DAY THREE: Greater Sudbury - Little Current - Kagawong - Gore Bay - Sheguiandah - Little Current

Another eventful day. 

We were up and out early for our day exploring Manitoulin Island. It was a 90 minute uneventful trip, most notable for how much of it was on freeways. Highway 17 west of Sudbury is four-laned for a surprising distance. 

We turned on to Highway 6, which begins way down in Port Dover and terminates just east of Espanola, a distance of 480 km (300 miles). I've now travelled its full length. There are some beautiful sections of road winding through the La Cloche Mountains. "Mountains" is a misnomer...at least today. When this area formed two and a half billion years ago, they were higher than the Rockies are now.  The French named them "The Bell Mountains" after an Indigenous legend: supposedly there are rocks here that ring like bells when struck, and were used by the First Nations as tocsins. 

Time has humbled these hills. The highest of them is 539m (1766 ft), which still ranks them among the highest altitudes in Ontario per Wikipedia. The white quartzite is beautiful. 

Courtesy "P199" - I wasn't taking pics while Kathy was navigating unfamiliar territory

We arrived at a causeway on to Goat Island and then a swift left turn on to the Little Current Swing Bridge.

This was an experience. The only other swing bridge I've traversed (and Kathy has seen, but was unable to cross because it was out of commission) connects Rose Point with Parry Island: this one is over twice as long. It's a single lane: the only highway access to the largest freshwater island on earth.

This bridge is open (swung out) for boat traffic for the first fifteen minutes of every daylight hour from May to October; the rest of the time it alternates northbound and southbound traffic. Kathy's timing was bang on perfect: we didn't even have to stop.

Our hotel for the night, the Manitoulin Inn and Conference Centre, is a stone's throw from the bridge, but it's only 10:30 a.m and check in isn't until 3:00 pm. No problem: now we know where it is. After a stop for a much needed caffeine infusion at the only Tim Horton's on the Island, which put us in mind of Tailwinds: badly understaffed. We were in line for more than twenty minutes.

Our next Island stop is in Kagawong,  30 km from Little Current. You very quickly forget you're on an island. It sure as hell doesn't feel like one: there are some farms here, for instance, and the land just goes on and on. Like the rest of the Canadian Shield, you're never far from water, including Lake Manitou, the largest lake on an island on a lake in the world, and yes, it has islands. Islands in a lake on an island in a lake...it's Islandception!

Kagawong is the site of our most-wanted waterfall (perhaps behind Kakabeka, the Niagara of the North) and Bridal Veil Falls surpassed expectations to become, quite possibly, our favourite cascade of those we've seen.

Accessibility: there are metal steps, 76 of them, interspersed with viewing platforms, leading all the way down to river level. From there you can, if you're careful, actually walk behind the falls. We saw kids of seven or so doing it; we still decided, between Kathy's sciatic and Ken's klutziness, we'd better not try. Mark Harris, the author of  Waterfalls of Ontario and head admin of the Facebook group of the same name, counsels that waterfalls are not swimming pools and anybody could be seriously hurt of even killed messing around with them. That didn't stop dozens of people from doing so, of course.

I'd imagine if you want privacy and seclusion here you'd have to come at sunrise. It's one of the top tourist attractions on Manitoulin Island and it was regrettably impossible, try as we might, to get a shot of the falls unmarred by humans. 

This was absolutely a highlight of our trek. 

We walked around Kagawong, checking out a store called Boo Bah Lou Candy Corner. Sadly, the best thing about this place is its name. I don't think they stock anything you can't find in a decent grocery store.

Dark clouds were moving in as we journeyed westward past Ice Lake, where Kathy stayed the last time she was here, another 14 km to Gore Bay. The Island actually extends more than 65 km past Gore Bay, but this is as far west as we got.

We were instructed to find the East Bluff lookout, and I'm glad we did:

While we were up here, a giant bolt of lightning struck the far shore. Lightning and high bluffs doesn't make for a recipe we wanted to taste, so we high-tailed it back down into the village in search of something we did want to taste.

Our first choice was Buoys Eatery and Take Out. They advertised a dining room, but it was not open for lunch and we really did want to sit down somewhere, so we found the Watersedge Pub and Restaurant. As it turns out, Kathy has been here before, attending a wedding the last and only time she'd been on the Island. 

When you first walk in here, you're confronted with a dining room far too upscale for our summerwear. We nearly turned around, but we were escorted to a back verandah much more convivial. We ordered iced teas, a corned beef on rye for me and whitefish on a bun for Kathy, and as we were sipping our teas, an alarm sounded and the waitress, who was already having a day from hell, informed us the power had gone out. We couldn't tell, outside, but for that alarm. 

