Sunday, July 29, 2007

Day 13, July 9, 2007

Day 13, Monday, July 9, 2007.
We started off about 9:00 am and we are off to see part of the Bruce Peninsula National Park, specifically the Grottos. It is about a 12 mile drive but in the direction we want to travel anyway. I had seen some writeups on the internet about this area so it was on our list of places to visit. A bit of a narrow windy road but all paved. We arrived shortly after 10:00 am and packed a backpack with coats etc and off we went. The hike in is about a kilometer maybe a little more. We hit the first grotto and it was quite exciting. Tegan climbed down in through an opening and got down that way, I climbed down the sheer face of the cliff. Actually it was not all that steep nor that far down but the first story sounds better. We explored this grotto for awhile then climbed back out using that same sheer cliff in the first story. As you were standing on the floor of the grotto you could hear the waves coming in and hitting the underground caves. It was a gurgling sound. Also, there was a very small pool and I mean small like 6 by 8 inches and it was moving up and down with the wave action. I assume the waves were hitting an underground cave and pushing the water up to this little pool. As I said earlier, amazing, just amazing. We walked over to the second Grotto. The ground we are walking on, other than the trail we walked in on which was fine bark mulch, is layers of rock which is the makeup of the cliffs we are walking on. On the cliffs there are lots of handholds to walk down. You still have to be careful because a lot of the rocks are wet and slippery. To get to the second Grotto we climbed through a cave entrance which took us down to the water level. This was easier than the cliffside, although we did climb back up that way. Now this second grotto is way larger than the first and as you got down to it you could see there was a pool inside. Once you got inside of the grotto, there was a tunnel coming in from under the water and letting in a very blue light, it was almost magical. These grottos are made from the water action on the rock and probably using tools of nature, rocks to help carve out these amazing places. The water in this area is a very pretty green, other than the temperature you would think you were somewhere tropical. It was the highlight of the parks although we really enjoyed the boat ride yesterday. By the way Willa was the hoity toity one, she stayed on the top of the cliffs and looked down on Tegan and me. We got back to the motorhome and I decided to see if I could find the leak in the exhaust system. At first it looked like a loose spark plug which it wasn’t, but I broke the plug wire trying to pull the plug out. I was able to put it back together but a few miles down the road the motorhome started to miss and I had to stop, buy a new wire and put it back together again. This done we continued down the road. This would be around 1-2:00 pm. We decided to drive and try to find a free place to stay. We drove through a couple of towns to no avail. Now it is was getting late and we were in Arthur, Ontario. We stopped to ask a few people if there was a place to spend the night and a couple of girls on the corner couldn’t think of a place to stay overnight but made a suggestion where I could spend a few hours, but we were really looking for a place for overnight. Another person suggested the Community Center so we asked there and the chap on duty said it would be ok as far as he was concerned. “Besides” says he, “the boss won’t be in before 8:00 am and what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him”. I thought this was sound advice and the recommendation of us being gone by 7:45 in the morning also had a very true ring to it. He came and checked on us later and made sure we were settled in, which I thought was nice. So here we are in a huge lawn area and all to ourselves. It is just starting to sprinkle a little and earlier there was some rumbling of thunder in the distance. It has cooled off now which will make it a nicer evening and easier to sleep. Other than a few minor problems, all has gone well. I’ve always said when an incident arises it’s not the incident that is the problem—it’s how you react to it. Another sleep and another day coming to surprise us.

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