Hi! In my previous post, I began telling you about the week Nick and I spent up at Sauble Beach.
(To quickly fill you in, that’s a long sandy beach/cottage community on the eastern shore of Lake Huron, located a 3 1/2 drive north-west of Toronto. We rented a cottage there for the second week of September, which is off-season so we nearly had the place to ourselves, which suited us fine.)
So, you’ve heard about the first couple of days of our holiday, when the weather was on the cool side. It rained nearly the entire day on Monday and then the weather changed completely after than, becoming hot and sunny. We almost got to the point of needing to turn on the air conditioning at night, but opted to just leave the windows open instead.
That resulted in my waking up one night in a bit of a terror, imagining a murderer cutting the screen and getting in. What would we use as a weapon? What would the escape route be. Of course, this was just me worrying, but coming from downtown Toronto as we do, we never go to bed while the ground floor windows are open.
Then, another night, I was awakened by the eeriest screeching of what I assume was an owl, who must have been just beyond the window. Yikes! Haha, I guess I’m not making our calm and relaxing vacation sound so calm and relaxing! Aside from those two fright-nights, it was lovely, I promise.
On Tuesday morning, we were greeted by this cute curious character …
After breakfast, we went out for a walk. This time were headed north.
(I mentioned before, that Sauble Beach is split into northern and southern sections. The southern area, which we took a look at in my previous post, is part of the Saugeen First Nation Lands, with the properties there being leased by cottage-owners. The northern part is provincial, with properties owned by individuals and the government. I don’t feel I’m in a position to comment on the situation, however, I will say that there has seen a long-standing dispute over the boundary between the two, detailed in this news story.)
We walked up through the neighbourhood of cottages, that runs parallel to the beach …
Eventually, we veered over to the water …
↑ Finding stones ↑
↑ Skipping stones ↑
Walking back south, we came upon this restaurant that’s been there for 70 years, since 1948. (It’s the one mentioned in the news story about the north-south border, linked above) …
We returned to the cottage, where we read outside and had an early dinner.
Our plan was to get back to the beach in time to watch the entire sunset. Since the beach runs along the eastern shore of Lake Huron, there is nothing in the way to block the view of the setting sun, and I knew from my previous visits that, on a clear night, it was nothing short of spectacular.
At around 5 we began hearing music coming from the beach, but couldn’t see what was going on. We thought that perhaps it was one of the restaurants with an outdoor patio. When we got there, we were pleasantly surprised by what we found …
I subsequently learned that this “Classic Cruisers Car Show” had taken place every Tuesday evening, during the summer months. We were lucky to catch the second last one for the year! It was really neat.
From there, we continued up the beach, to grab a bench for the big show. We’d sneaked a couple of cans of beer in our bag, for refreshment.
↑ A friendly passer-by offered to take a photo of us after seeing us attempt a selfie. ↑
The next day, Wednesday, was the only time our car left our parking spot, when we went to see “Sauble Falls Provincial Park”.
↑ These birds are Great Blue Herons. ↑
Then we got a little bit lost on the way back to the beach, and found ourselves on a dirt road to nowhere for a while. But eventually we found the right road again, and the detour gave us the opportunity to see some farmers’ fields and grazing areas for horses and cattle. Nick refused to stop, so I could get out try for a picture of a cow, though. He said they’d stampede us. He was kidding … I think.
Now, while reviewing our trip, I have those “Oh, we should have …” regrets, because we only ventured out in the car that single time. We’d originally fully intended on doing more day-trips, as there are some great places to see a short distance from the beach. There’s The Billy Bishop Museum in Owen Sound — our small downtown airport in Toronto is called “Billy Bishop Airport”, after the Canadian flying ace of World War One, and Victoria Cross recipient. William Bishop was officially credited with 72 victories, making him the top Canadian and British Empire ace of the war. He was born in the city of Owen Sound, which is near Sauble Beach, so we thought the museum there would be interesting, but we didn’t make it over.
We’d also intended to go further up the Bruce Peninsula, to Tobermory, known as the “fresh water SCUBA diving capital of the world” because of the numerous shipwrecks that lie in the surrounding waters. From there you can board a small boat to take you to “Flower Pot” Island, which is surrounded by unique and remarkable rock formations that resemble, you guessed it, flower pots. I’ve been to Tobermory and Flower Pot Island before and know this would have been a great side-trip to have taken, but alas, we ended up being overly content with just hanging out at the beach.
Speaking of which, in my next post, (and last on this holiday) we took a swim in what turned out to be very cold water!
Thank you for reading,
xo loulou
