Wednesday, September 5: Port Severn

The main street of Midland ends at the water! So our marina was just at the foot of main street - it had just about anything we needed. Groceries. Chinese restaurant. Breakfast place.

The plan was to stay 6 nights. Peter and Cheryl (from Surona and Deja Vu) live a short 20 minutes from Midland so it was going to be an opportunity to see them.

We traveled a bit with them last year and it's always enjoyable times when we get together.


But first - Cheryl's mom, Lois, was moving! So we thought it would be a chance for us to help with the move (mostly Steve of course) and see Lois's new place.

Bonus? Cheryl loaned us her car for the time we were in town! Extra bonus? She has Sirius radio - Willy's Roadhouse was on anytime we were driving back and forth :-)

Our dock at the marina was perfect! We were actually able to have Peter, Cheryl and Lois over for dinner. We were right near the covered shelter so we took advantage of the picnic tables and had dinner there. Steve decided that because this was a picnic, we could use paper plates! No complaints from the clean-up person :-)

A laker steamship pulled in the third day to unload grain - what a mess! Grain dust everywhere as the elevator moved the grain from the ship to the granaries.

After one day and one night, it left - backing it's way out of Midland Bay until it had enough room to turn and head back to ???

We did a bit of sightseeing since we could and visited the Martyr's Shrine just a few miles outside of Midland.

Quite an impressive structure. It was built to honor Jesuit priests who were killed in the 1600's.

The inside was shaped like an upside down canoe. Quite interesting. Pope John Paul II visited in 1984.

For more info, click here or for another link, click here.




The grounds were beautiful.

We finally left yesterday. It was an OK day with overcast skies and we ended up at Starport Marina in Port Severn.

A promotional boat, Water on the Water, Beer on the Pier, had traveled with us through the Kirkfield lift lock and the remaining 5 locks down to Lake Simcoe. To our surprise, the captain gave us a card for a free night - good until Thanksgiving (which is in October up here) so we decided it would be a good time to take advantage of it.

And it was. Low last night was 70 degrees so we ran the air conditioner as we had power.

Beautiful sunset ....

Peter, Cheryl and Lois will arrive on Deja Vu tomorrow and we'll travel for a couple of days to Orillia!! Looking forward to a good time :-)