So we decided to just pay for our iced teas and go -- and as we were about to do so, the power returned. We were told they'd already started our meals, and they arrived promptly, but rather than reverse ourselves yet again and confound the waitress, we simply got it to go and ate in the car.

That meal was too good to eat in a car. I love corned beef and don't often find it; Kathy let me try a bite of her whitefish and it was surprisingly good. Really mild, hardly any fish stank to it at all. Really good fries, too: the first fries I'd had on the trip. If I ever return to the Island, I'd at least consider staying at the inn here, which made our shortlist before we decided to go for the Indigenous vibe at the Manitoulin Inn.

Time is wasting again, and we are on a deadline. Our sunset cruise -- if there is  to be a sunset or a cruise on this day of random thunder and hail -- boards at 6:30 near our hotel and we have one more place I particularly want to see before we check in. So off to Sheguiandah and Ten Mile Point we went.

There is a large trading post here where we got our only souvenirs of the trip. The prices were quite reasonable, all things considered. I got a sweater I love and Kathy got an indigenous themed necklace to supersede the butterfly necklace I gifted her with six years ago, some pretty greeting cards and some coasters. Lovely (and busy) place to stop, and we found out there was a giant pow-wow and cultural festival starting right after we leave tomorrow.

That's one thing we didn't get to experience here. Another is the Manitoulin Eco Park Dark Sky Preserve. I feel like both of us have outgrown camping, but you never know.

Back to Little Current. We kind of fell in love with the Manitoulin Inn and Conference Center. 

Room 409. Those have to be at least ten foot ceilings. Really sets the room off.

View from our window

No suite this time, but the room was sweet. I didn't bother getting a pic of the bathroom but it was impressive. There's an expansive walk in shower. The beds are on a par with the Blue Mountain Inn in Collingwood, which is to say they're very good. Despite that, neither of us slept well. We can't fault the room in any way and in fact this would be my first choice to stay if I'm ever in the area again. Just...this bed is not my bed and it's not Kathy's bed either.

While we relaxed in the room, dining on more of Kathy's delicious prepared food, another storm rolled in, this one spitting hail. South of and unbeknownst to us, Parry Sound (and Barrie, and Lindsay, and Peterborough, and Ottawa) were getting hit hard. We resigned ourselves to the cancellation of our cruise on the Grand Heron. Then I recalled reading in the fine print that they would only cancel if it was still unsafe two hours  after scheduled departure. We drove the 800m we'd planned to walk,  not wanting to get caught in another mini-monsoon, and found a notice stating that cancellations due to weather are exceedingly rare since the ship is so stable. Are tornado warned supercells enough, do you think?

Nope. The sun actually poked out as we boarded and left right on time. The sun's been doing that all day, playing peekaboo just as we arrived at each stop (with the exception of the East Bluff Lookout in Gore Bay). We decided the universe really does like us today.

We forwent the dinner part of the dinner and sunset cruise. There were only three choices available and none of them really appealed; we also felt we could do better money-wise. We had planned to visit 3 Cows and a Cone and somehow that didn't happen, but really, we had to eat up the rest of the food Kathy had lovingly prepared for this trip.

We met the couple who, we discovered, founded OrKidstra. From the link:

OrKidstra is an Ottawa-based social development program that empowers kids, ages 5-18, from under-served communities by teaching life skills – such as teamwork, commitment, respect and pride in achievement – through the universal language of music. With the passionate belief in the transformative power of music, OrKidstra started with 27 children in 2007 and now includes 650 children and youth, both in-school* and after-school, from over 62 linguistic and cultural backgrounds.

I got to talk classical music with this couple, which was a blast: nobody in my life other than Craig appreciates this music as much as I do. 

Entertainment was provided by Scott Mitchell (link is to his YouTube channel; he's also on Apple Music). He played a steady stream of excellent covers as we sailed...everything from Joni Mitchell's  Big Yellow Taxi to Black Sabbath, and Scott multitracked his voice for each song. It was several cuts above your standard busker and I'm completely unsurprised to find he's released a few singles of his own work. 

The cruise was not as action packed as, say, the Island Queen's southern route out of Parry Sound. There was a lot more open water here. But we did go through that fabled Swing Bridge twice. The first time, there was light:

We also got some shots of a pretty little lighthouse. Kathy wins best capture of the trip yet again.

Perfection. 

