Weekend Recap: Tobermory

2 o’clock in the morning…not a shabby time to go to bed after a wedding.

However, when you have to be on the road to get to a ferry in South Bay on Manitoulin Island and it’s five hours away, it’s not an ideal situation to be in.

I woke up and suprisingly felt good. I packed up quickly and hit the road and then cursed myself for leaving the case of beer I had bought for the cottage trip. Hopefully Holly is reading this and brought it back to Ottawa for me!

About 20 kms outside of town, the thoughts of getting sick crept into my head and I realized that I wasn’t in the best shape after all. After pulling over to the side of the road and doing the unmentionable deed, I continued on the painstaking trip while having dreams of a nice spot to curl up in and die, like the animal that I felt like.

I arrived in South Bay an hour before I anticipated, hence the travel time was only 4 hours. Even though I was disappointed I could have used that extra hour of sleep, I thanked the heavens I was there, got out, kissed the ground and curled up on the side of the road.

After some seagulls started pecking at my neck, I went to the Pierside Restaurant with my book and ordered the fish and chips which hit the spot. I then took a nap in my car and awoke an hour later when the ferry pulled up.

Now, I don’t know how many people have been on a ferry but it is pretty cool. I was wondering how the heck such a small boat takes on so many cars. But they have these ramp systems where they end up stacking cars on top of another (well not literally on top of one another) but it’s like a beehive of cars inside and they aren’t just on one level. AWESOME!
I decided it wasn’t worth it to be on the great waterscape without being outside so I spent the next 1.5 hours outside reading a book or going into the front where the wind took my breath away. I’ve realized that I love the water and the serenity of it all and enjoyed this part of the trip the most.
Arriving in Tobermory was surreal as there were tons of people roaming the town. Turns out that everyone comes to Tobermory for the last hurrah of the summer (which turned out to be lame as it was raining all weekend). I picked up some supplies and headed to the cottage which Troy and Connie rented off of a friend back in London.

Met Shannon, Jay and Heather (who unfortunately had the wrong address and spent 1/5 hours scouring the dirt roads for our cottage. That would suck large!) and had a few beers until eating some supper. The cottage was quite the scenic place inside and it didn’t feel like roughing it at all! I must admit that I don’t know if I would like having a cottage up around the Georgian Bay as it is all rock! That was odd considering all the other cottages I’ve been to have lawns leading up to the water.

Troy and I took the stage and jammed until our fingers bled, along with Jay on some vocal duties who was excellent! All in all, a good jam session with some old tunes that I hadn’t heard. Dr. Hook anyone?

We then played Cranium which was hilarity at its best. Highlights of the game were Troy being the puppeteer and myself thinking he was trying to act out myself eating porridge considering my hands were flopping around like a ragdoll. Also, Troy’s peacock strut was a thing of legend.

Got to bed around 4 o’clock which was killer as I hadn’t had much sleep the night before either. Had some breakfast and then hauled out my recording equipment to show Troy and then realized I never brought any speakers so it was essentially useless. I was not impressed with myself.

The afternoon brought forth two games of urban croquet which is high up there with bocce ball in my books. We had an amazing tour of the woods playing croquet and there were many wars fought on the beach area. One ball actually cracked in half and I don’t think the mallets have much use in them after playing in a rough and tumble area such as the one we laid out. Jay ended up taking two wins. I don’t think these guys have played a game of croquet this wild.

Thanks to Troy and company for the wild times in Tobermory! It was cool hanging out with all of you, as well as Troy considering the only time we’ve ever hung out is at family functions. It’s good to see family outside of family functions! Advice of the Day people.

I headed out around 3 o’clock to hit up Meaford to go see Danny and Carol. I was pretty tired on this trip as well but luckily it was only 2 hours away. The adventure continues once again!