Day One of our Great Airplane Adventure: We're taking off shortly from Oshawa, Canada (CYOO) with our final destination Twin Oaks (7S3) in Portland, Oregon. We're "baby-sitting" a 1957 Cessna 182 (900 Bravo) for three years while her owner heads off to Africa for three years -- touch duty. We looked her over for the first time last night and she looks great: Rob's particularly enamored with the brand-new panel and I'm appreciating the fact that she and I were born the same year -- and we could both use some touch-up paint!

Weather is high overcast and winds are calm. We'll first fly into Toronto City Center to pick up Michael, our 23-year old, who's been living in Russia for the past year. We haven't seen him since October when we visited in Moscow, so I expect lively conversation as we make our way slowly west over the next 10 or 12 days.

I think I found a great place for our first night's stay -- a motel right on the bay in Wiarton, Canada, a short hop from Toronto. It's walking distance from the Wiarton Airport, so I'll let you know if it's any good.

Thats a very cool trip! Say hello to Wiarton Willie for us!

I did most of the reverse route last year. If you looking for an interesting stopping point in western South Dakota I recommend Custer, which is at the southern end of the Black Hills. We took a day off there, rented a car from adealer in town and drove the backroads of the Black Hills - its a magnificant place.

A few minutes of web surfing led us here to Wiarton, Ontario and the most wonderful motel I could imagine. The airport is literally across the road, and at $95 this place is easily worth twice the price. The Waterside Motel sits on four beautiful acres of lawn and gardens with a lovely sandy beach right on Lake Huron. We sat in buttery yellow Adirondack chairs all afternoon, reading, sunning, swimming, and catching up on the adventures of our 23-year old, who arrived back in North America last night with literally 23 cents in his pocket. He's become a model of self-reliance (and impressive mooching) and I'm sure his stories will carry us all the way home to Portland.

The flight from City Center Toronto -- the most spectacular location for a major city airport I've ever seen -- was quick and uneventful, flying over rich farmland and it seems many horse-racing farms, judging from the ovals we saw below. The friendly FBO guy, Doug (they're evidently both named Doug, so I couldn't tell you which one he was) gave us a courtesy car -- an station wagon, which proclaimed proudly, "This vehicle brings new people to our area through our airport." across the back window.

Just to complete the details of our day here in Wiarton, the fish and chips at Red Fish Blue Fish were great, but I learned that I never need to eat poutine again. And the motel has an inviting swimming pool with lounge chairs, horseshoes, an impressive array of movies to play on the VCR in your room, AND a bonfire every evening, weather permitting. But I will warn you: I had to run inside to type this last paragraph. As soon as the sun set, the mosquitoes came out in force!

Maybe Sault St Marie tomorrow? Rob's itching to see a bush airplane museum there...

Pictures??? Sounds like a great time!!

What's poutine? when I read your comment, I flashed on some soylent green-type stuff: protein distilled from.....pooh. Ugh. Please tell me it ain't so....

(Apologies to the Beatles for the subject line.)
And speaking of apologies, I feel terrible for getting the name of that fabulous motel in Wiarton wrong: it the WaterVIEW, not the Waterside. And somehow i'm gonna hafta try to get back there.
And to my reader who wonder was poutine was: it's NOT what you guessed, and a whole lot less healthy. It's french fries covered with gravy and melted cheese. Seemingly a local delicacy. A simple recipe for making french fries even worse for you than they already are.
Now that I've gotten all the apologies out of the way, on to the narrative portion of our transmission. We left Wiarton this morning, but not before snarfing some of the rhubarb walnuts home-made muffins at Mimi's Cafe, which seems to be open only a few days a week at the Wiarton Airport. Mimi buys as much locally-sourced produce, cheese, etc as she can, and I was sorry to miss the lunch special, Catalan Gazpacho.
We flew over the Bruce Peninsula -- a place I'd never heard of til yesterday, and absolutely gorgeous with aquamarine water and rock formations that looked like metallic art installations. A weak description, but words fail me. Wow. We pushed on and as the haze and overcast turned into real fog en route to Sault St Marie, we landed at Gore Bay to file an IFR flight plan. The friendly -- VERY friendly -- folks at that tiny, remote airport chatted with us for about an hour as Rob took care of business, offering us tarts from the farmers market and dispensing tourism advice without prompting.
The goal in Sault St Marie (Canada), at least from Rob's perspective, was to get to the Bushplane Museum. In his usual singleminded fashion, nothing would dissuade him, including a late arrival, lack of rental cars and eventual costly acquisition of same, etc. He was determined and we went. Eh. (That's not a Canadian-sounding "eh" with a question mark after it. It's an American, bleh. Take it or leave it and I was happy to leave it.)
But then we began the ordeal of getting out of Canada and into the US (Sault St Marie, Michigan). Fortunately, all I had to do is sit there and not say anything to get Rob more preturbed...what a process. He got quite cranky, discovering three-quarters of the way through some internet-based form that the ONE piece of info he didn't have was at the plane and we weren't, etc etc. It was stressful, time-consuming and generally irritating. Michael and I chatted and made ourselves scarce as there was really nothing we could contribute to the process except aggravation. Finally we were able to take off, fly six minutes to the US, land, and be checked out by a US Border and Customs agent with a sense of humor. "How did the constipated mathematician solve his problem? He worked it out with a pencil." (I'm not making this stuff up here...) Two minutes of examining paperwork and we had the ok to be in the States. (BTW, they did not care about our bananas, grapes, cukes, apples, lettuce etc, all of which we were prepared to toss.)
The last leg took us through an orange sunset in a bank of haze that blurred the demarcation of the sky from the lake. We landed at about eight this evening at Harbor Springs on Lake Michigan, and took a cab to this historic hotel, the Stafford Bay Inn in Petoskey. It's elegant and stately and we're a bit smelly and sweaty and slovenly. Oh well. Speaking of slovenly, which Michael nursed and ish-y stomach, Rob and I walked about a mile to the Bob-In, an ice-cream and burger joint for homemade root beer and dinner. Time to call it a day.
(Photos will come at SOME point, since someone was kind enough to ask.)

Poutine is a food group no different than protein, fruit and vegetables. Unfortunately, world class poutine is ordinarily only available in the province of Quebec. There is an excellent poutine served at Smokes Poutinerie in Toronto (http://smokespoutinerie.com/), which is a 5 minute cab ride from City Centre airport (I recommend the version with smoked bacon, which is a worthwhile derivation of the classic). Unfortunately, a majority of the poutine served in Ontario is as disappointing as described. Should you ever have an opportunity to visit the province of Quebec, give the good stuff a chance. The gravy will be loaded with taste, the cheese will be proper cheese curds (not mozzarella shreds as is often the case with poutine-wannabes), and the fries might even be properly double-fried.

N131CP wrote:Thats a very cool trip! Say hello to Wiarton Willie for us!

I did most of the reverse route last year. If you looking for an interesting stopping point in western South Dakota I recommend Custer, which is at the southern end of the Black Hills. We took a day off there, rented a car from adealer in town and drove the backroads of the Black Hills - its a magnificant place.

We loved Wiarton! If you haven't stayed at the Waterview Motel, you're missing a truly lovely place. Hoping to get to Custer later this week. Thanks for the note and look for my posts "XC Adventure" in the trip report section.