Good or bad, the days of solitude are behind us

Little Detroit Channel is the only charted worry between Spanish and Killarney.  Despite the name, the concern isn’t street gangs, or Red Wing fans, or Eminem; it’s the narrow trench between hull-piercing submerged rocks.  Meh.  We barely had to slow down.

Okay, there’s one more worry.  The Little Current bridge only swings open once an hour.  For three minutes.  Miss it and you have to tread water for a good long time.  In current.  Which sucks.  Dana calculated our departure perfectly, however, so three and a half hours after leaving Spanish we rolled through Little Current and the bridge and past the lighthouse like we owned them.

On the open water stretch the wind built and the low cloud looked sketchy, but no problems arose.

Speaking of lighthouses, we’ve seen hundreds of ’em.  This is the first time we’ve caught a mother with her baby.

This little one marks a place we dinghied around with Second Wave on Mini Pearl one 2018 evening as the sun was setting.  Great memories of great times.

Then into the Killarney Channel, which thankfully was only moderately crowded.

Killarney is an awesome little spot.  Founded in 1820 as a fur trading outpost, supposedly it’s the oldest town in the North Channel/Georgian Bay.  To celebrate the first road access in 1962, they burned and scuttled the ship that no longer was required for mail service.  True story.

Killarney Mountain Lodge is new to us, and huge, and swanky.  Good steakhouse.  We didn’t bother with the pool, in part because the high was 66°*.

The uncharacteristic fog that set in this morning was acceptable only because we didn’t plan to travel.  Sailboats still were out and about, of course, because sailors don’t care.

When the sun finally appeared, happy holidayers came out to play.

These things looked fun, but the chances Dana would pedal around while Doug reclined on the cushion with a drink in his hand approached zero, so neither of us brought it up.

Anyway, sitting in Killarney thinking about traveling with Second Wave through these parts almost exactly five years ago made us wistful, damn near to the point of teary eyes.  We miss a lot about them, including those days of just mindlessly following along behind Brent through the Georgian Bay islands, confident in the knowledge that Karen was worrying enough for all four of us.  Great memories of great times indeed.   Brent and Karen are the rare strange breed who sold their power boat and bought another lake sailboat, although right about now we figure they’d rather be in Killarney than in San Antonio.  Did we mention it’s 66°?

There are several Looper boats in Killarney, including Prime Meridian.  Rich and Maggie visited Misty Pearl during the Fall Rendezvous boat crawl, and we met up with them again at Faro Blanco.  Seeing them in Ontario was cool.

Remember all those empty places we stopped?  No more.  From here, we’re heading into the teeth of the Looper peloton like drunks going the wrong way on an interstate.  Should be interesting.

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*Thats 66° American, not 66° Canadian.