We were underway at 8:30 this morning and through the lock by 8:45. Two more miles and we were in Lake Simcoe.
Lake Simcoe is the largest lake on the Trent-Severn Waterway, 20 miles long and 16 miles wide. It can be dangerous in bad weather. There were thunderstorms forecasted for early afternoon and we planned to be through it by then.
We didn’t have the GPS navigational charts for Canada, so have been using paper charts. The only difficulty with this is keeping the wind from blowing them away.
We arrived at Orillia at 11:45 and met up with Bob and Margaret. Orillia has their 31st Annual Scottish Festival this weekend and we arrived just in time for the parade. There were 20 bagpipe and drum bands in the parade. It was interesting to see the different plaids that were worn. It was also interesting to see that this spanned generations. There were teenagers in the bands along with seniors. There are also Shriners in Canada!
The marina is right next to the park where the festival is being held and there was much activity. There were bagpipe and drum competitions, Scottish dancers and even a country western band in case you got tired of bagpipes. There were many vendor tents and tents titled MacLeod, MacFarlane, Clan Young, Clan MacKenzie, Clan Hunter, and MacMillan, just to name a few. This area of Ontario had huge numbers of Scottish immigrants settle here.
As an interesting note - We’ve noticed many Adirondacks chairs up the east coast and now in Canada. Along the east coast they are all in pastels. In Canada they are all in primary colors.
1 lock today – total of 71
