Day 7 of Trent-Severn Waterway- Orillia to Big Chute, Ontario

Before we left the dock, Ben helped a small sailboat tie up, and the captain who was pulling in said Simcoe was rough this morning. Again, I feel thankful that we made the choice to cross yesterday afternoon since it was so nice!

At Couchiching, lock 42, we found out that the wooden gates of the locks are made of BC Douglas Fir. (A type of tree we like to pick for our Christmas trees!)

We tied up at the top of lock 43, Swift Rapids (a 47 foot lock, which makes it the largest conventional lock on the TSW), behind a boat that was next to us in the marina last night and left before we did this morning. We hung out there for a while so Ben didn't lose service during his meeting.

Moose played Hatchet and created a bow and arrow, while scavenging for other things to create a shelter. Roo joined him, but didn't play his game. She was running and leaping in the grassy area with a fist extended in the air to lead her. Every year, one of our best decisions, is to only allow the kids to each bring a stuffed animal on the boat. They get a school workbook, too. Anything else they find to do comes from their imagination. It is always so fun to see what they create and come up with, and how well they play together or side-by-side. (We keep card games and books on the boat for entertainment, too.)

After Ben's meeting, we walked to see what the down side of the lock looked like and if we should stay up top or move down below for the night. A pro to staying just through the lock (whether top or bottom) is that we can get up and go at our own pace, with only the next lock's opening time to slow us down.

Ben said we might as well just get to this side of the Big Chute Marine Railway so we could watch the boats there in the morning until we were ready to go. We walked up a few flights of stairs and told the lockmaster that we were going to go down, and they started filling the lock.

We headed back to the Cartermaran, started the engines, pulled the lines, and went through. This lock, like the Carillon Lock, had a guide car for our line (but we didn't use it in Carillon, just watched it), rather than the typical cable we've been looping. This is shown in the picture below. The blue pole-type thing has our blue line around it. As the water level decreases, the guide car descends down the lock wall, so we don't have to worry about our lines getting caught up.

It's been rainy for the last few hours, but no thunder or lightning, so it has been ok, just wet.

Rain stopped as we got to lock 44, Big Chute Marine Railway. We didn't want to do this today, and they were closed for the day anyway, so we tied up at a dock. There was a current pulling us away from the dock, so instead of looping around a stanchion from the boat, Ben got the stern close enough for me to take a line and jump onto the dock (which I found out was a little slippery from the rain), then tie the stern and pull the boat in. This is another time when I marvel at the idea of the lines' abilities and strength. Once the stern was tied, Moose threw the bow line to me and I pulled the boat in close enough for Ben to hop off and we walked the boat a little further up the dock and tied it up for the night. I saw another one of those giant, mouse-sized spiders scurry across the dock here and freaked out.

I made dinner while the kids fished. Moose found a crayfish and used it as bait. He also was playing with birds and feeding them snails. Ben and I decided that if this kid was stranded in the wilderness, like Brian in Hatchet, he would definitely survive. He'd build the things, use the things, eat the things needed to survive, and wouldn't bat an eye at any of it.

It sure is hard to call an end to the day when it is still so bright at 9 PM.

2 locks today. Trip total: 112 locks.