On Thursday morning, Wayne and Roxanne came to Buckhorn lock.  We had decided to stay at the lock for one more day, plugged into power as it was extremely hot out.  So we travelled to Bobcaygeon by car, so that Roxanne and Wayne could see some of the boats being used by loopers.  In Bobcaygeon we saw the  Blessing, the looper boat from Winnipeg, which I had seen lock through Buckhorn the day before.  We also saw Late harvest-  James and Mary Jane-loopers from Orillia, that we had originally met at the looper meet in Trenton in June of 2018, they are very close to becoming Gold- only another 50 miles.  Roxanne and I went through some of the Bigley stores looking at shoes and clothes.  Our next stop was our favourite place in Bobcaygeon—Kawartha Dairies ice cream plant.  We all enjoyed dishes of ice cream of our favourite flavours.

We were then off to Fenlon Falls to check out the boats that were there. Here we saw a custom order- grey and white boat called Vision- ( we had previously seen it on the lock wall at Bobcaygeon )

I think it was 50 plus feet, and had everything- including a laundry room in the lower level and a head in the pilot house.  Roxanne and I checked out several of the stores, and we met the AGLCA harbour host in the water street store.  On our way back to Buckhorn we stopped at the Kawartha country wines and picked up a couple bottles of fruit wine- they also had gift items, jellies, preserves and ciders-and free tasting.

We spent part of the afternoon resting in the boat.  For dinner we went to Cody Inn for Chinese food with Wayne and Roxanne

On Friday, we had to leave Buckhorn lock, as there is a 2 day limit.  At 7 that morning we drove over to BYH (Buckhorn Yacht Harbour) to confirm with Peter, that we would be bringing the boat back there later in the day to be pulled out and put up on the hard. Andy and Peter also called the electronics technician to find out his plans for addressing some of our deficiencies. He said he would schedule the work later in the summer. We returned to the lock, and once Wayne and Roxanne arrived we locked through.  We had decided we would go through a couple of locks to let them see how locking on the TSW worked.  With a little direction from the captain, Wayne graduated to seaman first class, and was put in charge of ropes on the stern.   Roxanne observed and critiqued as any Admiral in training should.

After locking through we crossed the lower Buckhorn Lake, then proceeded through Lovesick- Lock 30

and then on to Burleigh falls.

We ended up anchoring in Clear Lake for lunch, this consisted of a mixed grill—as I wanted to bbq all the meat that was left in our freezer.  At 1:15, we pulled anchor and reversed our course.   We saw this police boat that had pulled over a runabout—it looked like they gave the boy on the boat a t-shirt, as he was caught wearing a life jacket.  A rare sight!

We have seen many boats, overloaded with adults and children and not a single life jacket in sight.  Once we got to Buckhorn and had locked up- Roxanne and I jumped off the boat.  Both our cars were at the lock and we drove to BYH, to meet On Business at the gas dock.  By this time the winds had picked up and it was a little rough on the lake.  We tied up and had the 2 heads pumped out, before moving the boat to a transient slip, where it would stay while we packed. Friday night I listened to the AGLCA pod cast, where our friend Dave Fuller was talking about the Agawa Canyon train trip that they had taken from Sault St. Marie.  He gave a shout-out about Andy and my recent adventures in Lake Superior.  Thanks Dave!

By about noon on Saturday, everything that needed to go back to Winnipeg was in the car, and items in the boat had been stowed away.  We went to Mainstreet Landing for lunch as we were meeting Jim Coyle there.  We had first met him on our loop trip in Delaware City, and had stayed on his dock on Stoney Lake when we passed through in July of 2016.  He will be  completing another portion of the loop starting this fall in a new boat.  After lunch we drove to Bancroft, on the way we stopped for our last taste of Kawartha Ice cream for this season. We visited with Brian and stayed the night.  We got up early Sunday morning and started the drive westward.  Andy drove passing through many towns that we had been through by boat, on Georgian bay, the north channel and east side of Lake Superior.

We arrived at Wawa and checked into a hotel for the night.  Monday morning we got back into the car and continued, there wasn’t a lot of traffic, but we were stopped numerous times for bridge or road construction.

We stopped in Marathon and went to the Napa store to redeem our $500 gift certificate plus, on filters for the boat. We passed by the continental watershed divide and I took this picture.

Later we entered the Central time zone

and there was also a sign board depicting the original route of the Trans Canada highway.

  We reached he Manitoba border at 6 pm,

and encountered more road construction,  we arrived home shortly after 8 pm.  After unpacking the car it was almost 10-Another long day! In the morning I called in to work to say that I was back in the city- but wouldn’t be in until Wednesday.  I spent Tuesday doing cleaning, laundry and weeding my garden.   Back at work on Wednesday, I found that Cheri had everything under control regarding the harvest.   There are lots of changes at work with many new people, including a new Director for the Grain Research Lab.  It will take a few more days to catch up on all the emails- but I have no other plans for being away from work over the next few months.  On Friday morning, Andy received the news that his next hernia surgery is scheduled for September 30^th-I truly hope they get it right this time!