Peterborough Lift Lock and Beyond

         We left Healey Falls on Monday, July 3rd and entered the Trent River.  We went through only one lock on Monday, before we got into Rice Lake.  This is a long, narrow lake - about 15 miles long.  We had it mostly to ourselves, this being the end of the Canadian holiday weekend, and found a really nice anchorage just of Black Island.  A friendly local came by to make sure we were ok.  Apparently not many Loopers anchor in Rice Lake for the night.  We had a very pleasant evening and stayed up to watch the full moon rise.  The picture doesn’t do it justice - it was a gorgeous dark red-orange and very large.  

Tuesday we headed into the Otonabee River toward Petersborough.  Our plan was to stay in Peterborough at the town dock, but we were so excited about the hydraulic lift lock, we shot right past the basin where the town lies.  There are three locks they consider to be in Peterborough, but only the lift lock is named for the town, and for some reason, we thought the town was after that lock.  The lock itself was really impressive - two basins side-by-side, each on a giant hydraulic lift (think of a car lift at the mechanic shop).  As one rises 65 feet, the other comes down.  Unlike the other locks, in these you cleat your line, and then you’re free to wander the boat to watch the process in action.  No tending.  The water in the lift just remains placid.  When that locktender asked us our destination, we said “here in Peterborough” he looked at us kind of funny and asked if we were planning on turning around.  Oh, we said, realizing what we’d done.  That’s how we ended up spending Tuesday night at the top of lock 22 in Nassau Falls, the next lock up the canal.

See the jetski in the lift lock to the right.

The signpost at Lock 22

It’s been very hot and humid, and nearly windless.  Today was no exception.  It was already in the 80s when we left Nassau Falls this morning and promising to be in the 90s.  We started the ice maker when we left so we could have ice water to drink while tending lines in the locks.  We had four locks to go through almost immediately, but it would take all morning, as these are front-filling locks and the locktenders do it slowly so as not to create too much turbulence for the boats inside.  Thus we covered about five miles in about three and a half hours, spending most of that time in the sweltering heat of each lock.  When we got to the town of Lakefield around 12:30 pm, both Dan and I were a sweaty mess.  We tied off to the seawall, got our grocery bags and some spoons, and set off for the grocery store and a pint of ice cream.  Lakefield is a cute little town, with all the amenities walkable from the lock.  We enjoyed our ice cream in the little park across from the grocery store, and then went back inside the store to reprovision.  We took our time; the air-conditioning felt heavenly.  

From Lakefield we moved into Kathawanooka Lake and Dan said “This looks like a great spot to anchor.”  So we dropped the hook a little ways from the channel and immediately went for a swim - our first time since the Bahamas.  Wow, that water felt great.  A nice breeze came up too.  We are entering lake country now, so I think there’s more swimming in our immediate future!  We should have been taking our cue from the local kids - they have been swimming off the bridges and seawalls since we entered this Canal!  

And here is how Tommie cools off - on top of the screen.  

Beginning the Trent-Severn Canal

     Saturday, July 1, I took a letter into town to mail and found the Farmer’s Market was open.  (We’d been told it wouldn’t take place due to Canada Day.)  So I went back to the boat for a bag and some money.  Dan opted to stay behind as our new friend Debbie was coming over to help him troubleshoot the tension problem with his sewing machine.  While I washed the beet greens and turnips, and shelled the peas I’d bought, they went over every aspect of the machine.  (Dan learned a lot about what doesn’t affect the tension…)  It’s still a mystery to be solved.

Downtown Trenton

We left the marina close to 1030 and made the first lock of the canal shortly after.  The Trent-Severn, which begins in the Trent River at Trenton and ends in Severn River at Port Severn, has 45 locks which lift boats 275 feet and lowers them 166+ feet.  It’s 240 miles long, zig-zagging its way through this neck of Ontario through several lakes and towns.  We’ve gone through 17 locks, and traveled 36.35 miles in two days.  The guidebook says this canal takes about seven days, but we’re thinking it’s going to be more like 10-14.  

On Saturday we stopped just after Lock 7, in the little town of Glen Ross, which boasts the best ice cream on the canal.  There was a small general store right next to the seawall.  How could we resist?  We treated ourselves and then had dinner, ready to spend the night here. 

