Day 84 Goodbye Trent Severn Waterway

Finally did the Big Shute which is the second to the last "lock" before we entered Georgian Bay. We have heard about it since we started this part of our journey and it was a sight and experience to behold. Therefore, I will dedicate Part 1 to it and talk about starting the Georgian Bay in Part 2. We got an early start so we could beat the weekend traffic. Met up with Beaulah Belle again at the dock to the Shute and we observed the workings of this marvel together. It was built originally to keep this gross sucker eel, lamprey, out of the Trent and Lake Simcoe. These predators attached themselves to boats and sneak into other rivers, then they latch their round mouths with a circle of teeth on to fish and suck all their blood killing off the natural inhabitants of the waterway. Horror movie stuff! Now after decades of isolating and thwarting these creatures, because they die when the boat is out of the water, they are almost extinct. The other reason that they built the Shute was to save money. Concrete was very expensive at the turn of the 20th century, so building a railway over the mountain to transport boats was cheaper than building another lock. The Shute has been replaced twice. The version we took today was built in 1977. The pictures show the story. You drive the boat into a sling, it comes out of the water on tracks and transverses your vessel down 57' and over to the next body of water. Then it deposits you into a small basin and you drive away. We had no problem getting on at around 10:30, but since this is a huge summer weekend for Canada, there were 30  boats already waiting in line to come from the other direction. We saw them transport 6 boats and a jet ski on one trip. Glad we only had 2 with us. It was definitely exciting and unusual.