St. Jacob's (Photo Heavy!)

Hi guys! This past Saturday, I FINALLY got to explore bits more of Ontario that I'd never seen before. We went on a mini road trip with family friend Jeff to St. Jacob's. I tell ya, the only bits of Ontario I've seen outside of the York Region have been Brampton, Newmarket, the area leading up to Tichborne, and then from Toronto down to Niagara Falls. We went through Kitchener-Waterloo, then found ourselves at the St. Jacob's farmers market.

Approaching the Niagara Escarpment. This reminds me a little of the lower mountains of West Virginia.

The trip there was roughly two hours long. Because of terrible weather, we didn't spend a lot of time at the booths and stalls outdoors and decided to head inside where it was warm and dry. Forgive the terrible quality of these next few photos... :)

We wandered out into the next building, which wasn't as big but was still full of awesome stuff. I got a pickle on a stick, Trevor got some food into him to quiet his grumpiness, and then we ventured back outside as the skies let up. Jeff and Elisa got roasted corn on the cob, and Trevor got a delicious pulled pork sandwich and a deep-fried Mars Bar.

On our way out, we went food shopping! We came away with focaccia, candy apples, lots of gorgeous and HUGE produce, and Jeff bought American Hershey Kisses that tasted a LOT waxier and stranger than Canadian Kisses. Wow. I had never noticed the Kisses thing before!

Next, we explored the quaint little town of St. Jacob's. This included a Mennonite museum, an Anglican church that had been turned into an awesome toy store, a scrapbooking store, and a set of silos that had been repurposed into an art and craft gallery. The building beside the silos had a home hardware museum in the basement; a Scottish store, beadery & cafe, and other handmade goods on the first floor; a maple museum on the third floor; and a model train museum on the third floor.

We walked down to the banks of the Grand River, which you could see in one of the above model train depictions! The skies finally cleared and revealed a hazy, pale sun.

Then we piled up with all our goodies and started back home. We took a different route this time, hitting Guelph, Acton, and more. I've got to say, the Ontario countryside is very green and refreshing to the eyes. However, as I've lived in this type of setting for my entire life, I'm definitely not ready to get a driver's license and leave my lovely urban area just yet! LOL

At around 7:30, we discovered a Denny's in Brampton and Jeff had to pull a u-turn to get to it! LOL. Trevor and I hadn't eaten at a Denny's in four years, so it was a real treat. I had to laugh at seeing grits and country fried steak on the menu and my tablemates gawking at both.

Psst, Trevor ordered the country fried steak on my recommendation and he LOVES it! Now to just introduce him to biscuits 'n gravy, proper American KFC (seriously, what is with the lack of mashed taters & gravy, biscuits, sweet tea, and true cole slaw at the KFCs here??), and chili dogs! ;)
Ahead of us was a huge thunderstorm that was tracking toward Toronto. We rode behind it all the way home, and it wasn't long before Trevor and I had passed out from our awesome day =)

This is a GPS map of our trip. What an awesome day! I can already mark this up to being one of my favourite memories of 2012.

--Mary