Thursday, August 17, 2017

Rainy Ontario day...

Today is perhaps best described as a Rainy Ontario Day in which we escaped the traffic debris field that orbits Toronto. And it involves a ferry ride, as a bonus!

Early start to the day; we managed to completely avoid snarled and mired traffic around Toronto, at times by just one exit! On a hunch, we took a route that was an end run around Hamilton, and then were about to resume our route, when we saw bumper to bumper traffic and just kept going. On the fly route management is the key to getting by around these parts!

On route 6 north, we noticed that some of the shoulders were very wide with a packed gravel surface. We speculated that this is because there seems to be a large Amish population in the area, of whom we have seen a woman on a bicycle, another woman driving her two daughters in a one horse carriage, and a one horse carriage parked at a grocery store in an area designated for such conveyances.

The day started out very overcast and grey day, then progressed from occasional drizzle to steady rain, leading us to wonder what the ferry conditions were going to be like when we reach Tobermory.  Apparently, the weather was mild and calm for the ferry, since no-one seemed at all concerned by the conditions.  We passed the High Point of the pre-ferry drive after many, many kilometers of flatlands. Lake Huron was basically a grey nothingness past the tree line.

Made it to Tobermory in time to park and go have lunch, visit a bookshop, grab some munchies for later, look at overpriced clothes (although it was in Canadian $s), and then hop back in Nessie and board the ferry. If you are taking the ferry, you don't have to crawl all over town looking for parking (nor pay for it ... although the ferry ticket is more expensive than parking fees!). We ate lunch on a balcony overlooking the main strip and saw all kinds of acts and mishaps and general craziness as people scoured the strip for parking spaces. 





Help, there is a whale about to swallow our Mini! Finally it was our turn.












 Oh No! We are driving into it!

It was actually kind of weird to drive into a boat like this. Felt a bit like being eaten.






But once inside it was cosy, sort of. In an industrial steel painted humming box crowded sort of way. If you like sodium lights. Actually, it wasn't cosy at all. 


We retreated to the deck and cabin, where we had a lovely voyage for an hour and a half. It was nice to let someone else do the driving, and especially through the rain that came down at times. Coming from the Atlantic Seaboard, what impressed me most about the vessel was the complete absence of rust on the steel plating. It is impossible on a vessel in salt water to keep it from rusting, no matter how often you paint it, but here in the fresh water, it was apparently easy. There was not a spot of rust anywhere, as you can see in all the pictures. 







Driving off was a breeze, and we were off on the other shore of Lake Huron.












Driving through a changed landscape as we left the Niagara Escarpment and headed towards non-sedimentary rocks.





Finally pulled into our place for the night as it began to get dark, a BnB on Lake Lauzon. This is our last reserved place for the next few days of traveling, and we are curious what lies ahead. Will we find nice places? Campgrounds to test out our camping skills? How are we going  to drive the 30 hours of road between us and our next reservation, 4 days from now? But we do know that we are having a great time, and enjoying every day.

Thought for the day: When one is in Canada, are Canadian geese called Canadian geese? Or just geese?

Mini count for the day: Only 6, down from 8 yesterday.


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