Orillia turned out to be a nice town for me to have (almost) a week to myself! There are some nice walking/bike trails that lead to nice places, there are shops downtown, restaurants nearby, and a grocery store just a short walk from the marina. The grocery store didn’t mind shoppers taking the carts to the marina, which is an added bonus.

Orillia is the home of Gordon Lightfoot, whose imprint is all over the place. I found his bust downtown, his garden and monuments in a park, and walked along his walking trail. He’s everywhere!

I really enjoyed the stores downtown. They weren’t all open earlier in the week, but more opened as the week went on. The Mariposa Market was a fantastic find, and it was busy every day. I’m drooling just thinking about it. Baked goods galore, plus jams, chutneys, desserts, lunch items, gifts,…it was all there. And that’s just the first floor. There was fudge and more on the lower level, and stores on either side with other goodies. Touristy? Sure. I’m a tourist. It was made for me.

When Owen came back, we went out to dinner and found the streets to be closed off for people to walk. It seemed to be a new Friday night thing, and it hasn’t quite caught on yet, but it was nice to eat dinner in the middle of a street.

By the weekend, it was time to move on. Our plan was to go about halfway to Big Chute. Big Chute is a special lock we would need to go through, but it is currently only available to boats our size on Monday-Friday. Our plan was to get to Big Chute early Sunday to get in line for as early Monday morning as possible to limit the impact on Owen’s work day.

So we left Orillia knowing we had two bridges that needed to be opened. One was a railroad bridge that is not part of Parks Canada, and the other was a swing bridge that opened on demand by a friendly Parks Canada employee. We knew that the railroad bridge caused people some real headaches, as it is a very busy railway with operators who don’t care much for boaters. Some boaters sit there for HOURS waiting for it to open. There’s no way to communicate with the operator and there is no train schedule. Trains can go through at any time, and if a boater has to wait, they just wait. There’s nowhere near to tie up, and it’s too deep for most boats to drop the anchor. So you idle in a narrow river until the bridge opens.

We arrived at the railroad bridge very close to 9:00 am, the earliest it would open. And,…it opened! Owen idled for about 30 seconds while we waited for the gap to be wide enough, and the operator saluted while we cruised right through! What a relief!

Next up, the Couchiching Lock, #42. We pulled up to the lock and saw plenty of other boats waiting: a speedboat, four jetskis, and another speedboat. When the lock opened, for us, the first speedboat and the jetskis went in first, then us, then the other speedboat. The first five vessels were together, and one of the jet skiers was a floating party foul. He left his stereo blaring in the lock (Sheryl Crow, followed by other 90s hits). He left his engine running, and he and his group were otherwise annoying in the lock.

Once we left the lock, we were in a no wake zone for quite some time. Cottages lined both sides of the river, big and small. When we got to the swing bridge we needed to be opened, Owen sounded the horn three times as requested, and the bridge opened for us. Ahead of us, Mr. Party Foul saw some floating geese, pointed his jet ski at them and revved his engine. Not cool. We followed them for a little while before we got to a lake where they sped away.

Then we were in Sparrow Lake. It was nice to have some open water to speed up a bit through. Our plan was go anchor in Deep Bay, and we were looking forward to a quiet night on the hook. We pulled in through the shallow entrance to the bay and found a beautiful open area with large cottages built into the rocky shore. It was so pretty!

We headed to the back of the bay where the little green anchor symbol was on our Navionics app, and we dropped the anchor. We pulled back on the rode to set it, and it dragged. We tried again. It dragged. A third time. It dragged.

We moved over to another spot that looked good in the bay, and dropped the anchor again. It dragged. What in the world?!

We disagreed about whether we should try again or move on. We decided to move on. There was another bay not too far away, so we cruised over to McLean Bay. We dropped the anchor, and it set! Woohoo! It was such a hot, sticky day, and we were just done with the anchor issues.

For the first time in Canada, we went swimming! It was so nice to be in the water–once I got there. Owen is a “jump right in!” kind of swimmer, and I’m an “try to ease in before sunset” kind of gal. There was a bit of a current in this little bay. We didn’t know where it was coming from, but it pushed us around in the water, like it or not!

We also met some horse flies in this anchorage, and they were vicious biters. They put an early end to an otherwise wonderful day outside. Another boat joined us in the anchorage for the night.

We are excited to get to Big Chute tomorrow!