We departed Killarney the next morning for Baie Fine (Bay Fin), reported to be one of the absolute "must sights" to see in The North Channel. Here's a better look at the short channel through Killarney as we headed west out of town. That's Georgian Bay, behind us and east in the distant channel, and we're entering the North Channel westbound.
You wind around the land masses for about 29 miles and finally end up only about 5 miles NW of Killarney. Here's the approach into Baie Fine, a long and relatively narrow 8-mile channel which dead-ends at "The Pool." The guidebooks describe the channel as "very narrow" and "the closest thing to a fjord you will ever cruise in." It seemed pretty wide to us, especially after parts of the Trent-Severn Canal.
The hills are made of white quartz and create quite a different image than the pink granite of Georgian Bay. It really looked like snow on the hills.
Not much I can add to these pictures. The scenery is beautiful.
The last 2 miles of the "supposedly" narrow channel is even "more" narrow,
and as you make the final turn into ‘The Pool,” you see the cottage home of the
original Evinrude family on your right.
And we just happen to have an Evinrude on our dinghy!
The negative to anchoring in "The Pool" is the heavy weed growth in
the area. It creates quite a mess and
sometimes doesn’t hold an anchor very well either. Galen and Becky could not get their Danforth
anchor to set, and moved over to the bank to clean off the weeds and try
again. Is that a ball of weeds hanging off their anchor or what?
They got the weeds cleaned off and then had a bright idea, "This is working out pretty good here so why don’t we just stay tied to the
bank for the night?” So, they did.
One “must do” at "The Pool" is to hike up the hills to one of
the hill-top small lakes. Rhonda, Becky, and I
decided to go to Topaz
Lake
Topaz Lake was aqua colored and very clean. Becky went for a swim along with a lot of
teenagers who also were jumping from the rock walls while Rhonda began searching for a blueberry patch.
Picking wild blueberries is another “must do.” It takes a while, but we probably had a quart
or so in about 30 minutes. Rhonda kept
looking for the bears that were supposed to be there snacking on the berries
but never saw one. We even had a whistle to blow to scare the bears away – just
a joke, since there were way too many people around for bears to be out. We
decided the reason bears are so grouchy is that it takes a long time to get so
few blueberries, so they must always be hungry.
Rhonda baked blueberry muffins later and they were
outstanding. The wild blueberries have
much more flavor than processed berries, a little sweeter also.
Galen told Rhonda they were the best blueberry muffins he’s ever had. That was nice, but then he continued, “Much better than the ones we normally get at WalMart.” Some people just don’t know to stop while they are ahead!
We headed back down to "The Pool" for the dinghy ride back to
the boat. Many more boats were arriving
for the anchorage that night. No way we would see bears or moose with all of the campfires and people swimming and riding around in their dinghies! We were bundled up in warm clothing while the "tough" Canadians were swimming in the cold water at nightfall.
Just made this our new Facebook profile picture. The last one was from Darien, GA. Been awhile!
This is the first time we have truly been isolated from
communication with the world.
No phone service, no TV service, and obviously no WiFi.
But who needs that with this scenery. Let the pictures speak for themselves again.
8
A few more stops in the North Channel and we'll be back in the USA. The next post will cover Little Current, Kagawong, Gore Bay, and Meldrum Bay. Later.
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