We woke up this morning to the sun shining through the hatch above our bed and birds chirping out our windows.
At waaaaay too early an hour. And it was cold.
The idea was to get to the first lock by 9, when it opened. However, between here and there was a very shallow and long canal, a very shallow and long lake, and two bridges that someone needed to open for us. If we know we’ll be delayed at one of those we’d just sleep in and enjoy the delay whilst tied up. Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way.
In addition to a lake, a canal, and bridges, we had to deal with weeds. The weeds here grow to the surface. We plowed ten miles of weeds, easy, while working through slots where fortunately beauty trumped the treacherousness.
As we approached Lake Simcoe, however, the land started looking like Iowa.
Or maybe like that place where Ren McCormack played tractor-chicken with Willard before they became friends and proved that dancing is in the Bible and thus wholesome after all.
The other issue was boats in our locks.
Five boats in a lock—including us and Second Wave—is three boats too many. Once that happens, however, you’re stuck with them through the rest of the locks until someone peels off. Although the small boats were filled with good-natured teachers “on holiday,” our good fortune at having them stop for fuel was highlighted when they later passed us on Lake Simcoe, with the dude on the bow of the lead boat completely naked. At the end of the day we reached Orillia. More on Orillia later since we’ll be here until at least Sunday.
As for yesterday, the idea was to do a time-lapse of the entire cruising day. Not the pump-out part, or the moving across the small river to the blue line part, but the actual cruising part. Then we’d post the video for the blog entry. We got the video done just fine, but were stuck on a wall with no cell service. No cell service means no blog post. So here was yesterday: