We arrived in Orillia on Monday evening and expected that because the town was on a famous lake with lots of boaters abounding that there would be a lively scene. Strangely the Civic Holiday rendered the town that evening somewhat of a ghost town with a grayish aspect of abandonment. Weird, the waterways were full of folks in a celebratory mood that afternoon.

Nonetheless, over the next few days, Orillia, maybe because the sun came out and the town began to look inhabited and lively, she redeemed herself. There are a lot of fine eating establishments, bakeries, groceries and other outlets - and the town took on a colorful and festive aura on Tuesday and Wednesday, that was missing Monday night.

On Monday night, suddenly with a loud hissing sound both of the front tires on our fold-up bikes went flat. The next day, after replacing the inexplicably burst inner tubes, we took our bikes out in search of transmission fluid for Salty and went out to the marinas at the Narrows to see if they had any and any other boating supplies we had on our list. Orillia, we discovered, has fantastic bike trails - that led all the way out to the Narrows - the trails, part of the Trans-Canada bike trail, in places were covered in the shade of trees against the harsh afternoon sunlight. The Narrows we discovered is also where ancient Huron and Iroquois fishing weirs were discovered - dating the site to over four thousand years ago. Orillia had long been a center of Native American trading - consistent with Lake Simcoe/Couchching's position on the string of lakes and rivers connecting the Georgian Bay of Lake Huron with Lake Ontario.

In addition we found the Gordon Lightfoot Trail/Park on the return from the Narrows - it is a park dedicated to this native son of Orillia, who by the way is still living, with a couple of pieces of ornate sculpture. People of a certain age remember his ballad "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" - enshrined in the park as a leaf-shaped sculpture with lots of figures/items mentioned in the 1970s hit (and many friends/colleagues have mentioned it when the subject of the Great Loop came up - thanks...). Hopefully this is not an omen - the SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank in 1975 in Lake Superior, not Lake Simcoe - and the weather forecast calls for fair if not calm conditions on Thursday - not "gales of November" with hurricane force winds and 35 foot waves.