7-30, 8-5-17 North Channel with Guests on board.

We are now in the North Channel.  We like it equally as well as the Georgian Bay maybe better, because the anchorages aren’t as populated and there are more protected hidey holes especially around the Benjamin Islands. We went straight to Spanish Municipal Marina in order to re-provision and pick up my nephew, Donald, and his girlfriend, Amanda.  They left their car at the marina and hopped on board for 5 days. We had a blast.

They didn’t get in until 7:30pm, so we had to go to an anchorage close by. The first thing we saw was a beaver swimming along.  He slapped his tail a good one at us to let us know he was not happy with our presence. On August first, we took the boat to Kagawong where the Bridal Veil Falls are.  We tied up to the municipal dock, packed a lunch and hiked to the falls.  The trail was beautiful, nicely shaded and snaked along the river.  We found large boulders that someone sandblasted art into them.  One was in the middle of the river and others on the trail. Nice way to do art! It was a warm sunny day so the falls were busy.   There are two spots where we could go behind the falls, the small one and the big one.  Below the big falls, there is a nice size pool to swim in.  We swam up to the falls.  There is a lot of power behind falling water.  We didn’t want to stand under it for any length of time or we would be beat up.  The water was warm, and although there were many people there, everyone was on their best behavior which made it enjoyable and not annoying. We wondered what made the unique rock formation creating the falls.  It is a semi-circle of rock. We hiked up to the top and found some picnic tables to have lunch, to dry off and warm-up in the sun. When we got back to the boat we headed for an anchorage with some potential fishing spots.

We anchored at a couple spots with our guests.  We all went fishing in the dinghy.  It was a little tight but better than we thought.  Donald is an ace fisherman. He and Amanda went out a few times on their own. We had plenty of fish to eat. We caught Smallmouth Bass and Northern. Both are very tasty fish.  We had fish tacos one night and a wonderful fish fry another night.  It was delicious.  Donald was cleaning them while I heated the oil.  Can’t get any fresher than that.

We introduced them to rock hopping, which is just our word for getting off the boat climbing the rocks and exploring.  One area off Hotham Island, where it wasn’t hard rocks, it was solid blueberry bushes and they were loaded! We picked our small bags full in no time.  Blueberry pies for dessert and Blueberry pancakes in the morning.  We enjoyed them so much so that we went picking again this time with bigger bags.  Wow we had a lot of berries.  We all took turns cleaning and sorting them while we traveled to the next anchorage. We ended up with nine quarts of berries.

On their last day, Donald and Amanda went fishing one last time and caught a few more Northern and Bass, they threw them back as we had to get underway to take them back to their car.

You never know how things will go with guests on board especially since we had never met Amanda before. I must say they were the perfect guests.  Helpful, willing, adventurous and fun.  We played cards at night instead of watching movies and genuinely enjoyed their company. Thanks Donald and Amanda for sharing our adventure with us.

We took them back to the marina where they left their car, said hi to some Looper friends in the marina and headed back out to anchor and hunker down for a few days in anticipation for some windy weather. When we got anchored we went fishing and Scott caught 2 nice northern and 2 medium bass.  We threw them back seeing we have some fish in the freezer already.

We sat that night looking at weather predictions and the charts in anticipation to the last leg of our Loop.  It is hard to believe it has been almost a year.  We are loving the cruiser lifestyle!

Thanks for reading,

Karen and Scott

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