Last Saturday the 25th we went the 25 miles or so up to Midland for a cruise. When we arrived and saw the bitty boat we were a bit surprised but pressed on. This was a 2.5 hour cruise and the day was fairly hot and windy.

 

 

 

As you depart the harbor you see the wonderful painted grain silos. This thing is 80 feet high and 250 feet long, painted by a German named Lentz ... really neat piece of art depicting the relationship of  the Jesuits and the Iroquois Indian population of 1650.

 

 

 

 

This antique wooden boat was in the pic above and is staffed by period dressed sailors and they fired a canon off the bow to announce their arrival. The boats in the background represent the "Tug Fest" which gathers scores of the smaller immaculately restored tugboats at varying locations along the Georgian Bay. We have seen this sort of thing in Parry Sound several years ago and it is impressive still.

 

 

 

 

As our tour boat moved north through the 30,000 islands of this waterway we were impressed with the volume of traffic; this was bow to stern boat traffic for a couple of hours on fairly narrow passages.

 

 

 

One of the historic elements on the route was the Delawana Inn which was started here at the turn of the last century and burned a couple of times and yet the family has managed to keep the Inn going.

 

 

 

 

And after our journey we again came back by the silos and this view of a trumpeter swan. This is a stainless steel version of an almost extinct species saved in the local Wye River Marsh just to the south of Midland. Curious is the gull who thinks more that it is just a convenient place to survey his or her kingdom ... or look for humans offering a tasty french fry or two.