We have wanted to visit Tobermory since we moved to the Greater Toronto Area. But accommodations are always booked up a year in advance and traveling 6 hrs back and forth in one day just didn’t seem worth it. Especially since it’s been known to be SO packed that people cannot enter the parks.

We were looking for the cheapest vacation that we could, like max $1500, and since it was the off season we found some good deals on renting a whole cottage to ourselves.

Since it was also off season, it meant that we would have the trails to ourselves and wouldn’t have to worry about when we arrived at the parks.

I was happily surprised that the trails around the Grotto were relatively short. We thought we might have to carry the pup back. But 3-5kms is basically his max and what we were able to do that day! Although we almost started on the wrong trail that was 18kms haha

We ran into a few other brave souls as we were going through the trails. We reached the rocky beach and a lady was shocked to see a bulldog with us. “Is he half bulldog, half goat?” Hahah our little man can surprisingly keep up and has the same explorer personality.

These two will often go right to the edge of cliffs, no problem, which scares me to no end. But it really does make for beautiful photos.

I have read that it’s VERY difficult to get a shot of the grotto without other people in your photos. But we were the only ones around!

One bigger purchase me and the Man made before this trip was our jackets. For people that often go hiking, we actually have no “winter coats”. That is no functional ones, more stylish. Since we knew it was going to be mighty cold by the water, we purchased some Canadiana jackets from Walmart. Which I must say… was probably our best purchase in a long while. A great value for the price they were selling at….we were expecting to pay around $300 and we paid about half that.

I planned for us to spend the sunset by the lighthouse in tobermory. Google doesn’t have the correct location, and the road to find the light house actually states there is no access to the water on the road to get there. Obviously to deter tourist on a residential road that I can imagine gets WAY too packed in the summer.

It was a pretty cloudy day and I was really hoping to get some amazing sunset shots. But these subtle purplish shots are pretty too!

I sent The Man up the lookout tower for my last sunset shot of the night. I attempted to climb the tower and made it about half way up before I looked down through the grates and felt my legs buckle as I clung myself to the railing. There was no way I would be able to walk down from the top hahaha I would probably have to sit and slide my way down like a toddler.

Well that’s another one off the bucket list!