We have added a full day to our stay in Midland so instead of three nights, we will be here for four. The Admiral is picking up a rent car at 9:00 am this morning, and we will keep it until 9:00 am on Day 118 when we are now leaving. Our first trip in the car was to downtown Midland where we hoped to explore the downtown and find a suitable restaurant for lunch (photo at right). The photo shows a typical block of downtown, which as it turned out met our requirements for today. For lunch our first choice was a fish 'n chips restaurant, which turned out to be closed today (Monday). However, just a couple of doors away was a wonderful New York style deli. These folks had actually been to a New York style deli, and the food was wonderful. I had a Greek salad with turkey. The kalamata olives alone were worth the cost! However, in keeping with the theme (in Ontario?) even this place did not have unsweetened iced tea. We browsed several eclectic stores, including the one in the right side of the picture above.
There were several nice murals painted on the sides of building at the cross streets, including the one in the photo. This mural has scenes from the 1920s that honor the Girl Guides of Canada, which is the equivalent of the Girl Scouts in the US. Other cross streets had murals depicting other themes, such as railroads. The murals helped to beautify an already vibrant downtown.
On the corner across the street was the Midland Public Library with this classic old stone building that had more modern additions on the two sides away from the viewer. We came back to this location the next day to sample the fish 'n chips and were duly rewarded for our efforts, although the chips (French fries) were a little greasy. As before, we also browsed a couple more stores just for fun. One thing about travelling on a boat is that we are seldom tempted to buy anything large, breakable or not waterproof. So, we look a lot but seldom buy.
In the afternoon of the first and third full days we went to the movie theater on the edge of town. On the first trip we went to see 'Ghost Busters", which I thoroughly enjoyed. I had kind of been dreading seeing this new version after seeing some of the many different trailers over many months. I thought that the original movies would be difficult to match partly because of their great casts. Boy was I ever wrong! In addition the pop corn was excellent, which always helps to improve my mood...
On the second day we drove to Lock 45 in Port Severn, which is the last (or the first in our case) lock on the Trent-Severn Waterway. We took this trip to see two special locks and to buy our permit in advance. Lock 45 has the smallest lock chamber, and it is one of few remaining locks were the gates and the valves are still hand operated. The photo at the right shows the top of the lock chamber on the left and the wall with several boats tied up to it. While we were there we had the opportunity to view several lock cycles and see how the boats queued up and the order in which they were moored side by side in the locks. None of this was completely new to us, but at the same time it was all just a little different.
We drove across the bridge at the lock and had lunch at a waterfront restaurant on the other side (photo at right). This also gave us additional time to watch the boats tie up to the lock wall and to see others station keeping as they waited their turn. We had lunch at what happened to be a very busy time so we got to see some of the crazy maneuvers that some boats made while waiting. We had fish and chips, but we noticed that their dinner menu, which started at 4:00 pm, had healthier options for how their selection of lake fish were cooked. We did not know it at the time, but it turned out that in 48 hours we were going to be here for dinner and sample the dinner menu for real.
After lunch we went to the next lock, which is the famous Big Chute railway lock (photo at left). We have seen lots of pictures of this lock, nut nothing does it justice like seeing for real. It's not that it is scary, but rather the scale is much bigger than I had ever imagined. Also, I had never fully understood how the car could remain nearly horizontal while going up, then horizontal going across the road and then going down hill. It turns out that it was very simply engineering to have 2 sets of rails on either side with the front wheels on one set of tracks and the rear on the other. To go down hill the back wheels go down before the front and visa versa to go up hill. Incidentally, we put Lucky in her 3 wheeled stroller to walk around the rail road. we got some strange looks as I think that some people thought that we had a really ugly baby (ha ha).
After we were loaded back up into the rent car, we drove on to get back onto the Trans Canada Highway to go back to Midland. In a short distance we went past the reason for this 40 foot high lock (photo at right). These beautiful rapids had to be bypassed via a lock... Incidentally, there was originally at least one other rail road lock, but it was replaced by a conventional lock about 50 years ago. That is probably too bad, but since the whole waterway is now a national landmark, it is likely that they will have to retain the rail road lock and several other classic locks forever (?).
We went for a ride after dinner on our last night, and we chose to go north to the next bay and the city of Pentanguishine, Ontario. It was a pretty bay, but I am not sure that we ever saw the downtown. We did see this beautiful Catholic Church (photo at left). It sits high up on the side of a hill and was brightly lit by the setting Sun. Nice way to end the day...
We enjoyed our stay in Midland, and it is the biggest city that we have been to or will be in for a long time so we did do some stocking up on supplies while we could. Tomorrow we are off to Lock #45 and we will begin the count down to Lock #1 in Trenton, Ontario just off of Lake Ontario.
There were several nice murals painted on the sides of building at the cross streets, including the one in the photo. This mural has scenes from the 1920s that honor the Girl Guides of Canada, which is the equivalent of the Girl Scouts in the US. Other cross streets had murals depicting other themes, such as railroads. The murals helped to beautify an already vibrant downtown.
On the second day we drove to Lock 45 in Port Severn, which is the last (or the first in our case) lock on the Trent-Severn Waterway. We took this trip to see two special locks and to buy our permit in advance. Lock 45 has the smallest lock chamber, and it is one of few remaining locks were the gates and the valves are still hand operated. The photo at the right shows the top of the lock chamber on the left and the wall with several boats tied up to it. While we were there we had the opportunity to view several lock cycles and see how the boats queued up and the order in which they were moored side by side in the locks. None of this was completely new to us, but at the same time it was all just a little different.
We drove across the bridge at the lock and had lunch at a waterfront restaurant on the other side (photo at right). This also gave us additional time to watch the boats tie up to the lock wall and to see others station keeping as they waited their turn. We had lunch at what happened to be a very busy time so we got to see some of the crazy maneuvers that some boats made while waiting. We had fish and chips, but we noticed that their dinner menu, which started at 4:00 pm, had healthier options for how their selection of lake fish were cooked. We did not know it at the time, but it turned out that in 48 hours we were going to be here for dinner and sample the dinner menu for real.
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