July 1^st

We left Couchiching lock at 8:50, and went to wait for the opening of the railway bridge, ¼ mile down the canal.  We lucked out, it was opened at 9:00 and we were through by 9:05.We then had the 10 mile stretch of Lake Couchiching which was a little choppy.  We enter Lake Simcoe shortly after 10, at 11:00 there was warnings of squalls and thunderstorms on Simcoe starting in the early afternoon, which made us feel uneasy as we were only ½ way across.  We were back in the canal by 12:10 after passing through the Lakeshore swing bridge.  We then had the 5 locks to traverse, Gamebridge, Thorah, Portage, Talbot and Bolsover.  We were through Bolsover by 2:50.  We encountered a little traffic going through these locks, mainly coming toward us. I took a picture of this house, as we had met the people that owned it at Couchiching in the morning, they had been headed west.  (We later met the same couple at Fenlon Falls on July 3^rd, they have a boat and like to travel– my kind of people!)There were some pretty dark clouds building around us.  The trip through Canal Lake was eventful, lots of weeds fouling the props and slowing our progress.   We  saw these 2 guys with their picnic table on a raft with a motor on canal lake– sure liked the way they were celebrating Canada Day.We reached Kirkfield lock, just when the rain began to pour down, we were in the process of tying up when the green light came on so we proceeded into the lock.  We then had  another narrow piece of the Trent canal,as we emerged into Balsam Lake, a 22 foot blue Sea Ray was waiting.  Glen, had come to escort us to his part of Balsam Lake.Glen and Julie from Meant to Be II live right next to the Balsam Lake provincial park.  We weighed anchor about 150 yards in front of their house in 10 feet of water and Glen picked us up and drove us to their dock.We had supper and spent the night.  What a night on the lake; being July 1^st there were fireworks everywhere ,  we saw fireworks displays from Coboconk, Indian Point, Grand Island, Kirkfield, Fenlon Falls, Rosedale, Long point and the Balsam Lake park,  It didn’t matter which direction you looked at dusk- there was fireworks going off.  One cottage not too far from Glen and Julie’s had a barge out on the water shooting them off.  The night was amazing and the fireworks lasted for more than an hour. A great memory of celebrating Canada’s 150 birthday on Balsam Lake!On Sunday we went to a restaurant called Nana’s for breakfast, Julie left us from there as she was driving down to Windsor to see her mother.  We went back to the house with Glen, and took a boat trip to Coboconk to see the town and go for Kawartha Ice cream.We lazed around in the afternoon,  Glen did a demonstration of his potatoe gun and after supper we  walked to the Balsam Lake Park store for yet another taste of Kawartha Ice cream. Shortly before 8 the winds picked up and a thunderstorm moved through.  It was raining so hard we couldn’t see the other shore, and could hardly see On Business. I was thankful that we were in the house and not on the boat.   Following the storm, a rainbow appeared.

On Monday morning, Glen brought us back to the boat, and Andy tried fishing for about 45 minutes but didn’t even get a bite. We left around 11:15, and proceeded to Rosedale lock, which we were through shortly after noon.  We proceeded to Fenlon Falls, and were able to get a spot on the wall with power by 1:30.   We went for Ice cream and to the little pie shack in the afternoon- as we are celebrating our 7^th anniversary!

Tuesday morning we left at about 10:30, and went through the Fenlon Falls lock, we then crossed Sturgeon Lake and then through Gannon narrows to Pigeon Lake and on to Bobcaygeon.  There was no room on the lock wall, and the Kawartha Voyager was arriving later in the afternoon, so we didn’t want to wait around.  We continued the 15 miles  and saw these sailboats in one of the lakes,we continued on to Buckhorn and tied up on the wall at 2:50.    We  were surprised to be visited by Jim Coyle, the AGLCA  harbour host  from Stoney Lake, who had been passing by and saw our boat tied up.He came by and gave us an update, as we hadn’t seen him since last summer.  He will be continuing his loop starting in mid-August.   Later Stan and Pam from the Buckhorn Yacht Harbour, also came for a visit.Tonight will be our last night on the wall, as tomorrow, we need to move to Buckhorn Yacht Harbour and start preparing the boat to be taken out of the water, and pack up all the stuff that has to go back to Winnipeg.  Where has the time gone?  Your head goes to mush, after being away from work for over a month- I tried to log-on to my work account, and didn’t have a clue what my password was- guess I’ll have  to get it reset when I go back to work next Monday.