

I perched at the big table, got out my sketchbook and jotted down some of the ideas that floated around in my head while driving home in the dark with Cariño this past Sunday…it really was a beautiful night…the bright, full moon in a deep grey sky with a gauzy haze of clouds moving about provided dramatic lighting for the skeletons of the mostly leafless deciduous trees and the wonderful silhouettes of the coniferous ones…

On the route that we take across Ontario, using the back roads, we drive through the mixed forest region which makes up the central part of the province...known as the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence forest…so the combinations and varieties of tree silhouettes against the grey sky and the full moon were endless…it was beautiful and mesmerizing…

As I was sketching, I came to the realization that I am going to need a tree book…or a good web site…one that shows the tree shapes for both summer and winter…it is the winter shapes that I am interested in now…although I guess – except for the Tamarack – for the coniferous trees it doesn’t much matter the season…

Here are my starting sketches…I can go ahead with the coniferous (not sure which species this was) painting, but will have to do some research for the deciduous and mixed ones…



































It might be neat to do a triptych of a mixed species scene…sort of like this…except this is just a repeat of the 1 sketch…but then I do have a thing about repetition...

November 2nd...

Like I said…things have not been going according to any plan of my design lately…for quite a while, actually…but it seems to have been amplified lately…

So…the painting idea is still in my head…I didn’t even get a chance to sketch it today like I had hoped…

My creative outlets, instead of sketching and painting, were 2 side trips into books stores and some photography while I was out and about doing a bunch of things that weren’t my idea to do today…

I treated myself to the Canadian Art magazine…I am looking forward to crawling into bed soon to look at it…the second book store I went to was the Book Bazaar on Bank Street in Ottawa…I had never been in it before…it was lovely…so much so that I took some pictures…I’d like to go back and take some more…




























































Driving home in traffic, I decided to take a few more 'drive-by' shots...holding my camera out the window and taking pictures...it takes a lot of shots to get some that work...because I am not watching what I am taking, but pointing in the general direction of stuff and snapping away...actually these 3 were taken while I was stopped at traffic lights...













































Here's hoping for some studio time tomorrow morning!

November 1st…

Yesterday was the first day of the Art Every Day Month (AEDM) that Leah at Creative Every Day is hosting…and while I did do some creative things – photographed an abandoned house and planned a painting in my head…things haven’t been going according to any plan of my design lately, so I didn’t get home in time to post last night…so be it…

I had been down to visit LT and her Beau last weekend for an extended weekend and when I left to head home on Wednesday, it wasn’t until I was almost back that I came to the realization that I had left my laptop behind…how could I do that???...not only is it my creative friend and research tool…it is also the main tool in my computer work…so, on Sat (Oct 31st) Cariño and I headed back to LT’s (a 5½ hour drive) in order to get my laptop…except the van broke down on a back road…nowhere near anything…thank goodness I had cell reception, we called CAA and settled in to wait…so we spent the dusky hours of Halloween sitting in the van, windows fogged up by our breath and our 2 big heavy-breathing dogs…eventually we got the van towed into Orillia and LT came to pick us up there…

One neat thing we did on the drive down, way before the van decided to give up the ghost, was to make a wee detour off our route to go visit a ghost town called Balaclava…just a bit north of Dacre, Ontario…I will do a post about that later...

Sunday we were told that they wouldn’t be able to order the part for our van until Monday…so we rented a car and drove home…we had been planning to leave in the morning and take our time driving home…stopping so I could photograph along the way…it was supposed to be a faily good day weather-wise…but as it turned out, we didn’t manage to get away until about 2pm…

I still got to photograph this abandoned house in the late afternoon light…just east of Norland, Ontario…I have been eyeing it each time I drive past…but it has either been raining, I was in a mad rush, or it was too dark any of the times I flew by…


























































There are so many abandoned and falling apart buildings along these back roads of Ontario…beautiful old barns, log buildings, or just little homes like this one…slowly falling apart…

I watched the sun set in the rearview mirror and the full moon work its way through the clouds…












I spent a long time looking at that full moon…a bit hazy in a grey clouded sky…and the bare branches of the trees and the solid tops of the various evergreens piercing the sky lit by the moon…it was beautiful…each species of tree with its own special silhouette…that got me to thinking about an idea for a painting…I am hoping to get a chance to sketch it out a bit later today…

And who knows...the weather might be wonderful for photographing when I have to make the trip back to Orillia to get the van later this week...there must be a reason why I am having to make this trip back and forth across Ontario so many times this year...