Exploring Manitoulin Island: Our Epic RV Road Trip with Harvest Hosts Stay

Hi everyone, how you doing? Great to see you all again. So if you're new to the channel you won't know that we've sold up everything and we're traveling the States and Canada in our motorhome aren't we babes? We are. We arrived about three months ago and how many miles have we done? 7,417 of which 603 have been in Canada. Which is what we're focusing on in this episode. So coming up today you're going to see dragons, you're also going to see ferries and we're going to talk a little bit about the wildfires that have been happening unfortunately. But and we're going to give you a bit of an update on them pesky mosquitoes in Canada. But before all that here's our map. So if you've been keeping up with our mosquito adventures you'll know what a pain they've all been. We've had 40 days and 40 bites and then mosquito mayhem. But what happened next? Check this out. We've got one of these mosquito stick things hanging up to try and catch some of those ones. But it keeps, the only thing it's caught is Gary's hair so far. It's got millions of his hair in it because he keeps. It's horrible and sticky now as well. Oh you might have to cut that off. God he's joking. Oh no because you can't get rid of it. Just use it like hair gel. Oh god no thank you. I'm not 18. Hide and see if you can find out where they're coming in. Oh yeah I'll if I'm out the side they're not going to want to come in the van they're going to want to come at me. Well I'm not being funny but you're not going to find it like you keep wandering around with the torch inside. We've got a bit of an idea for tonight because we bought something today when we went to Canada Tire didn't we? We bought a dining mosquito net. So Gary's thinking about can we put it above our bed a bit like a a mosquito bed net isn't it? Yeah yes it is somewhere just trying to find somewhere to put this. I'm convinced this is going to work but I'm not going to knock anything. It's quite big though it's like 12 foot by 12 foot in it. Ah so he's hooking it up to the cabinets. Yeah so that's a good idea. Okay so as you can see this is like a tent sort of structure. It's looking like this but I've already seen mosquitoes flying above that. I'm just we can't figure out where they're coming in fully can we Gary? I actually think that's quite a good job Gary. It's covered it. I mean we do have to kind of crawl in don't we? We just crawl in and crawl out underneath here. Okay don't lift it too much though because there is some flying around I've just seen them. They'll still get under there I'm telling you. Well let's figure out in the morning. Okay we'll give it a whirly. At this point I'll try anything. So it's the morning and this is what it looks like from the inside to give you a bit of a flavour. What do you think Gary? How do you think it went last night? I think it's all right. I mean I think we had some gnats or midges or something like that that got us that were in here already but I've not seen any mosquitoes. Sort of done the trick even if it does look a bit weird. So after all that on the plus side we have a really good mosquito dining tent. However we're not the only ones dining in it. So as we came through Ontario we stopped over at a friend of mine from over 20 years ago. So we stopped with my friends Arthur, Lynn and Maria in their home in London. It was a fantastic night. Thank you very much for hosting us guys and what a wonderful thing to do to be able to catch up with friends from the Middle East years ago. Then we headed up up a little bit north into Ontario didn't we and we found a fantastic Harvest Host location. It was very very serene and beautiful. Have a look at this location. Gary's getting out the van. It's perfect isn't it? Here's the entrance to the gardens and Gary's found himself a gong or something. What's that all about? When you strike this it grants you safe passage. Okay we'll give it a little bong. Is that is that safe enough? Is that safe enough? Gosh not much effort in that. Hopefully that's safe enough. It's ringing in my ears. So when you come down it's really quite serene. It's very cute and there's some like colourful dragons here. Beautiful bridge. So there's a bit of a story behind this beautiful bridge. Give us the story behind it because you've also got a little model here haven't you? It was made by Dr Kenningham. He was a retired oncologist and we helped him when he was helping and when he was walking the Bruce Trail and became friends with him over time and he proposed an entranceway to the trail system and he eventually came up with the idea of an archway. We played with various different arches, moon gates, arabic arches etc and then finally he says I think this looks rather Irish and so he composed this little maquette model at his breakfast table out of cheerios and plaster of paris and if you look carefully you can see that the mice have chewed away at the plaster of paris to get in at the cheerios so we had to keep this inside but it's it's a real treasure. He's signed it for us. This goes back to about 1997 maybe and he built this archway in the summer of his 80th year. Wow. And he built it all by himself. Gosh. Both Dee and I have worked as stonemasons so we showed him how to mix mortar, how to select the stones etc and basically how to do it but we had no hand in it until it came to the eventual keystone which is a piece of quartz crystal which sort of provides the energy of the archway and just a bit of a treasure. We've had people get married under the arch and renew their vows and basically just stand here and toast each other's health as we toast yours. So Gary, you've found the rainbow serpent haven't you? Yes, you walk in from this direction, you'll find your centre and walk out straight knowing your path. Okay off you go. Do you know your purpose now? I suppose it's to look after me better. Sometimes we just love helping other people out as well when we come to these places and Gary's beef's obviously going to be very useful now and these fantastic outdoor paintings need hanging up. They're actually commissioned paintings that have been redone and here's our beautiful artist here and Gary is going to help Tom to put the paintings up. So this is the weathered one isn't it and then this is the new one. These are gorgeous and they're designed for outside aren't they? They're not indoor artwork. They're not indoors and each one of them brings a special kind of energy to the gardens so there's a poem and a story that goes with it to help you understand how this painting is going to connect you back to the planet. So you carry that down, I'll close the door. No is it right? It's correct. Dee has the eye for it. We've got the mussel over there look. Oh they look great. Arguing with dragons, there's no point in arguing with dragons. The dragons took a tumble. Look we've got three of them hung up. Looks amazing. They're huge aren't they? Yes he gets it. I absolutely love this shop. It makes me feel like I've got to be quite quiet. It's just really serene. It's got lovely little objects and I bought myself one of these necklaces yesterday. They're sort of all handmade and they're about $15. They're beautiful and just when you come in you know what you're going to buy. There's just something about it that you want to buy. It's lovely. It's really gorgeous. Dragon spirit ways. Look at these gorgeous like eggs that are like handmade. It's like little crystals in them. I love this sort of thing. It's really creative. It's really magical. So in order to save ourselves about 400 450 miles we decided to take the ferry from Tobermory on the Bruce Peninsula across Lake Huron to Manitoulin Island. And we found a fantastic free park up for the night. Check this out. We're getting on the ferry in a minute aren't we? We are. We've booked the ferry from Tobermory to Manitoulin Island. Thank you for saying that because I keep saying it wrong. And how much did it cost us Bab? About 100. Well it was $135. So we're parked up waiting for our ferry and we'll collect it over there. It's really quite nice here isn't it Gary? Beautiful. Look there's a little restaurant over there. We think we might go and get a bite to eat somewhere. There's a couple of places isn't there? Yeah there is. Haven't got time. Oh this day's getting better isn't it? Look at that. You can see the water right at the bottom. You can see how clear it is. I mean that's got to be about 15 feet deep and I can see there's grains of sand on the floor. That's had crystal clear water. Wow. On to the ferry aren't we Babs? We are. You're having to concentrate. Here she is. It's a beautiful design on the front of that ferry. So we were due to stay at a golf club today weren't we Babs? We turned up and it was boiling hot and you would sort of park on the driving range and there was nothing around. Yeah apart from golfers hitting golf balls all over the place so not a great place to stay. So we thought right okay we don't like to just like just stay there and just put up with it so we thought right let's change this. So we've come to this lovely place called Little Curran haven't we? It's right by the swing bridge and we're just going to find something to eat. We've found a right little fantastic little place to park up haven't we? So we're quite happy with that. It's going to cost nothing for the night. There's no facilities there but that's all right. That's what the beautiful it's flat and it's gorgeous view. So once we hit the mainland after Manitoulin Island our intention was to travel across Canada on the Route 17 which is the Trans-Canadian Highway. However you'll have heard about all the fires in Canada. Now a few of those fires were actually both above and below and some on Route 17. So that forces our rethink and what we decided to do was to head back into the States via Sault Ste. Marie and then go west across America and then at some point we'll then head north back into Canada. So here we are in Sault Ste. Marie. We've come to Sault Ste. Marie but actually it looks really hazy here doesn't it Gary? Yeah there's lots of wildfires in the area. Apparently there's a couple around Sault Ste. Marie but we can't see them but we can certainly see the smoke in the distance and the haze in the air. But if you have a look here you can see that the air is really hazy. Boardwalk monument. It's got the American flag to one side and the Canadian flag to the other. It's a really nice boardwalk actually. Painted stones along the walkway. You are not alone. That's lovely that. Love conquers all. They're all really positive sweet stones. I feel like painting a stone Gary. It's very pink though but I would agree. I've got my lipstick. Half a tonne of mosquito blood. This is my attempt at a lipstick lip. I think we can all agree that I'm not a very good artist and I've now sort of... defaced a rock. No not defaced a rock. That'll wash off in the sun and the rain. But I've blunted my lipstick somewhat. So that is a little bit worrying. Look at that. Let's see if I can make it a little bit better. J4G. Oh that's supposed to be a kiss but anyway. There we go. Pop it with the others Gary. Let's inspire some artwork here. That's it from us today except to tell you what we're doing next week. So next week we're heading off to Badlands National Park aren't we? Yeah. And we're also going to Mount Rushmore. So if you're interested in all of that and you enjoyed this episode don't forget to hit the subscribe. Give us a nice like. We'll see you next time. Love you loads guys. Take care. Ta-ra.