Day 33, Thursday July 25 - An interesting encounter

Day 33, Thursday, July 25

Today we are on the move.  We are heading into Killarney and staying at a marina which is a treat for us.  Gilles has reserved for the 4 boats.  Winds are light and from the South.  We say good-bye to Blue Marlin who are heading up Fraser Bay on holiday.  The rest of the boats also cast off, but we are the last to drop the stern line so will depart an hour behind everyone.  A swim is in order first as we won’t be able to swim in the Killarney channel.

As we are making ready to raise the anchor a comorant surfaces with a large fish, probably around 2 pounds which is huge relative to the birds size.  The comorant tilts back his head and gulps the fish down in one fowl swoop.  Cool to see.  Then a tern and a gull start fighting in the air over a fish the tern has.  After a few minutes we notice a bald eagle gliding on the thermal currents above us.  Very busy morning for the birds.

We cast off uneventfully, and head up the channel.  We only put out our head sail as it is a short sail so we are lazy.  We are able to sail all the way to Killarney Bay and then motor into the marked channel.

The channel is very congested with traffic.  Not something appreciated as there is sufficient windage to move Jazzebelle around.  Also in the channel and a power boater has gone sideways with their dinghy streaming behind, while waiting for their berth.  They should go do laps up and down the channel as for 8 minutes all traffic is halted except for the kayakers and dinghies sneaking past which adds more stress to Julie helming.  We choose to go do a few circles since we can’t get past to our berth at the Sportsman lodge.  Finally the power boater gets out of the way and we are able to pull into our nice easy berth behind Rod and Donna in windswept.  Staff are there to catch our lines and within minutes we are safely tied up and on the internet.  (this is a treat for us)

We head into town to grab a few supplies and meet up with the rest of the gang who announce they are going for a hike on George Island.  We declare that we will join them and soon we are off.  The trail is 7.5kms long and it is already 4:00 and we have 7:30 dinner reservations so most of the group figures on only doing a couple of kms. 




Most of the trail is bush and bog and then we pop out on the shores of Georgian Bay.  A beautiful view it is.

Julie foot, moose print and Dawson's foot

View from shoreline of George Island

We had thought we must have already done about 3kms. so figure we will continue on the loop which would only be another 4...kms.  i.e. we thought we were about halfway when we made this decision.  The rest of the group makes the decison to go back the way we came, we make the time and wonder who will get back 1st.  Boy did we make the wrong choice!  After about 10 minutes or so, Dawson sees a sign that says 6 on it.  We figure it can’t be saying we have 6 more kms. as that would mean we had ony hiked little more than a km. when the rest of the group had decided to turn back.  We had cockily said we would race them.... joke was on us.  We did in fact have 6 more kms. to go.  After about another 30 minutes we hear a rattle and we stop in our tracks, then step back.  We don’t see anything, but Julie pulls out the camera with the big lens on it and there it is.  A huge rattle snake under the yew tree sunning on the rocks about 6 feet away from us. 

Rattlesnake's head

We probably stepped within 4 feet of it when it rattled at us.  Neither of us has ever seen, nor heard a rattlesnake in the wild.  Killarney is a bit north of where we would expect to see a Massasauga Rattlesnake.  We take some pictures and move on, after this we are more careful watching our feet and where we place them.  It seemed like forever, but finally we are nearing the end of the trail.  It is now about 6:30 and other than snacking on a few blueberries along the way, we have been hoofing it at a good pace for the last hour.  Our feet are disgustingly dirty from the bogs we walked through and dinner is in 1 hour, and we still need to fit in happy hour. 

Rattlesnake tail

Our friends see us and laugh at us as they have been back since about 5:10 and figured we bit off more than we planned.  We did not share our snake experience as it may discourage future hiking and the snake really did mind its own business.

We are off for a restaurant experience at the Sportsman Lodge which is a fabulous place.  Dinner was excellent and then we went to listen to Andrew Lowe singing at the Killarney mountain lodge.  The highlight was Mustang Sally which is a favourite our friend Terry Wiseman used to sing.  We headed home by 11:30 as we needed to ensure we caught the midnight ferry across to our berth.

Cheers Julie and Dawson