Seventh Sun III - WELCOME to our site as we travel the Great Loop. We will be beginning the Loop f

Leg #14 — 6/2/15 to 6/10/15 — Owen Sound, Ontario to Parry Sound, Ontario, Canada -

We started the drive north around 6:00am and went through Cus­toms into Canada at around 10:15am. We stopped in Goderich for lunch and walked around a bit before arriv­ing in Owen Sound around 2:20pm. We started the pro­vi­sion­ing process, food and drink, and had another OS dinner….nothing great…headed back to the boat. Ken talked the secu­rity per­son into pick­ing him up at Enter­prise so he could return the car. Ken had a nice con­ver­sa­tion with the young Indian man who just recently brought his fam­ily to Canada. He was pre­vi­ously an attor­ney who wanted a safer and respect­ful place to live.
We left OS in the early morn­ing for a very easy and short (apprx. 30 mi.) trip to Meaford—which appears to be a nice town. We are the first Looper this sea­son. We walked around town and found some break­fast and a new ver­sion of but­ter tarts…with rhubarb. We vis­ited with a woman who orga­nizes the group that han­dles the “Scare­crow Inva­sion” event in the fall. They put together about 250 scare­crows, peo­ple dress them up in cos­tumes and they are then spread all over the town. What a neat idea. We relaxed in the sun, vis­ited around town, had a nice din­ner at the Leeky Canoe Pub and headed back for the night.

Marina Art

In the morn­ing, I took a nice walk and met Ken at the local cof­fee shop. We took off early for Thorn­bury and arrived before 10:00am. Another nice small town with local fla­vor and, again, the first Looper. We had an early lunch at the Thorn­bury Bak­ery and got into a con­ver­sa­tion with a Scot­tish cou­ple who now live in Lon­don, Ontario. Dis­cus­sions are always infor­ma­tive and inter­est­ing when talk­ing to locals.

A good shot of the beau­ti­fully clear waters.

We relaxed on the boat, in the beau­ti­ful sun­shine, until around 2:00pm. We took off for an exploratory walk and ended up stop­ping at a cou­ple of places, Piper’s and The Dam Pub, for food and drink, drink and food. We also bought cheese at the famous Cheese Gallery. We were back at the boat before 6:00 with desert in tow but with the inten­tion to go out roam­ing later but that didn’t hap­pen because we had full stom­achs and were lazy.
We left early for our short trip to Colling­wood Town Docks, no ameni­ties, hydro or water, and a bit of a walk into town which we did sev­eral times. This is a much larger small city with a vibrant down­town with lots to see. We had an old time diner break­fast at the Old Red Hen Restau­rant just in time for lunch. There were sev­eral pub­lic art projects dis­played on the streets, ban­ners and chairs, which made an inter­est­ing walk. The town also had mul­ti­ple murals on build­ings. I vis­ited sev­eral gal­leries and stu­dios in the after­noon while Ken was answer­ing ques­tions from a local cit­i­zen about bet­ter serv­ing the boat­ing com­mu­nity. We had an early din­ner at a pub and then headed back to the boat in the cold rain.We left very early the next morn­ing, which is get­ting to be a new habit, for a bit longer of a trip to Pene­tan­quesh­ene, PTang or Pene­tang for short. The docks and dock mas­ter Jeff and his wife Sue, who turned out to be Loop­ers in “Pause” mode, were very nice and invit­ing. The town, at first look, seemed tired and run down. After a cou­ple of days, and since the food in sev­eral restau­rants, Froth and Phil’s, were quite good, the town started to look bet­ter. We hit the Farm­ers Mar­ket for sausage, but­ter tarts and mini-fruit pies !
Greg and Jan from Santa Bar­bara joined us for a cou­ple of days.  We were able to visit a boat restora­tion in progress with Sue’s son-in-law, John at Har­bor West Marina. He is work­ing on a downeaster for his father.  What an amaz­ing piece of work­man­ship.We ate in town the first night and took off in the morn­ing for Henry’s Fish House. The scenery is amaz­ingly beau­ti­ful. The rock for­ma­tions and the mul­ti­tude of islands just take your breath away. This was a new boat­ing expe­ri­ence for Greg and Jan. The tight chan­nels with lots of mark­ers is not some­thing that you see when boat­ing in the Pacific.
The whole crew was at the dock to help us in at Henry’s. Paul, the present owner, greeted us with his sto­ries and we all enjoyed our con­ver­sa­tions with him.  The only neg­a­tive thing is the mosquitoes.
I have nicely for­got­ten to men­tion the bug sit­u­a­tion since we got to Owen Sound. We have had a dif­fer­ent bug at each stop—gnats, flys, strange look­ing insects — mega amounts, swarms, the boat is cov­ered with bugs and you end up hav­ing to walk on them! We finally were able to wash some of the body pieces off when we got to PTang—using lake water. Now the mos­qui­toes have arrived in full force.After Paul explained that the walk to the only lit­tle store down the way might be fraught with bit­ing bugs, we took the dinghy out to check it out. Very inter­est­ing in a “can’t believe they stay in busi­ness sort of way”. Back to the boat for some book read­ing and nap­ping. Of course, we did the fam­ily style pick­erel and chips for din­ner and couldn’t fin­ish the pile.We headed north early in a bit of fog. The morn­ings are quite cool still and the days have been warm­ing up to the 70’s. Again, beau­ti­ful scenery and neat cot­tages dot­ting the land­scape. Every shape and size, some with the per­fect boat house just for me included.

We had one swing bridge to go through right before Parry Sound. We could see flash­ing lights under the bridge. Some­one had wrecked their boat on the small land mass under the mid­dle of the bridge. The 20+ boat was up on top of a pile of rocks and tim­bers. We later heard that the police found HIM at home in bed and he had sup­pos­edly been drink­ing a bit too much.We were met at Big Sound Marina by Har­bor Mas­ter George and got into our slip and all tied up quickly. We headed down­town so that Greg and Jan could check out the town before leav­ing. An early lunch at a café and off we drove to PTang to return them to their car. Off they went to enjoy a few days at the fam­ily cabin near Buffalo.
We were finally able to work a bit with inter­net, we gath­ered up stuff to take home, ate din­ner at the lit­tle Bistro down the way, and watched the run­ner bring the Pan Am torch to Parry Sound.  Very early the next morn­ing, we drove out to Kill­bear Marina, Snug Cove and Dil­lon Har­bor to check them out. All three are very small mari­nas with mostly local small boats….and one restau­rant or store.  I was able to get a pic­ture of this slow tur­tle but missed the black bear that crossed the road in front of us.

Off we went toward home about 1:00pm. We were going to try to stay north of Toronto and out of traf­fic so we wig­gled down and across Ontario to reach Sar­nia. We stopped for a very nice lunch in Cook­stown at the Old Bull Dog Cafe and then some­how took until 1:00am to get to Van­dalia. Our plan was to stop after Port Huron but the beds were full and there was nowhere to stop. Soon, we were so close we had to keep going all the way home.

This entry was posted in Journal on June 14, 2015.