Given that the area was a gathering spot for teenagers on ATVs intent on leaping into the canal from an old railroad bridge, and it’s daylight until nearly 9 pm, we decided to move on and take up space at the seawall before the next lock.  It was considerably quieter there. 

    Today (Sunday July 2) we moved on through the locks and took a break at the 2-lock flight in Ranney Falls, just shy of the bigger town of Campbellford.  We’d noticed a pedestrian suspension bridge over the gorge that runs alongside the canal, where Ranney’s Falls are, and Dan realized a Canadian Tire store was only a twenty-minute walk away.  He’s been hoping for a Canadian Tire store since we got into Canada.  It’s one of those places that has everything you need, things you might need, and things you didn’t know you needed.  We walked there first, before going to check out the suspension bridge, and brought back a bagful, mostly of things we didn’t know we needed.  

The suspension bridge was very cool.  Great view of the falls on one side, and the rapids running through the gorge on the other side.  There’s a large national park on the other side of the bridge, which hiking trails and a campground, and it was very popular today on this holiday weekend.  We opted not to hike, after our walk to and from Canadian Tire, it’s just a little too humid to be good hiking weather.  We returned to the boat and pushed on.  

        At each lock the locktenders ask where we’re going.  We always say we don’t know, we don’t have a plan.  They accept this answer cheerfully, but they really want to know some kind of destination because they call ahead to the next lock to alert them you’re coming.  So we’ve taken to adding “what do you recommend?” and that’s how we found out where the quieter stops are and what we should stop for (like the ice cream at lock 7) and which stops we might think of avoiding because they are either wild with local boaters or they might be in a ‘sketchy’ section of town.  So here we are this evening tied up to the seawall just beyond lock 17, in Healey Falls.  (There are no falls, but the flight of two locks was very impressive with its 60 foot combined lift.)  28 locks and 203.65 miles to go.  

Approaching Locks 16 & 17 

            We've had a request for more cat pictures, so here's Tommie on bow watch.

Kingston to Trenton

                 When we raised anchor in Morton Bay on our last day in the Rideau Canal, we pulled up this huge mess of weeds.  It took us about fifteen minutes to clear it with a gaff and a boathook.  I spoke with a local boater later about our beautiful night in that Bay and she said "Did you pull up some grass with the anchor?"  It seems this area is known for its overgrowth of thick grass and weeds.  Someone else told us the zebra mussels had done such a great job clearing the water the grass started to grow in where it had never been before.  If you anchor here, keep something handy to hack off the clumps you bring up!

        We entered the last locks on the Rideau at Kingston Mills, a flight of four locks dropping 60 feet.  The view was spectacular! 

        From there we moved on to Kingston, and took a marina for the night.  Our tentative plan was to spend a leisurely afternoon and evening looking around town and explore a little more the next day as well as take care of reprovisioning and laundry, spending another night here if we fancied.  So we scoped out where the laundromats and grocery store were, noted the lovely stone buildings, and browsed through a few shops.  We’re not big fans of dollar-type stores, but Dan was looking for thread and so we ducked into one to see they had what he needed.  He is currently designing a flag to commemorate our 2015 completion of the Down East Circle Loop.  

We chose a small restaurant with a patio overlooking the street to people watch over drinks and dinner.  I noticed a large pink cloud formation and wondered if the smoke from the wildfires was finally catching up to us.  We went to firesmoke.ca and saw that yes it was.  In fact, Kingston was due to be covered (smothered) with a ‘very unhealthy’ plume the next day.  

        We changed our plans.  After dinner we collected the laundry and the grocery bags and I sat in the laundromat while Dan did the shopping.  We got up early to leave Kingston in time to make the 0700 opening of the bridge that let us out into Lake Ontario.  Things were a little hazy, but not bad, and we had an enjoyable cruise along the coast to the Adolphus Reach that led us back inland to the Bay of Quinte.  We anchored in a little nook off Willow Point for the night.

Thursday, June 29, we awoke to a very hazy sunrise.  Air quality was designated as ‘unhealthy’ so we donned our KN95 masks as recommended and wore them all day while we cruised through the Bay of Quinte.  We decided to make a side run to the Murray Canal - because that’s Dan’s mother’s family name. 

