Day 11: Tuesday, September 22

Time To Go Home!

We had a clear, sunny day for our departure.

We got up at about 8:30 and had our showers. We packed up everything except the toiletries then headed off for breakfast at the Tobermory Princess Hotel:

Reaching the hotel we found three people in queue ahead of us – the staff were only letting in a few people at a time due to COVID restrictions. After a 20 minute wait, though, we were ushered in and guided to a little table. I had the Breakfast Special (sausage, eggs, toast, etc.) and Vince had the Eggs Benny, which had been much heralded on TripAdvisor. Breakfast was absolutely delicious:

Having our fill, we left the Princess Hotel’s dining room and returned to our room at the Bruce Anchor Motel. Before we packed up I took one last shot of the tree outside our motel room, which was just starting to display the fall colours:

We finished getting ready for the journey, then packed everything up and loaded the Mighty Durango. I returned the room key to the office and we were off!

Farewell Tobermory… It’s Been Great!

It was 11:00 when we hit the road. According to Google, Tobermory to Toronto takes a little over 4 hours on a good day. We stopped for $10.00 worth of gas in Wiarton as the tank was getting lower than I felt comfortable with. I had purchased a gas plan with Hertz, meaning that the vehicle’s fuel tank could be brought back near-empty and Hertz will fill it upon return (and charge me, of course). It was a tricky thing to keep the gas near empty for return, but not run out of fuel on the returning journey.

We were following the #6 highway and then on to the #10, and everything was going fine until we hit a traffic circle which put us on to the Bruce Grey 10, which is a totally different route. To make a long story short, we got quite lost until we realized we could take a concession road across country that would take us to Dundalk, where we got back on the #10 as originally planned. Stopping in Dundalk, we went to a Tim’s and got a juice and apple fritter (me), and a coffee and muffin for Vince – at this point it had been a long time since our lovely breakfast at the Tobermory Princess Hotel. While in Dundalk I put yet another $10.00 worth of gas in the vehicle as it was again getting uncomfortably low for the journey ahead. This navigational error cost us well over an hour’s time and a quarter tank of fuel.

Back on track in Dundalk after refueling (ourselves and the vehicle), we followed the #10, then got on to the 401, then south down the 427, then on to the Gardiner Expressway to Lower Jarvis Street, then home.

We stepped through our front door about 4:30 – what a long return trip it had been! I secured a visitor’s pass from the Concierge for overnight vehicle parking of the School Bus (the Durango would be returned to Hertz the next day). We made two trips back and forth to the vehicle to get all the luggage.

Everything was fine in the condo. I made the rounds and turned the water, router, servers and PC back on, and we settled into doing laundry and meal prep. After dinner the rest of the evening was spent uploading all our pictures and catching up on the last bit of this journal.

And… well, that’s about it!

Hats off to the great Ontario Getaway of 2020!