Today was a pretty small day. I woke up a bit earlier than usual since check out is at 10, rather than the normal of 11. I moved all my stuff back into the car, trying not to get stuff to wet under the light rain that had been falling all morning. After getting ready, I went to bring the key to the front office, but there was a sign on the door saying they were closed until 3pm, and to leave the key in the room. This was a bit of a shame because I wanted to say goodbye, but it’s okay.
I sat in the car for about 10 minutes organizing and thinking about where I wanted to go next. I still had 4 hours until my ferry, so I figured I’d go back to South Baymont and get some lunch at one of the only restaurants on this side of the island. It was a nice drive back, with the rain lightly falling and casting a misty shadow over everything. When I was almost back in South Baymont I saw a road with beach access, and despite passing it at first, I turned around and decided to go down it because it looked nice and foggy when I passed.
The beach access was only about 10 seconds off the main road, but when I got there I didn’t actually end up getting out of the car because of one thing: bugs. There were black flies everywhere, I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many flying bugs in one place. I decided I didn’t want to deal with that, especially because at the time I thought they might be mosquitoes, and took a photo from inside the car and then carried on to South Baymont. In the few moments I was stopped at the beach, so many flies stuck to my car and only just came off when I got up to speed at 80km/h, gross.
When I arrived, I noticed there were a lot of cars already lined up in the ferry line. I asked a worker who was standing by the road and he said the next ferry was in 20 minutes! I figured that instead of waiting around for hours for the next one, I’d see if I can hop on this one. I drove back around to the ticket booth and was able to successfully convert my ticket from the later ferry onto this one, and a short few minutes of waiting later we were boarding.
It was quite foggy this time around, and so you could barely see anything out of the windows, but before we left the dock I was able to see along the coastline a bit, which was quite pretty. When it was time to leave, the boat backed out of the berth and turned around, which felt a bit odd in the tight constraints of the harbour, before heading full steam ahead (which still feels slow) towards Tobermory.
2 hours later we arrived in Tobermory and disembarked. I drove a little bit up the road to a gas station where I parked to plan my next move. I’ve been communicating with Claire about what day and time to pick her up to start the trip, and in doing so she offered to have me stay the night tonight so I didn’t have to camp at a rest area, which was nice. So, I started the long 3 hour drive down to Guelph, backtracking along pretty much the same route I used to get there, seeing all the same farmhouses and fields.
Upon arriving in Guelph, we hung out for a bit until Claire’s friends Sierra and Owen arrived. The three of them were planning to go climbing, and I ended up coming along. A monthly pass at the local climbing gym is about $60, and a single day pass is just over $30 with rentals. The first time I was in Guelph I didn’t imagine I’d be climbing more than once, but I’ve now climbed 3 times and certainly paid more than what I could get a monthly pass for, but oh well, it’s fun and worth it anyway.
Owen and Sierra had about the same climbing experience as me, that’s to say, basically none, so it was fun to try new problems with them and try and figure out what we were doing wrong. We climbed for about 2 hours until our arms and hands were completely giving up on us, at which point we decided to head home, especially as it was getting late. Owen dropped us off at home, and Claire and I spent the rest of the evening doing laundry, making food, and hanging around, before setting up my air mattress and calling it a night.
Bonus photo of Jojo bird watching:
