Travelling without a plan

Our original intent was to ride out to Ottawa to spend the weekend with my sister, her husband, and their two cats. What actually happened was a little off target. I had completely forgotten that they had made plans to meet up with some friends for a week-long trip to Las Vegas and had asked if they could stay the night with us before catching their flight out from Buffalo. Oops!

As it turned out, however, they had been unsuccessful in recruiting anyone to cat sit for them while they were going to be away. Well! We could still go out to Ottawa, but instead of being a burden, we'd be doing them a favour. Ha! Done! Sold!

But then there was the weather. As much as we love riding, we don't "love" riding in pouring rain if we know it's going to happen. We waited until the last possible moment, hoping the weather forecasts would change (remember Earl?). We caved and rented a car. And boy was that the best decision, hands down.

We left Toronto just before noon. The sun was out in full force. The weather was absolutely perfect ... if we were on bikes. Grr. When I saw the signs for Prince Edward County, we made an impromptu decision to have lunch in Picton. We had hoped to stop in at Buddha Dog, but they were closed. Instead, we walked into The Painted Peppercorn, located just around the corner from Buddha Dog. We both enjoyed lamb burgers with salad. The burgers were fantastic; the patty was moist and full of flavour. The portion size was satisfying. We'll definitely be back!

As we ate lunch, the weather started to change. By the time we walked back to our rental car, it had started spitting. The rental started to look more appealing. We continued our journey to Ottawa. After a ridiculous amount of time spent crawling through construction zones, traffic finally started to move freely again. We passed a rider on a Ducati who was wearing very minimal gear: helmet, jacket, and gloves. He was stopped on the side of the highway. I commented that he better be stopped because he was putting on rain gear as we could see huge dark clouds looming up ahead of us. He passed us about 5 minutes after that. About 15 minutes later, the rain came down so hard that we could barely see any vehicles around us. We spotted the same Ducati rider stopped under a bridge. Wise move.

We drove through this crazy rainfall for quite a distance. It eventually cleared up. And then it came back with a vengence. This time, the rainfall was so heavy that we slowed down to a crawl and turned on the hazards; all the vehicles around us did the same. Wow. When we got through this second storm, we were extremely thankful for the rental car. Riding would have been absolute misery and extremely dangerous.

And now we're here! Safe and sound. And DRY. Yay!

Grisly Discovery At Downtown Condo

Local authorities were notified when a partially dismembered body was found by the residents of a downtown condo in the wee hours of the morning on April 23rd.  Other residents of the building describe the area as quiet and relatively crime free. 

A member of the investigating team who did not wish to be identified confirmed that the victim was not wearing any clothing and none was found at the scene.  Foul play is suspected, however, no motive has been determined thus far.

A suspect has been detained for questioning.

Update on Saturday, May 14, 2011 at 11:08AM by Cess

As the suspect was acquitted, she was released late this week and has been spotted at her former haunts in Little Italy.

Why does it take 10 months to print photos?

Historically, we've always put up prints of photos we've taken over the years on our walls.  After moving into the loft, we didn't want to simply hang up the prints we previously had at our old place.  Since that time, we've taken many new (better!) photos, and hey, it was time for a change. Why has it taken 10 months since we moved here to do this?  Well, I'd like to say we've been "busy" (read: lazy).

An unspeakable amount of time was spent choosing photos, printing, framing, mocking up the print arrangement on the wall, etc.  When everything was said and done this was the result on one of the walls in our living room...

All in all we're both happy with the result so far.  The question now is... will it take another 10 months to complete the next print hanging project?

Autumn Waterfalls

We've been meaning to do a day trip to photograph some local waterfalls for quite some time.  Given that it's the tail end of fall colours season, we decided to do that trip last weekend.

We left home at about 8:30am in the morning and visited the following:

• Hilton Falls
• Darnley Cascade
• Webster's Falls
• Albion Falls
• Buttermilk Falls
• Felker's Falls

It was a pretty good trip and we managed to get some pretty decent shots along the way.  Some I think will even be worth printing. The highlights were the ruins of the Grist Mill at the Darnley Cascade along with Webster's and Albion Falls.

The most frustrating part of this outing?  Goddamn. People. Meandering. Everywhere.  I can't say how bloody annoying it is to have some oblivious idiots parade right in front of a set up tripod and camera.  Especially after you've spent 10-15 minutes waiting until people cleared out enough to actually take a few shots.  Ugh.  Alas, it was still worth it!

Hilton Falls:

Grist Mill ruins:

Webster's Falls:

Albion Falls (closer up view):

Felker's Falls:

She said "apple"!!

My sister and my 19 month old niece were downtown on Saturday for a rare visit.  Matt and I had a bag of apples sitting on one of our Barcelona chairs.  My niece ran over to the chair, picked up an apple, turned around to show it to us, and said (very clearly) "apple!"  Then she put it down, ran around the the living room, and did it again.  I was so impressed.  Not only did she use the correct word with the correct object, she repeated it several times.  Wow.  That was the first time I had ever heard her say a proper word, not baby-talk or nonsense babbling.

And she whispered "bye" when they left to go home.  AMG!!

Manitoulin Island Wrap-up: Matt's pictures

I'm going to try something different this time.  Instead of placing a whole bunch of images on here, I'm going to link to a Flickr slideshow.   Enjoy!

Here's a little teaser...

Update on Tuesday, October 26, 2010 at 3:02AM by Cess

Drum roll, please!

