Wednesday, August 23, 2017

Manitoulin 

Last night there was an amazing lightning storm that lit up the bus! Unfortunately there was also an active railroad and a busy highway. I woke up several times during the night and once after the storm had cleared I looked out and saw a million stars! I haven't seen this many stars since I was hiking! I felt like waking Michael up but thought better of it. We had a very slow start this morning. It was raining off and on and we were both sleepy. Between rain storms Michael took the dogs for a walk and came back with a handful of blackberries for me! I thought about going out to collect more but it started to rain again. The place we had pulled into last night turned out to be really nice! We had parked right along the Spanish River. There were lots of picnic tables and benches and back closer to the road there were washrooms. It was probably lunch time by the time we pulled away and as we got closer to Manitoulin Island everything kept getting more picturesque. We were driving over rocky hills and could see lakes and tiny islands with pine trees on them on both sides of us. It was so beautiful! We wanted to stop several times to take pictures but the road wasn't wide enough to stop safely and we knew we would be taking this road back off the island later. We crossed a swinging bridge that I would love to see open and stopped at a tourist information centre in Little Currant just as it started to downpour. We sat in the bus and enjoyed a coffee and were thankful that we have such a perfect space inside the bus that we can enjoy watching the rain from the comforts of our home. When the rain stopped we went into the tourist centre and picked up a couple of maps before heading to the Cup and Saucer Trail. The trail was awesome! It led us up to the top of 70 metre cliffs and had many different lookout spots. It was the perfect way to spend the afternoon! The trail was a bit muddy from the rain earlier but still completely enjoyable! I was tempted to spend the night at the trail head and possibly go back up in the morning but Michael had a better idea. We left in search of the perfect sunset spot. In the end we didn't find it but we did find Bridal Veil Falls! By the time we got there it was a little too late to explore but the quiet parking lot with restrooms was a place to call it a day.