Gore Bay, Manitoulin Island, Ontario

The sun came out for the first time in a long time yesterday. It sprinkled a few times as we drove to Gore Bay, but it was dry for most of the day. It ended in the most beautiful place. Here's what happened.

We'd told ourselves that if the sun was shining, we'd get out for a walk. As it turns out, the untidal tide had come in, and there was just a very narrow strip of beach on which to walk. Also, the little lapping wave action at the water's edge had turned into full-blown breakers.

The truck was covered in leaves and pine needles. These two seemed posed for their picture, and so I obliged.

As we were packing up, Sadie was victorious in jumping from the seat of the chair to the uppermost cupboard. You must understand that it is the kitties' fondest desire to explore these cupboards.

As we headed down the road to Sault Ste. Marie, we had to make a decision. If we turned right, we could head back into the USA to Detroit, Toledo, and Buffalo. I don't know about you, but that sounded positively awful to us. Hopefully, I'm not denigrating anyone's home town, but we really dislike cities and their traffic.

On the other hand, we could turn left and see Lake Huron for the first time. What do you suppose we did? I suppose my title gave it away, but I'll just continue thinking I'm keeping you in suspense for a little while longer.

Our trip took us past more barns. We hadn't seen any as we drove across the northern tip of Lake Superior. In fact, there was very little along that route...even the towns were very small. The barns were immense. They were far larger than any of the surrounding structures.

I so regret not getting a better picture of this one because...do you see what I see? Look to the left of the image below, in the middle...it's an Amish buggy. Well. My ancestry is Amish, and I got so excited when I saw them.

Indeed, there were signs posted along the highway...more Amish signs than moose signs, for a change.

And we saw about half a dozen buggies. My camera settings were off, and I didn't get a single in-focus picture of them. It's probably just as well. The Amish do not want to be photographed, and so perhaps there was divine intervention involved.

In not too much time...we saw it! Our first glimpse of Lake Huron! It's something new for the side of the RV, but that will come later.

In a little while, larger views opened up, and we traveled inland and then coastal again throughout the day.

And we saw lots and lots of huge barns.

We stopped for lunch at a rest area. Mike took his nap. I stitched along with my friends.

Here's a picture of the map to give you some idea the route we were following. We were on the upper red road, but then took the turn on the red road to the south out to Manitoulin Island and Gore Bay. Gore Bay is marked with a red arrow.

Highway 6 took us down the mainland and across a few small islands until we came to this swing bridge that took us out to Manitoulin Island proper.

There was a traffic light at either end of the bridge. When your vehicle approached the light, it triggered the signal because this was a one-lane bridge, and narrow to boot.

Here's what our tour book tells us about Manitoulin Island.

We're scuba divers, and geez. Burrrrrrrrrrrrrr! You're not going to do any diving in these waters unless it's with a drysuit.

We passed through a lot of First Nations land and more barns. It seems to be chiefly agricultural out here.

Here's one with a quilt block. It's a little hard to see it through the bushes there.

It was quite a distance out to our final destination, over some good roads, bad roads, dirt roads, road construction, and I think we hit just about everything. The roads were so bad and the distance so far that we began to realize we hadn't really saved any money driving all this way for free parking. On the other hand, the views promised to be amazing. Finally, we were there.

We drove easily to our free spot, marked with a sign, which was very reassuring.

And this was our view for the night and this morning.

Fantastic. Well worth everything we'd driven over to get there. The lot is a public lot, not associated in any way with Split Rail Brewery, other than being right across the street. The brewery was closed when we arrived, and it won't open this morning until after we've left. We're really just here for the free night of camping. Still, we walked just a little way down the road and had dinner at Bouy's Eatery where we had our first pizza of 2017 (I think). Man, did that taste good!

Of course, the first order of business upon arrival is to get the catio hung up and the window opened for the kitties. There's never any squabbling over this territory when we first arrive. It's share, and share alike.

We took a little stroll on our way to the restaurant. We found this breakwater. There was a picnic table at the end. What a nice spot on a warm summer day. We walked all the way to the end.

At the beginning was this plaque.

When we reached the end, I took this panorama. What a stunningly beautiful place!

The restaurant was at the beginning of the breakwater. We had our pizza and then headed back to the trailer for the night. Along the way, we watched the sunset over the marina. Day is done.

It's early as I'm writing this. If the weather is as nice as it was yesterday afternoon, we'll get out for another stroll this morning. After that, we'll head back the way we came, although we've learned a few shortcuts from the owner of the restaurant. We're hoping to avoid the worst of the roads and road construction. Today we'll journey to Parry Sound, which will be our last stop before reaching Niagara Falls.

There is a town of Niagara Falls on both the Canadian side and the US side. Initially, we thought it would be cheaper to stay on the Canadian side, but then factored in the "tourist tax" of 3.5% and the $10 per day we're paying for data on my cell phone, and we decided to go back to the US side and stay there. I've done some reading, and apparently there is a footbridge that will allow us to cross between the US and Canada to see both sides of the falls. We plan to spend three nights there, and so we'll have two full days to take it all in.