We floated back into dock and briefly contemplated something freaky that became a running joke for the rest of the trip: PizzaForno. "Artisanal" pizza prepared in three minutes flat. It's located in the parking lot of a Shell station and we seriously considered trying the "Shell station-adjacent pizza machine". The reviews we read said "about what you'd expect" and "great food if you're hammered" so, not wanting to risk Manitouwaning's Revenge, we decided we could do without this great feat of culinary engineering, and retired to our hotel, which really is lovely: 

They lean hard into that Swing Bridge, and why not? You can see it from the end of our hallway and I even got to watch it swing the next morning.

I would stay here again without a blink.

DAY FOUR: Little Current - South Baymouth - Tobermory - Owen Sound - Waterloo/Woodstock

Up way too early. This trip has been fantastic, but the sheer volume of events is weighing on us. We pulled out, wistfully, at 8:30 and made our way across the Island (past Sheguiandah and Ten Mile Point again) to  South Baymouth. This village (population 450) is considerably smaller than Little Current (population 1300 and one traffic light) and the big draw here is the Chi-Cheemaun ferry I'm about to ride for the first time in my life.

This thing is quite simply impossible. It has to have some sort of TARDIS on board: the number of cars, RVs and TRACTOR TRAILERS that fit on this boat is just absurd. Would you believe over 140? I still don't. The Chi-Cheemaun may be the second largest thing sailing on the Canadian Great Lakes (after the Viking OCTANTIS), but it ain't THAT big.

We had worried, needlessly it turns out, about actually driving on. The YouTube video I'd previewed made the hallway we parked in seem crazily narrow. I thought I might have to get out of the car prior to boarding and get in on Kathy's side. That turned out to be not even close to necessary and I cursed myself for a fool: thousands upon thousands of people take this trip every year and nobody says you know what, it's really hard not to ram the walls on that boat.

The crossing takes an hour and 45 minutes, and many people had told us it was an amazing experience. I found the loading amazing, but quite frankly the trip itself is kind of boring. There's nothing but open water as far as the eye can see in all directions. I mean, it's kinda neat to realize you're on a bay in a lake, not the Pacific Ocean, but still...in terms of interesting visuals, there were exactly zero. 

Please don't take this party pooper's word for it. The Chi-Cheemaun (a bastardization of the Ojibwe chi-jiimaan, "Big Canoe") is an Ontario landmark and we are almost certainly outliers.

We drove off the bow at Tobermory (after boarding the stern at South Baymouth) and found ourselves immediately on Highway 6, back in the rockless, comparatively treeless and lakeless land of Southern Ontario. We thought about hitting Shipwreck Lee's, a Tobermory institution we'd last visited on our first big trek three years ago. But in that way Kathy and I seem to have, without a word passing between us, we nixed that idea. I can't speak for her, but for me the drawback was the traffic. There were a hell of a lot of people behind us, and the Bruce Peninsula is kind of like the eastern coast of Georgian Bay: there's only the one real road. We were both utterly drained, and home was calling. Loudly.

That said, we still found a little restaurant in Owen Sound, attached to a roadside motor court: the Sunshine Diner. Completely unassuming, the food in here is yet another pleasant surprise in a trip full of them. I mean, seriously, this place feels almost like a cafeteria, yet Kathy's hot turkey and my beef dip were both scrumptious. The service is friendly and laid back and once again, despite its less than humble appearance, I gotta recommend this restaurant.

From here we just drove home. Everybody was safe and accounted for by dark, and I slept like the dead last night.

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This gets repetitive, I've already said this on Facebook, but I have some thanks that must be officially made here. 

To Ray and Donnie and Bennett and anyone else I'm forgetting, who made sure Kathy's side chick was able to take us on this trip. Kathy got some of the best fuel economy she's ever seen and I'm choosing to believe at least some of that was their doing. 

To Bennett, again, and Max for their company, and for introducing us to one of the best breakfast establishments I have ever had the pleasure of eating in.

To my father Ken Sr and stepmom Heather, who treated us to (sorry) yet another wonderful meal, gave us Georgian Bay posters, and so much more. Thank you. We love you.

And finally to Kathy, who drove and drove and drove without complaint even when bone-tired, who put up with my foibles and oddities, and who filled every moment with joy.  Shell station-adjacent pizza machine! It turns out they are all over the place...do we dare??? 

I still marvel you're in my life, hon, and  I thank whatever it is that put you here every single day. 

No idea what's next on the docket for us. Kathy wants to get out east. Stay tuned.

FIN