        Murray Canal is definitely the road less traveled for most Great Loopers, even though it’s straight across Lake Ontario from Rochester NY, and is considered the beginning of the Trent-Severn Canal.  It’s only 8 kilometers (nearly 5 miles) long and has two swing bridges, but no locks.  We pretty much had the entire canal to ourselves.  We traveled the length of it to Lake Ontario, turned around and came back inside the Brighton Road Bridge and tied up to the seawall for the night.  Lucas, the bridge tender, came down to offer us the key to the washroom and told us to just hang it on the hook near his office door if we left before he got back in the morning.  

Today (Friday June 30) the air is still unhealthy, but the smoke is supposed to start clearing out later today and stay clear for the next couple of days.  We’ve taken a slip at the Trent Port Marina and are enjoying their boaters’ lounge (and wifi).  And there is a rumor of ice cream available here too…  Side note:  tomorrow is Canada Day, when all of Canada celebrates its nationhood with fireworks and festivities.  

Rideau Canal

         We stayed two nights in Ottawa, one night on the outskirts of Ottawa in Dow Lake, and then pushed on, soon leaving the city and suburbs behind us.  There are 49 locks separating several lakes and rivers that make up the Rideau Canal which rambles from Ottawa to Kingston.  So far, we’ve been through 42 of them.  We are one day away from Kingston, two if we don’t feel like traveling very far tomorrow.  

All but two of the locks so far were motorized.  All the rest were hand-operated, as were many of the opening bridges, by Canada Parks personnel.  These employees are mostly young, all smiles, filled with pride over their knowledge of the locks and the surrounding areas, and eager to answer questions or give you a hand.  They ask how far you plan to travel today and call ahead to the next lock to let them know you’re coming.  Many times we’ve moved from one lock into the next without waiting, and the times we have had to wait averages less than thirty minutes.  All the parks and docks and restrooms (they call them washrooms) are well maintained and open to the public, and there often is an audience watching you lock through.  While we are being lifted or dropped, people will stand on the side to watch and often call out questions about how far we’re coming and where we’ve been.  Little kids will wave.  People will point out the cat if Tommie shows up in the doorway.  It’s been a lot of fun being lock ‘celebrities.’  

The day we left Dow Lake (Friday June 23) we moved into a narrow area lined with maples and spruces and the occasional ‘cottage.’  We went through seven locks and decided to call it a day in a little town called Burritt’s Rapids, tying up at the dock after the eighth lock of the day.  This town is on a very small island and has a few historic stone houses and a short trail called the Tip to Tip trail (one end of the island to the other, lengthwise) which goes from the lock through town and to a view of the dam on the other side of the island.  It wasn’t a very long trail, but it was a good leg-stretcher.   

Saturday we cruised on past the towns of Merrickville and Smiths Falls (13 more locks) and through the lock at the area of Poonamalie to stay on the seawall there.  Poonamalie was so named by a Royal Engineer who had worked on a site in the Tamil region of India and means ‘cat hill.’ There is little here beyond the lock and its surrounding park, but it too had tourists and bicyclists and picnickers like all the other lock parks.  These waterways so far had been rivers and canal cuts, decorated with duckweed and lily pads, the shores lined with maples and weeping willows.  Really, they could be anywhere in the US.  It does seem odd to be traveling along knowing there is no ocean outlet coming up, and there are no tides. 

        Sunday we left the narrow winding rivers to enter the Rideau lakes.  These a large, deep lakes with many islands and are very popular with Ontarians.  Lots of recreational boaters on these lakes, as well as people out fishing.  We made a lunchtime stop at Col. By Island.  Col. By is the man who designed and oversaw the creation of the entire canal.  Every town has a By street.  Ottawa was first named Bytown.  This island had been privately owned for years until it was sold to the Canada Parks system and renamed Col. By Island.  We’d been told it was a must stop.  There happened to be space, so we stopped.  We did the perimeter walk in about fifteen minutes, mindful of the poison ivy which was everywhere.  At one point on the trail Dan remarked about the oddly shaped trees and wondered if there had been an ice storm in the 1980s.  Then we came across a sign detailing how a tornado cut a swath through the middle of the island.  That explained the odd curvatures of the trees that survived.  

Done with Col. By Island, we set off again.  It was a toss up between stopping at Westport or Newboro.  One of the locktenders had told us Westport offered hamburgers “to die for” and Newboro had a store called Kilborn’s that offered everything you wanted and things you didn’t know you needed.  We opted for Newboro and tied up at the seawall there after having going through that lock.  There were only two locks on Saturday.

