Orillia, Ontario was incorporated as a village in 1867, as a town in 1875 and as a city in 1969, and is located on the shores of lakes Simcoe and Couchiching in central Ontario.  It was a more active community than several of our last stops.  The marina was nice and centrally located near town and stores and there were a number of looper boats coming and going.

    

    

We had some ominous clouds and a bit of rain off and on…….

    

We were also positioned to witness some gorgeous sunrises……

    

We call these “city mascots”.  In Norfolk it was mermaids, here in Orillia it is sculptures of sailboats – placed strategically around town.

    

The Chippewas of Mnjikaning Indian Reservation is here as well.  The name refers to the fishing weirs at Atherley Narrows between Lake Simcoe and Lake Couchiching.  There are 1600 members with approximately 700 living on the reserve and about 900 living off the reserve.  Weirs are used to trap fish and are usually built from wood or stones.

    

With all of the lakes and bodies of water in Ontario, we have frequent sightings of float-planes, both docked at marinas and in the air.

    

There was a nice city park at the marina, complete with a sandy beach……

…..a mini train ran through the park………and of course – ICE CREAM!

    

We took advantage of the ample biking trails throughout Orillia……..

    

On our walk to town we found this neat “Fairy Village” at a local nature store, and we timed it just right for the downtown street festival!

        

After a long walk we decided to take a break and stopped at Fionn’s for some “Mini Yorkies”, which are basically mini shepherd’s pies and really good!

    

Two evenings were spent meeting follow loopers.  Jim and Susan, aboard “Gypsy”, invited us to their boat for docktails.  We managed to increase their entertaining space by having 13 on board one evening.  Thanks Jim and Susan!  We also met Julia and Steve on “”Erben Renewal”, Greg and Doreen on “Noah’s Ark”,  Bruce and Janet on “Elixir”,  Tom and Connie Jo on “rPad”, Jan and Stacy on “Ceci Kay” and the Magee’s on “True North”.

                

We had dinner with Jim and Susan at “Rustic Pizza Vino” , where David was our most attentive waiter, and were later joined by the local Orillia Harbor Hosts.

    

The marina had a lit up Canadian flag………and Karen manually routed us from Orillia to Coldwater for our departure in the morning……

    

Random Stuff:  It was humorous watching the many geese at the marina – much of the time they were diving for morsels and exposing their big white butts!