I've been waking up so hungry with all the previous days activities. It made sense to not fight it and simply get up to do stuff. After a little blogging it was time to hit the road for early sun and coffee. The coffee sop is open at a reasonable 7:30 AM. leaving a few nice sun lit moments to capture some shots. After a few hours of blogging, Silvia came down mostly ready for Ministers Island. .
We learned she had required a rain resistant coat and this would possibly be a good day to test it. We had followed the Ministers Island instructions and had purchased tickets the night before online. It's important to be aware of the Tide Schedule for Crossing the Bar Road https://www.ministersisland.net/tides-07-2021.htm#31 Reveals Cross over 9:20 am – Return by 2:20 pm.
I convinced Silvia to ride to the Island and contemplated crossing with the bikes. We packed whatever we needed and the ride was pretty easy for me. There is a gradual climb tat tired Silvia but it was not that bad. We crossed the bar along with cars and passed a 10 car line up. Nobody else was walking or biking at the time. We had to interrupt the ticket checking people to make them aware that we were there. After confirming our online tickets we were good to go.
Cars are checked in with a dashboard sticker. The sticker is relinquished once back on the mainland. This way they know if the Island is clear. After passing the gate, there is a pretty steep climb to the main parking lot. We misheard the directions to bypass the road and rather took a portion of the forest trail by foot. If's was a little longer but certainly nicer. After switching out to cooler clothes we walked back towards the main parking lot and left our bikes. The sun was showing it was to be hot that day and it made no sense to engage in any indoor tours at this time. We decided to enjoy hiking a portion of the trails before it was a scorcher. The trails on the island are very well marked although once out there it's easy to get side tracked with other options. It is an island so getting lost is impossible. We found the beach front tended to be isolated from the trail which was good to prevent erosion. After hiking possibly 25% of the trail the temperature was getting a little hot.
It was time to grab an indoor tour of the massive barn Van Horne's livestock barn. These animal's were very happy. There was so much attention given to their well being. Rounded corners so they did not bump into edges, and even weigh scale as they entered and exited the building. The entire property was build to be self sufficient for the small family and large staff. It was cool. After out tour, we had no more reason to stay..
We thought it would have been fun to watch the tide come in as it sometimes catches people off guard. Instead we chose to head home, pack a bit and enjoy a find St. Andrews dinner. We wanted to try a different place but they were still insisting on masks. Their call but we had none and since the rules had changed we headed to a different location. We headed back to the familiar at Kennedy Inn http://kennedyinn.ca/ It was super busy and we got a spot inside. We saw more details of the hotel inside and it was crazy busy. The manager helped out by pushing our order through super fast. I took his recommendation of Lobster Chowder. It tasted amazing. Silvia and I were kinda nervous about getting out on time to Kayak the next day so we headed home to pack and hit the hay early.
This is the morning rush to Ministers Island. We rode our bikes and bypassed the cars lol
Very happy animal lived in this barn
Why were we the only bikes parked there?
We figured hiking while cooler would be wiser. Safe the tour until later
We saw only a few souls on the walk around this magnificent island
Which way do we go?
I found no official trail down to the beach. We left it that way and stayed on the trails
Crazy beautiful
Toast
Lotsa garbage coming in from the tidal waters, bummer
That's a big ass barn
The basement of the barn, this thing was enourmous
A creamery for the cow milk they created, wild
A barn, really WTF
I'm kinda confused with the buildings here so I'll sort that out later
This was the "bar" at the lowest tide. Easy riding
Made it :-)
