7/23/18: The weather forecast changes so often that we can’t keep up with it! We’ve been staying put, and delaying our plans, trying to avoid big wind and thunderstorms. But everyday that has been forecasted to be awful has ended up being not so bad. We finally decided to make a break for it, and just go. There have been thundershowers forecasted everyday, and they haven’t happened yet, and we need to get moving. It was a cloudy day, but I think we only got sprinkled on a little bit. And the wind was not bad at all. We followed the Small Boat Channel for most of our route today. We had heard that a swing bridge on the southern route to Parry Sound was broken and would not open, so we took the northern route – the long way around. (After we got there, we found out that the bridge was fixed. Dangit!)
The cottage country is pretty, and there are a lot of rocks! It is very important to stay in the marked channel!
I always had stopping at Henry’s Restaurant on our list of “Must Do’s” while in Georgian Bay. It is an icon, and beloved by everyone who lives in or visits this area. It apparently has the “best Great Lakes fish & chips in the world”. We were cruising past it at about 9:00am, so it didn’t make sense to stop. Later we heard from someone that it isn’t even open on Mondays. I guess it wasn’t meant to be for us this time around!
We continued on our journey to Parry Sound. We figured that the weather was still a bit unstable for the next couple of days, so we’d put some miles on and get to a marina where we could hunker down if the weather really did go downhill in the next day or two. After about 34 miles and nearly 4 hours, we found ourselves at our destination = Big Sound Marina in the town of Parry Sound. We spied a few other looper boats, and got the local scoop on where to go and what to see from the nice helpful marina workers.
First on the list, was a walk to the new brewery! It wasn’t a far walk, but my knee is still giving me fits (as my mom used to say). So I waddled along. This limping was making other muscles really sore too! The Trestle Brewing Company had a few beers to try, and a smokin good food truck, so we ordered up some drinks and a couple of pulled pork and chicken sandwiches. They were really good!
It was a good stop! This was the view from their outdoor patio. There is a very large, high railroad trestle that crosses the river here… and so the name.
From there, we walked into the town, and stopped for a photo shoot along the way.
It was a couple of miles to the grocery store, so we called a taxi to take us to WalMart. We stocked up on a bunch of groceries for the next week, and taxied back to the marina. Around 5:00, the gang of loopers got together for patio-tales. I think we had Island Girl, Nellie Mae, Compass Rose, Band Wagon, and Corkscrew. Everybody thought they would stay another day due to the weather forecast. We figured we’d wake up in the morning and see if it changed enough to go, and then we’d sing our favorite song… “should we stay or should we go now?”
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7/24/18 Tuesday: The wind forecast still looked bad, so we decided to stay. This made life a little easier, because we really needed to do laundry! We needed loonies ($1 coins), which we didn’t have enough of, so needed to wait for the office to open. Of course, other boaters were doing the same thing, so we had to wait for our turn. All morning was pretty low key. We were all done by noon, and I had heard that there was a Tuesday morning farmers market in town. So I rounded up the gang for a walkabout. Sure enough, we found the market. There were craft booths, meat and sausage & cheese, vegetables, etc. We stocked up on some veggies.
And Kenny stocked up on some carbohydrates. He found some delicious yumminess from the Pastry Lady. Apple strudel, pecan butter tarts, and coconut macaroons. Everything tasted great! These are by far the best pecan butter tarts we’ve had anywhere, with a very fresh flakey crust.
It started to sprinkle rain around 1:00, so some of the vendors started packing up. We figured that was a good sign that we should go find a bar or restaurant or something. We’d heard that Wellington’s was really good, and it was only a couple blocks away. We stopped in there for lunch, and they did have good food. The guys had some kind of schnitzel. You don’t see that on every menu!
Walking around town, I found a few neat buildings. This is the Parry Sound District Courthouse which was erected in 1871. It had a second floor court room and a main floor jail and registry office.
The First Baptist Church was founded in 1888. This was from their beginnings. “…the time has come when the baptized believers in and around the town of Parry Sound would greatly advance the cause of Christ by organizing ourselves into a Regular Baptized Church, our object being the edification of the Body of Christ and the salvation of sinner through the means of a preached Gospel.”
In the evening, my sweet friend Mary, from Nellie Mae, came over and ‘air-dropped’ a bunch of pictures from her i-pad to mine, of our adventure through the Big Chute from last week. Here we are with our dueling i-pads.
They got some awesome pictures and video for us! Here are a couple more… our butt was really hanging over the edge! And there we go, across the road to the other side!
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We had some rain and drizzle, so our docktails for tonight were at picnic tables under the covered area by the office. It was a nice gathering. There were a few more boats that came in today, and they all said it was pretty rough out on the water today. I guess it’s a good thing we stayed put. One of the boats that came is was a member of AGLCA who hasn’t started their loop yet, but they live in this area. Wayne & Barb on Red Dog gave us all some great route briefing ideas for upper Georgian Bay. They had some great anchorage locations and thoughts on traveling the area. One alert we’ve all been focused on is forest fires. There is a fire burning in the northeastern portion of Georgian Bay, which has closed a favorite area for all marine and land traffic. BOO! We will not be able to go to the Bustard Islands or Bad River like we had planned.
We had a beautiful evening and sunset. Tomorrow is forecasting some fog in the morning, but I think we’ll get up and go. The wind shouldn’t pick up until early afternoon, so we’ll double check the forecast. We plan to go about 60 miles to Byng Inlet. It sounded like that was the plan for several of the loopers. It will be a parade!
Good to see you on the move. Don’t fret about missing Henrys. It’s way overrated. you can get better tasting fish in Chattanooga and not have to eat it off of a paper plate!