Silly Little Country

Driving in a Winter Wonderland

As part of my seasonal migratory behavior, I was driving from London, Ontario, back to Toronto yesterday. I hate driving in snowstorms but it proved to be one of those gloriously beautiful days where the whole world is coated with snow. Doc gives a hint with a couple of pictures here.
As for me, the scene through the window from my starting point was typified by these two scenes.


Often when the snow is general all over London and region, there is none in Toronto. But yesterday, here is the scene as I entered the back streets in my neighborhood.

Where Doc documented the burden on sunflowers, let me post a shot of the apple tree in my backyard.

The old maple tree the city has sitting in front of my house lost a large branch yesterday, and you can surely see why.
By the way, the diffuse lighting these photos suggest was exactly like that yesterday - it was perhaps the hardest part of the driving, as, at least for part of the trip, the provincial Ministry of Transportation had the road looking like this (there were bad stretches later in trip):

(For all the travails imposed by the weather, let me say one thing in favor of doing this drive early New Year's morning. I stopped at the service center near km 226 on the 401, entered the Tim Horton's, and, rather than trying to pick one of a dozen queues, each a dozen customers long, found myself able to walk straight up to the counter and choose from among six servers, all idle, and waiting for a single customer. Canadian travellers will know how unusual this is. The servers did tell me a deluge was to come later.)

posted by Alan Adamson @ 6:08 AM