What a Ride!!

We made it. We entered Georgian Bay yesterday after completing 44 locks of the Trent Severn Waterway. All in all it was quite an experience. Much nicer and easier than the Erie Canal, and much prettier. Plus the Canadians are great, friendly neighbors. Look at this one lock. It is called the Big Chute and it is actually a Marine Railway that takes you down 57 ft. The left photo is Rock Chalk on the railway car going down the hill. The second is a boat we have been traveling with, Muddy Waters, as they went down.

The rail car is on tracks and goes down into the water so you can drive the boat onto the platform. The put straps underneath the boat to hold it in place, and then the car drives out of the water and over a long hill, down to the lower lake level. It is a great ride, and fascinating technology. One minute you are floating, the next twenty feet in the air and moving downhill. What an experience!

The Canadian Shield is the term given to the granite base that was scraped clean by the glaciers millions of years back. Today the water fills in between the pink granite, and pine trees grow on shore. The water is pristine and the weather is cool. Cannot beat that combination. I am finding the boat channel is well marked, which is good, because that granite is not very forgiving if you wonder off course.

The channel weaves through these rocks in a protected passage for 150 miles northwesterly toward the upper part of Lake Huron called the North Channel. There are a jillion places to pull off the main channel and tuck back into a secluded cove. My navigation skills will be challenged to the max as once you leave the well marked channel, you better know where you are on the chart. But it is beautiful and well worth the challenge.

We are back amongst the Loopers. There are a bunch of boats all around doing the Loop. We have seen them in the harbors and I can hear them on the radio. We missed 6 weeks, but we caught them. Now we can slow down and take three weeks to go through Georgian Bay and the North Channel to Mackinaw Island. That still gives us plenty of time to bump down the Michigan side of Lake Michigan to get us to Chicago by Labor Day or shortly thereafter.

I am in no hurry to get south, however, as the weather is just gorgeous here, and not so cool in the States. So the balancing act is to stay up here as long as possible, but still get off Lake Michigan before the big storms hit. We'll see. Marc