Yes, it has taken a while for me to get organized enough to post up my photos from this road trip.  I've actually been working on it gradually and I think it is mostly done.  I may still add a few photos to the colleciton.  So here it is: my own Flickr slide show!  Please click here and enjoy my little photo set. =)

Day 4: Long boring drive...

Ok, so this is a few days late but hey, I promise you're not missing much.  Day 4 of our Manitoulin Island trip (Monday) was pretty uneventful.  We had a leisurely breakfast at Green Bay Lodge and started making our long drive home.

On the return leg, we drove the entire way without taking the ferry.  As we left the island we stopped off at Whitefish Falls.  This waterfall was rather small and we couldn't really get a good view of it to take any worthwhile pictures.  The remainder of the day consisted mostly of me driving home while Cess slept in the car.  500+ km later, we were home!

Day 3: Running salmon?!

On Sunday morning we were up early hoping to see the beginnings of a beautiful sunrise.  Unfortunately, when I woke up at 6:30 and looked outside, I could see the sky was completely overcast.  Clearly, there'd be no sunrise photography this morning.

After a pleasant breakfast at the Green Bay Lodge we made our way to Kagawong.  Kagawong had several places we wished to visit: Old Mill, Pioneer Post Office, Lighthouse, Church, and several other historic buildings.  Having said that, by a large margin the highlight of the excursion to Kagawong was Bridal Veil Falls.  This awesome waterfall is situated on the outskirts of the village.  The drop in the waterfall is several meters, so we were able to get some great long exposure shots.  Little did we know that we would also be treated to the tail end of this year's salmon run!  Salmon were still working their way upriver and were congregating and spawning at the base of the falls.  Having never seen a salmon run before, this was certainly a great experience.  It was interesting to see the instinctive drive that salmon have to swim upriver and spawn.  Clearly, survival of the fittest was in the works as there was quite a number of fish that obviously had not made it all the way to the base of the falls.  Their corpses littered the river and surrounding shoreline.

Next up, we drove to Misery Bay and did a 7-8 km hike along the eastern side of the bay.  The hike itself was quite easy and we were treated with many photographic opportunities, including very surreal rock formations called alvar.  The specific type of alvar we got a chance to see is only found in two places in the world; Manitoulin Island and the northern shores of the Baltic Sea (Sweden & Estonia).

We finished the day's travels with a visit to Gore Bay.  For the first time on this trip we were treated to a bit of sunshine.  As such, we decided to stay at Gore Bay to catch the sunset from a lookout point overlooking the bay.

After a quiet dinner back at the lodge (we were cooking ourselves!) we ventured outside with all our gear to do some night time photography.  For a bit of fun, we even did some light painting!

Day 2: Island Time!

Remember how I said we hoped the sunrise photos would actually happen?  Yup, they didn't.  Matt took a look out the window at 6:00am and it was still overcast.  I guess we'll try again tomorrow from the Island.

We drove to the ferry dock and got our tickets.  We would be taking the first ferry of the day from Tobermory to Manitoulin Island.  We parked the car and quickly hunted down breakfast before boarding the ferry.  3 eggs over easy, a thick slice of ham, homefries, and toast.  Oh, and all you can drink coffee.  Not bad!  Too bad I only had time for a few sips of coffee.  That was probably the fastest I've ever shovelled breakfast into my mouth before.  It was a record-setting 10 minutes!  We boarded the ferry, climbed upstairs, and prepared to set sail.

I spent the majority of the crossing asleep.  Matt, on the other hand, spend a good deal of time outside taking photos.  End result:  we were both in need of hot beverages once we got onto the Island.  We stopped in at one of the motels by the ferry dock and warmed up with a hot chocolate for me and a coffee for Matt.  We also browsed the local wares and picked up a few things.  Once we finished our drinks, we set off to continue our sightseeing and photography tour. 

Today we saw a few more lighthouses, several historical buildings, and a decomissioned ferry.  The ferry, named Norisle, ended its active service in 1974.  Since then, it has been sitting at the Manitowaning Harbour.  There have been plans to restore it, but they seem to have stalled.  It now sits silently in a rather sorry state at the harbour.

Some of the historical buildings we visited today include the Manitoulin Roller Mill, the Batman Mill, and St. Paul's Anglican Church.  We also made a quick stop in Providence Bay to see the boardwalk.  A few broken down, abandoned looking trucks also became subjects of our photographic excursions today.

The weather was pretty overcast and gloomy.  The only time we saw any sun was just after debarking from the ferry.  Hopefully we will see some sun (and sunrises and sunsets!) in the next two days.  This is getting frustrating!

Day 1: And I'll huff, and I'll puff ...

Wow.  We were rather unprepared for how windy it was throughout the day.  It's still blowing like crazy outside as I am typing out this entry.  Today we visited 5 lighthouses in the Bruce Penninsula.   As it turns out, they are all open to the public for tours.  Unfortunately, most of them are only open until Labour Day.  Drats!  We came, saw lighthouses, and took pictures of them.

When we finally arrived at our motel in Tobermory at 6:15pm and checked in, we were informed that most restaurants closed at 8pm.  We decided to try and eat dinner quickly and then attempt to get some sunset photography done.  We quickly ate at a local fish and chips place (they were out of chowder!).  Our potential sunset photos were a bust.  It was far too overcast.  Oh well.  Perhaps we will have better luck once we get onto Manitoulin Island.

Our final outting for the night took us to the ferry dock at 10pm.  The wind was still blowing quite strongly.  We watched the final ferry arrival of the day as it came into the harbour and docked.  It was quite an undertaking with lots of turning and adjusting.

Tomorrow we plan on getting up early and getting some sunrise photos.  Wish us luck!