#58 The North Channel

Bruce Mines, Ontario, located in the North Channel. Never heard of it, am I right? No reason you should. I only came across it when I was looking for the Canadian town that is exactly north of Knoxville, TN. Bruce Mines gets the award. On the other end of that straight line going south, right through Knoxville, it’s Apalachicola, FL. By coincidence, they are just about exactly 1000 miles apart, in a straight line. However, being boaters, our reality does not include straight lines, so we took the long route, which was just about 3000 miles. Kinda like walking from your bedroom to your kitchen by going through Topeka, KS. That might sound a bit unrealistic, but to a Looper, it’s just good seamanship. I was actually looking for the point at which we will be the furthest north we will get on this trip, which also happens to be in the Bruce Mines area. I’m sure this is a record for both myself and the boat.

Cheryl, reluctantly, wanted to learn how to drive the dingy. It didn’t take her long to get the hang of it!

Just a couple of tourists on an island!

Bonfire on the beach with Katz and Dogz, Loma, and Seventh Wave.

The sunsets! Seems like every one outdid the last one.

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Just a few pictures of the Benjamin Islands. Pink and black granite everywhere. My dad was a bit of an amateur geologist. If you come to my house, you’ll see, alongside my driveway, a collection of rocks he’d picked up over many years, all examples of one kind or another of geologic curiosities. The Benjamin Islands would have excited him to no end. The striking pink and black granite that we walked all over in the Benjamin Islands is the exposed heart of an ancient mountain range that formed nearly 1.8 to 1.9 billion years ago. (Much like the Smokies at home, which are the remains of a much younger mountain range.) Imagine how many sunsets and sunrises have passed here, the unimaginable number of deep, silent, velvet nights that passed over these rocks before the mountains eroded and the glaciers pushed the remains of the mountains into hills, then retreated, so that the first humans here could walk and live among them. Those first humans came only around 15,000 years ago, a mere blink of time compared to the age of these rocks. The pink color comes primarily from potassium feldspar crystals, while the black streaks and bands are minerals like biotite and hornblende, which apparently are softer, as they leave dramatic gaps and ridges in the granite as they erode away. The entire region also has mica throughout, which gives the rocks a nice sparkle. All in all, it’s flat-out gorgeous, as well as being fascinating to walk around on and to think about the epochs that have passed here, leaving such dramatic scenery. Mastodons used to walk here.

Nope, we have no idea where they were going.

We are in Blind River Ontario as I write, staying here two days so we can visit Bill and Sue, friends from Knoxville who have a cabin on a lake up here. We had some adventures back in the day, Bill and Sue and I. They helped me deliver Lucidity home from the Keys, and she wasn’t in that great of shape, so we had some “issues’. But man, what memories! So great to see them again, still adventuring and enjoying life.

It’s a little bit surreal, watching Cheryl book our reservations for Michigan. We’ll be there in just a few short days, back in the USA, which is actually just a bit depressing. The crowds, the general insanity, the arrogance, the noise, the interstates, the in-your-face billboards exhorting you to sue someone; we’ve been without all that for quite a while now and it will be a transition getting used to it again. The solitude, peace and quiet, and the proximity to nature we have enjoyed has been refreshing. On the other hand, we’ll be back among friends, family and in familiar territory, so there you go. Six of one, half dozen of another.

We plan to leave Blind River in the morning and make our way to the Mississagi Delta Provincial Park, or at least the bay there, which is the most out of way, deserted, middle-of-nowhere anchorage I could find, for our last night in Canada. Supposed to be good for star-gazing and Northern Lights viewing, although the forecast is not good for that.

Next update will be from the great state of Michigan!

“And so they set sail for the Land of Possibility where anything could happen, and often did.”