Comments (0) After the fire tower, we went down to the shore for a closer look at the ice. I figured we’d be fine walking out to the island, but our roommate wasn’t so sure of the ice’s thickness. After seeing so many snowmobiles pass us while we were hanging out on the town dock, he started to feel a bit more confident about our trek out on the ice.
Looking back at Tower Hill:
The Island Queen V taking a long winter nap:
A snowy self portrait at the end of the pier:
After a few hours of broken sleep at the hotel due to some miscommunication about our hotel rooms when we checked in at 3am, our first stop was the Parry Sound fire tower on Tower Hill. We figured out would be a good way to check the weather and how strong the ice looked. Here’s a few pics and a video of it. Sorry for sounding half asleep on the video. That’s just the lack of sleep talking.
The fire tower:
The view from the tower:
A video:
Not since Harold and Kumar went to White Castle, has there been a trip as epic as Sadie and friends going to Sobeys. You might wonder why we would drive to Canada just to go to a grocery store – honestly, I even asked myself that a couple of times as we drove almost 500 miles through a blizzard to get there. It all has to do with margarine. Yes – margarine. The Becel with Olive Oil to be exact. It is so good and it’s not sold in the states. We’ve been out of it since November or December and we needed to stock up. Of course we hung out in Parry Sound, hiked to Action Island, had dinner with friends and did some other fun stuff while we were on our way to the grocery store, but we always kept our eye on the prize. Three small tubs of Becel. We should now have enough to get us at least through June. Since returning to Ohio, I’ve had grilled cheese sandwiches twice already. This trip was so worth it.
Unless the weather is absolutely unbearable, I try to climb the fire tower on the Tower Hill whenever I go up in the winter. The fire tower is almost 100 feet tall and it sits on an already steep hill. From the top of the tower, you can get quite a view of the bay and of Parry Sound. Below are a couple of pics to show you what I mean.
View of some of the town:
and here’s a view of some of the bay:
To keep up with the February countdown, here’s another pic taken from my December 2002 trip up north. Here I am sitting on the pier in town. You can see the Island Queen hibernating further down the dock. Looking at the footprints, I think that there were only a few people that made the trip out to the end of the pier that day.
So now that the new year is here, the countdown to February is on. The husband and I, and possibly some friends too, will be spending a weekend in February in Parry Sound. The husband has never been able to experience it in the winter, so he is super excited. It’s been years since I’ve done it, so I’m quite excited as well. Life up north in the winter is quite different than it is in the summer. There will be sure to be lots of snow and enough ice for us to walk out to the island.
Here’s a pic from December 2002 of the island. I took it from the mainland when I went on my last winter trip up there. I’ll be posting more pics from that trip later. Hopefully I can find and scan some of my older pics from our winter trips too.
Ever wonder what the island girls do to pass the time until it’s summer again? Well other than working our respective school jobs, going to the gym, vegging out, and planning our summer Canada dates, we do one interesting thing – make chocolate. The husband and I mainly make truffles. Not those truffle balls that people roll and then dip in chocolate. I’m talking real truffles in molds. Here’s a very small sample of what we made in the last week or two.
The swirls are milk chocolate with blueberry ganache, the plain dark ones are dark chocolate peanut butter cups, the light ones are white chocolate with blueberry ganache, and the geodesic ones are dark chocolate with an espresso ganache.
So what do you do to pass time in the colder months?
We first heard about the big fallen pine this winter. A neighbor of ours on the mainland was roaming around on the ice and noticed a giant tree on top of the cottage. They took some pics, and mailed them to us. We then got in contact with some of our friends in town and had them come and take it off of the roof. I don’t have the initial pics from the neighbor on my computer, but I do have pics that our friends took while they were cutting up the tree and getting it off of the roof. The tree that was shown in my last post in front of the door is actually just the top of the big tree. The tree was behind the cottage and it somehow became uprooted. It fell forward, going over the entire roof and the top of it stuck out over the front of the house. Here’s our friends cutting the tree while it’s on the edge of the roof.
and here’s what it looked like from the back:
Also wanted to let you all know that I just set up accounts for my sister (Victoria) and for my mom (Colleen) so they can start posting their blogs about life on the island too.
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