Guelph to Manitoulin Island

From our campground at the Guelph Conservation Area (in case anyone is trying to correct their spouse’s pronunciation of Guelph, it’s “Gwelf.”  Since Canada is bilingual, I feel compelled to add that in French it would be pronounced “Ghwhelf.”  That’s why the French don’t name their towns “Guelph.”  I also feel compelled to add that there would be more marital harmony in the world if everyone else would kindly refrain from naming things “Guelph”) we drove to the Bruce Peninsula National Park campground. 

I offered to take the kids to the beach at the campground lake while Eric got to go food shopping.  Liam and Kai found very tiny fish, snails making snail trails on the bottom of the lake, and a blue heron ankle-deep in the water that edged away from us down the shore.    

The next morning we hiked down to the beach at the Grotto on Lake Huron.  Holding a towel so that Liam could change into his bathing suit, I took a close look at the rocks that girdled our changing place, poked out like old bones, whitish-grey and knobby, eaten through at the knuckles.  The water at the Grotto reminded me of that moment in the Wizard of Oz when they turn on the Technicolor and you realize you’ve been swimming in black and white all your life.  It’s also like swimming in a mild electric current – when you get out you realize how cold the water is because your skin is humming.  Here’s what it looks like:

We climbed around the top of a rocky path and bouldered down to the grotto itself.  It’s the open mouth of a cave, filled with water and green light from an underwater passageway to Lake Huron.  People jump into it from a ledge at the back and you can see their bodies in silhouette greenly backlit from the underwater window.  Some people try to swim through the passageway to the open water beyond.  Well-mannered people don’t do that when their mothers are nearby, so that their mothers don’t have to kill them first to save their mothers the agony of watching them try.

We booked it* to Tobermory to catch the Chicheemaun ferry for a two hour trip from the tip of the Bruce Peninsula across a chunk of Lake Huron to Manitoulin Island.  The ferry is amazing.  When it approaches the dock all you can see from the parking lot is the top of the massive ship looming over a nearby hill.  The nose (people who know boats would call it the prow) opens like the beak of a huge turtle.  Tourists line up with cameras on either side of the dock to stare and photograph your last moments as you drive in.  You drive up the tongue, enter the beak poised yawning above you, and pass through the ferry’s throat into its maw.  Then they tell you to leave your car, climb to an upper deck and stay there so that it can digest your car.  I guess that’s how they get up enough energy to make the crossing.      

We spent Monday night on Manitoulin Island in a campground that advertised itself as having a great swimming area.  Which we didn’t use.  Because of the playground, laundry, apple tree, and wifi. 

On to Lake Superior.

-Juliet