We woke up in the Benjamins to rain, lots of rain, pouring down. The forecast luckily was mostly just for rain, not so much thunderstorms - so we pulled up anchor and headed out for Meldrum Bay. Nearly all the other boaters had left already. Are you sensing a trend with Salty's crew?

The wind forecast called for 10-15 knot winds but fairly calm seas - and it was an uneventful, but very grey and wet trip across the Northern Channel. We plowed past Gore Bay and Vidal Bay and turned into Meldrum Bay just as the rain was letting up. A friendly little marina was at the end of the bay - we were the only transient boat there. We fueled up and parked the boat at the empty transient docks.

Meldrum Bay Marina; Meldrum Bay in the rain

After a few hours, the sun came out and the splendor the bay revealed itself. Most of Manitoulin Island looks from the water to be uninhabited and in fact, probably looks as it did several hundred years ago. If not for the occasional structure and channel markers, you'd believe you'd gotten lost in absolute wilderness. Meldrum Bay is surrounded by nearly uninterrupted pine coverage to the shore - only the village of Meldrum Bay being the exception.

We ate dinner at the Meldrum Bay Inn - a marvelous find, where we ate the most amazing lake trout almondine in an impossibly quaint inn with an extraordinarily busy hummingbird feeder visible from the dining room. The owner said that this week was like a light switch going off - a packed dining room every night was now just us and two other tables. Even the hummingbirds busily sipping their sugar solutions are aggressively stocking up, getting ready for the flight south.

Downtown Meldrum Bay - the Inn and the General Store / State Liquor Store (LCBO).