"Wring it dry!"

Sep 14th, 2007.

I am sitting on the coast of the Georgian Bay, Lake Huron, Lion’s Head, Ontario. The white limestone cliffs in the distance have been our playground the last two days. The waves crashing sound like the ocean and are with us the majority of the day. While climbing, the waves are a calming backdrop to the challenging limestone crag. It has been midweek since we have been here and therefore not at all crowded. We did run into one other climbing couple who were friendly enough to stop by the library to get our email addresses so they could send us pictures they had taken of us climbing the previous day. We also had a long conversation with a local woman named Ginny who lives just behind where I am sitting. She and her husband took a yearlong journey down the east coast in a boat when they were about our age. Her advice to us was to “wring it dry”.

This place is fantastic. The climbing is a little above us at this point in the journey, but so far we have been getting to the top (fairly gracefully most times). We came in last Tuesday evening in the rain after a day walking around Niagara Falls and attempting to boulder at Niagara Glenn. Jay had never been to the falls and I am always somewhat in awe of them, although the commercialism surrounding them leaves something to be desired. Niagara Glenn wasn’t really given a chance since we got there in the evening and it was difficult to see the holds by then, and when we awoke it was raining, so we moved on. From what we saw it seemed a little stiff though.

Tuesday, we made a brief stop in Toronto and bought a guidebook for this area at MEC. As we continued north, the clouds grew darker and the rain and even hail started. Sometimes rain has a good way of justifying long days sitting in the Rialta, though, so I enjoyed it. When we got to town we found the small campground that was listed in the guidebook as being $6/night. It was very much an RV park now (the guidebook was written in 1997) and there was no one at the marina to talk to about prices. I was tired of staying in places where we were not technically supposed to be, and was hoping to find a place to call home here, but we were both sure that the campground was going to be over our budget. By this time, it was evening and all we really needed was a place to park, so we tried finding one more campground and in the process discovered what we have come to refer to as “the hole”. It is on Cemetary road, and if you turn east from Rt 9, it is on the left and you don’t have to pass any houses to get to it. It is a simple pull out where it appears that some firewood has been collected by some of the local residents. We have spent three uneventful (FREE) nights there so far! We have also discovered the free public washrooms at the marina, which have proven useful, and that there is a decent wireless internet connection outside the library even though they charge two dollars an hour inside.

International postcard stamps are expensive. You all will be getting postcards written weeks or months before they are sent for the times we are not in the states for the rest of the trip. Since leaving Ohio on Monday we have only spent $125. That includes gas. We are pretty proud of that and being very careful about how and when we spend money. We did find out that the crappy little RV campground in town charges $23.66/night. That doesn’t include hookups to water or electricity. IN other words, the hole is really a score.

I have finally come to be totally and completely enjoying this trip. The first two days we sat in the Rialta too much and I felt the normal stresses of travel. We got a bit off course, we couldn’t find anything nice on the US side of the Falls aside from the park itself (I think now that is because there really isn’t anything nice on the US side), we slept in a parking lot of a Perkins and Best Western (and I am always a little nervous about places like that), and we weren’t getting any exercise. We’ve had a lot of mini starts to this trip, but after Shannon and Paul’s (unbelievably fairytale) wedding was over and we left Ohio, I was ready for the feeling I had when we had left Jay’s parents a month prior.

The east doesn’t have as much large scale splendor as the west, though, and sometimes it takes a little time and patience to see the beauty. As I write this, and feel the cool breeze and listen to the waves and occasionally look out at those cliffs across the bay, I see it very clearly. The water is a clear turquoise blue and from the top of the bluff it looks as if you could be in the Bahamas. I’m sure in the summer it might even feel that way until you jump in the water. The hike in is a short 15 minute jaunt through evergreens that were planted in neat post logging lines and then into birch trees lining moss covered limestone. The stone is pocketed and gnarly and reminds me of brains and something out of Lord of the Rings. You have to rap down to the climbs and a lot of the cliffs are so overhung underneath the climb itself that you have to use a hanging belay. My legs go numb; I don’t like that, and I wonder how I’d do on a big wall when I can’t feel my feet after Jay does a quick single pitch of sport. We have done the majority of the easiest climbs here in the first two days. There are only a very small handful of climbs below 5.10 and the 5.10’s are not very technical, but definitely strong. Jay and I have been doing a lot of eating and drinking and other general merriment type activities for the past few weeks and we feel we have a ways to go to get ready for the Red River Gorge by October. Why, you ask, am I sitting here typing instead of working on getting stronger on those cliffs right now? It rained all morning, it’s cold, and we think it might be best to take this as our rest day. Jay has twelve more routes he wants to do before we leave here. I think we can knock ‘em off in two days, he thinks three.

The sun doesn’t hit the cliffs ‘til about 3 pm, so we have luxurious mornings drinking tea, reading our books, and hanging out on the beach or by the lake. Yesterday I did yoga on the beach in the morning, and this morning Jay and I went for a bike ride on the west side of the peninsula. It feels good to get exercise everyday. It feels good to live very simply. It feels good to dictate what we do by the weather. It feels good to be unemployed!

I’m definitely writing this in a stream of conscious style, and if it is annoying to you, I’m sorry. I would like feedback from people, but at the same time, I guess this is kind of my journal, so I don’t care what you all think. The only thing that I want to add at this point is the fact that I have to go back to Ohio and testify in court on Oct 2nd, which changes our plans a bit. Some of you who know me well, know all about why. Some of you might not know anything, and that’s ok too. I just found out on Wednesday that we will have to testify and it has been very much on my mind since. I am thankful to be in a calming and peaceful place to think these thoughts and “prepare” myself for whatever that entails. All in all, I know it will bring more closure to the situation because we know we did everything we could do to protect others, and we faced it all honestly and openly ourselves.