Rick & Chantal's 2014 Summer Road Trip: May 15 – Manitoulin Island to Caledon

We decided to get up by 8:00 this morning, as we wanted to grab a bite of breakfast at Mum's Cafe; and had to catch the M.S. Chi-Cheemaun ferry from Manitoulin Island over to Tobermorey, and still had to travel about 37 kms to get there. We miscalculated our time, and had to rush through breakfast, and literally sped the distance between Mindemoya and South Baymouth, where we were to catch the ferry. If we missed the 11:15 am ferry, there was one more ferry at 3:00 pm, and then our day would have been thrown off.

The ferry ride between South Baymouth and Tobermorey is about two hours - something that we're quite familiar with, being from Vancouver Island, and traveling to the mainland of BC often. On this ferry, however, passengers aren't allowed to remain in their vehicles during the ferry ride.

The ride between the two ports was often very foggy, and dismal with rain. Something that I found quite interesting, is that this ferry has a permit to sell alcohol on it, and has beer and a couple cocktails that they sell.

Rick and I were sitting in the lounge area, and were absolutely freezing, with our hoodies on. We decided to move one floor down, to the cafeteria area, and perhaps get a hot chocolate to warm us - this area was much more bearable regarding warmth, and we stayed there until it was time to return to our vehicle.

After our ferry ride, we continued our trip through Wiarton, where we had lunch, and took some pictures of the huge groundhog statue, commemorating Wiarton Willie. Oh, and we saw Wiarton Willie's "Re/max" home, and took a photo of that, too!

We passed through some areas that had Amish colonies - there were road signs heeding us to watch for horse-drawn buggies on the road. And we came upon some areas that were using wind turbines for power generation - we'd never seen that many wind turbines in such a small area.

We continued our beautiful, scenic drive to the Village of Alton in Caledon. We had a reservation at the Millcroft Inn, which is a beautiful, historic, country inn that was once a knitting mill in 1881. Rick had also made dinner reservations for us at the restaurant in the Inn. We took a short while to rest up and change our clothes, and then we went down to the restaurant. We both had a cocktail prior to dinner, while relaxing, then had a most delicious meal, while overlooking the waterfall that used to operate the mill. We took about twenty photos at the Inn, but I'll only post a couple. Our room was fantastic, beautifully appointed with a comfortable king-size bed, towel-warmer in the bathroom, a seating area and stunning views from the windows.