Miss Hattie's Loop: No More Locks

We've completed the Trent-Severn - no more (expletive) locks - YAY!! As we finished the last part of the TS we entered some beautiful country: Lakes lined with pine, spruce and cedar; rustic boat houses on islands; loons waking us with their melancholy melody; clear water. It all reminds once again of the places where we vacationed as we grew up: the Adirondack Mtns and the St Lawrence Thousand Islands region. Now we're in Georgian Bay and looking forward to more beauty as we once again spend more time 'on the hook' rather than dockside.

The Trent-Severn Waterway has some unique features in the canal system. Manually operated locks at which the doors and valves close by cranking turn styles and lift locks which consist of 2 giant bath tubs set on hydraulic lifts; the boats enter one tub, the gate is raised to close it and then the tub rises as the one on the opposite side lowers. And most uniquely: a cable operated rail system with a flat bed car on which the boat is placed, with straps, and the whole is transported across the hill, down some 58 ft. I've tried attaching a couple of videos but the WiFi we've been experiencing is very sketchy and our phone service doesn't allow much data usage; so the videos and pics will have to wait - I'll edit the posts when we can add the pics.

We've been traveling with 2 other boats for the past 10 days. Tomorrow one couple will vear off and head for Chicago via a relatively direct route. The other couple is from this area of the Georgian Bay and they are going to show us some of their favorite spots before they call it quits. We met many others along the way and we expect we'll be running into them again over the next 700 miles. We must say, as we enter this leg of our journey, we're getting a bit homesick and we're looking forward to returning to Valparaiso, "our home town", and all of our friends we've left behind.