Gemini Loop: Orillia, ON

We have spent a lovely few days in Orillia. The marina is located along a park and boardwalk, within easy walking distance to shops and restaurants. The grocery store and liquor store were also close by, and the grocery store let us take the shopping cart to the marina to get our groceries home.

Orillia is a larger town than most we have seen since Peterborough. They have something going on almost every weekend this summer. I mentioned in the previous posting that there were painted sailboats... Each summer, they pick something different as a basis for an art competition. Last year it was guitars, in honor of the anniversary of a folk festival held here. This year it is the sailboats. There are 60 of them done by (I assume) local artists and sponsored by local businesses or the artists themselves. We photographed as many as we could find, and they will be in a separate entry for those who would like to see them.

We walked through the park yesterday, reading about the rich local heritage here. There is a large monument to Champlain, who explored this area with the Indians in the 1600s - he was even with them when they fought . Both French and English settled here, and later large numbers of Scottish and Irish immigrants.

Today we will continue on. We are almost to the end of the Trent-Severn Waterway. Our destination is something called The Big Chute. It is a place where your boat is lifted with slings onto a railway system that takes you from one body of water to another, over higher land in the middle. We will stay tonight at a marina on this side of the chute and take lots of photos before actually going across tomorrow.