It’s Been a few days

Map #1 is our entire journey and Map #2 is the journey through the Trent Severn.

Middle pic is the Big Chute in action

The bottom three pictures are views from our boat today and the middle one is of Lock 45

First off, Happy Fathers Day to all you dads out there. May your day bring you exactly what you want it to. We are giving this dad a day off of his “captaining“ duties. We have been running for 6 days and the captain much deserves a day off.

Back to our travels. Much has happened over the past 5 days. The most notable being that we went on The Big Chute yesterday. What an amazing feat of engineering that is. But I will get to that later.

We have also pretty much completed our journey through the Trent. We are sitting at a resort looking at Lock 45 which will be our final lock. Once we are through that, our Georgian Bay leg of this trip will begin.

It is a little bittersweet to be leaving the Trent. We have said it before, but the Canadian park system and these waterways are so amazing. Staying on their walls is a treat and so many times, you are pretty much camping out on your boat.

A quick recap of the Trent after Peterborough.

First off , it was cold all week. 🌨️ We are still waiting for temps to warm up, but the sun is out anyways. 😎

Tuesday June 12th- We woke up to a cold, rainy and miserable day. So, what did we do? We made a cold and rainy run up to Lakefield. I can’t say there was anything pleasant about it, but we did move from Point A to point B. Mike doesn’t like driving this boat from downstairs, so by the time we arrived to Lakefield, he was frozen. Me and the dogs did our fair share upstairs as well. Not a nice day! 🥶

There were some cool tiny islands along the way- many with houses on them. As it turns out cute little islands with houses are everywhere, but who knew that first day.

We stayed on the wall at Lakefield and it was one of those walls, where you felt like you were camping in a beautiful place.

1. Tiny island with house

2. Where we stayed the night..sun finally came out.

3. Dogs are sucking it up and hanging upstairs.

Wednesday, June 13th- From Lakefield, we moved on the BobCaygeon. A touristy lake town. At this point, we were seeing more open water and lakes. The wall in Bobcaygeon was in the middle of town, so not nearly as quiet. But a nice setting.

1. perhaps the first modern house

2. and 3. Random photos

Thursday, June 14th- We made it the Kirkefield Lock. This is second of those lift locks and also the lock that stopped us from finishing our trip last year. They have the lock up and running, but it is definitely still broken! The second pan is down so the lock itself is using a pump to go up and down since it doesn’t have the second pan to counter the weight.

Since we were going down stream - our first lock to go downstream- it took a mere 20 minutes to go down. Going upstream, would have been an hour. And then if you arrive when it is going down already and you need to go down, you get to wait and and hour and a half for that lock.

For our part, we arrived at the end of the day, and took the first ride down in the morning. We enjoyed a lovely night at the lock and since the burn bans have lifted, we were able to enjoy a nice - but safe- campfire.

1. camping at the lock

2. last one is a stop along the way. Fenelon Falls

3. The rest are of the lock. Starting with looking at it from down below the night before. ( the working pan was also lowered) and you can see the broken pan. The rest are from us going into and down the lock After they raised the pan up 45 feet for us to go in.

Friday, June 15th- We made our way to the Port of Orillia And spent the night on lake Couchiching. - I just love that name- We stayed at the municipal marina and got a lot of housekeeping done. Literally. The boat was filthy. this was the end of the lakes region and the beginning of the most scenic part of the journey. From Couchiching onwards, it is absolutely gorgeous. It’s a glimpse of what we are going to see in Georgian Bay and we are so excited to see it.

1. Hole in the wall Bridge

2. Where‘s Waldo?

3. Orillia- looks a little like Burlington on aproach

4. Waterfront park

5. Dogs are still snuggled

6. Lake Couchiching is full of all sorts of fun 😬

7. Flag at the marina. I love Canada!!❤️

Saturday June 16th- THE BIG DAY!!! THE BIG CHUTE

This was the day, the day of the marine railroad. It was also day 6 of travel and quite windy. So, we were getting tired and grouchy. We probably should have looked at the campground at Swift Falls and decided to stop for the day and chill.

But you know, Mike and I never get testy with each other, so onward we went.

We arrived at the Chute and were met with like 5,000 Sea Fleas ( Jet Skis) so the stress started to rise right away. And of course we had big winds gusting to 30 MPH…

Next, I had misread a couple of sentences in the book. Mind you, the sentences, weren‘t making sense to me as I was reading them, but I didn‘t question them or myself. Of course I was WRONG!

There is a blue line on every lock that you go to and tie to when you are ready to go through the lock and then there are other areas that you can tie off to and stay for up to 48 hours. Somehow I read to go to the blue line even if you want to visit, so we tied off to the Blue Line and set off to explore. No sooner had we set off then we were being called to lock through.

At this point, my anxiety was already starting to rise a bit - and we were both tired- I can’t say the next 10 minutes were pleasant and I was really missing my ear techs, but we got loaded onto the Big Chute and from there it was amazing!

Nothing like being taken out of water, over a road, down a hill and put right back in the water. A little rollercoaster for out boat. 😂

It was truly a highlight of our Trip❤️🛤️

We hung out down below and watched for a few minutes before moving on and then made our way through some amazing countryside with some HUGE houses - yes even to me- to the Rawley Resort where we are today. It was also extremely windy at the resort and there were only 500 sea fleas to get around for docking.

At this point, we are super grouchy, knew we needed a day off and are glad to be at the resort.

As soon as we were docked and settled, the stress fell away and we have totally enjoyed the resort. It’s in a beautiful setting and last night we had a great dinner and some live music at the bar. Today, the wind has died And we had a moment of , “this would be a great travel day”, but it was fleeting and instead we are watching the boats go by us and looking at our very last lock on the Trent that we will pass through tomorrow am.

We are going to chill, do a little BBQ later and maybe find our way off the boat and onto some Adirondack chairs. With the warmer weather, the dogs will be getting a bath as well. Little do they know now that it’s coming. 🛁

1 and 2 random photos

3. I thought seeing the doors open on the Swift Falls lock” was cool

4-6 The Big chute. I also have a video I am trying to post

The last few are views from the boat, of which you can see the Adirondack chairs with our name on it and the bbq we will use later.

Final Pic. It looks like Mike and the dogs have already moved in over there. My que its getting time to wrap this up.

I will post again as soon as can get videos going of the marine railway.

Tomorrow, we will head to Georgian Bay. We will spend one night at a marina to provision and then if the weather warms up as predicted, we will spend several days exploring the bay and anchoring out. Supposed to be some of the best boating in the entire world. We will let you all know.