Kilborn’s was interesting, but it was really a one-stop department store for summer people looking to decorate their cottages.  We didn’t find anything there we needed or wanted, but we did enjoy sitting in the porch swing outside.  We had hoped for a nice restaurant for dinner, but Newboro only had one restaurant and the menu didn’t interest us.  Another time, maybe.  So we had supper on the boat (chicken teriyaki on the grill) and watched a map turtle climb the embankment adjacent to us to lay eggs.  

Today we left Newboro and began our descent down through the locks towards Kingston.  Prior to Newboro all the locks lifted us up, beginning with the 80 foot lift in Ottawa, for a total of 275 feet.  Now we descend 166.2 feet to Kingston and Lake Ontario.  Today we’ve come down around 90 feet already, the last 60 feet in four locks at Jones Falls.  We had contemplated spending the night at the dock in Jones Falls but after walking through the park to see the sights (old dam wall, no Falls because the water has been harnessed in large wooden pipes to feed a hydroelectric plant) we moved on into  beautiful Moton Bay, surrounded by stone cliffs to anchor for the night.  This could be Maine, and it’s making us a little bit homesick.  

Ottawa

         On Tuesday morning we had a very peaceful cruise to Ottawa.  We’ve been really lucky with very calm seas on our passages through large bodies of water, even if it’s raining. 

We reached the base of the Rideau Canal with its incredible flight of eight locks just before noon.  These are similar to those at the end of the Chambly Canal - hand operated, and one leading directly to the next.  We were lifted a total of 80 feet for a length of less than a half mile, and it took nearly three hours to transit all eight locks.  It’s an incredible engineering feat.  We tied up at the long seawall after the locks, right in the heart of the city, and walked back to the flight to gawk at it from above. 

The flight of locks sits between the castle-like Fairmont Laurier hotel and Parliament Hill. Ottawa is the capital of Canada; Parliament Hill is where their government (House of Commons, Senate, and Prime Minister’s Cabinet) buildings are as well as their government library and Supreme Court, all enclosed in Gothic majesty in a beautiful park.  Normally people are welcome to tour much of it - both inside and outside where all the statuary and monuments are - but much of it is under reconstruction; currently tourists are limited to the perimeter of the park.  The entire Hill overlooks the Ottawa River.  

We had a light supper at one of the nearby hotel restaurants and returned to watch the summer solstice sun set from the Willie Dawes. 

Wednesday we set out to navigate the subway (the O) and the bus system to get to the marine store called The Chandlery to see about equipping our boat with a throwable life ring.  We’re not city people, so we always find mass transit a little daunting, but Ottawa makes it all pretty simple. The people we encountered volunteered their help and local knowledge too and we enjoyed making quick friends everywhere.  We took the O to the end of its line, hopped the number 57 bus toward Crystal Bay, and walked a block or two from the stop to The Chandlery.  We were on the west side of town, in a small shopping mall-ish area. 

We did find a life ring that was both Canada and US approved!  Dan was quite the character wearing that ring as we browsed the nearby thrift store and hopped back on the bus - this time the number 11.  We opted to stay on the bus instead of taking it back to the subway, in order to see more of Ottawa, and we came upon Chinatown! 

This one was much smaller than the one in Montreal, but it had a much more elaborate gate.  We decided to exit the bus and eat lunch here, finding a nice little Vietnamese place with outdoor seating.  Afterwards we walked around a bit and back to a bus stop to catch the next number 11.  The buses have a posted schedule of arriving every ten minutes or so, but this one took nearly thirty to arrive and other people began to drift over to wait with us.  One of them came up to Dan and began a very long, very involved, and very personal narrative.  Dan’s recounting is below. We’ve come to learn that Dan is not just a people person, he is a people magnet.

We went to the boat for a short rest and a lot of water - it’s been close to 90 and walking through a city just amplifies the heat.  Then we set off to find the Byward Market, a few blocks’ worth of shops featuring farm fare and artisanal everything from clothing to cheese.    We picked up some great fresh fruits and vegetables.  

Thursday morning we set out to walk Parliament Hill and we timed it to be in an adjacent park for “Ottawa’s best hot dogs” (recommended by a woman we met in the subway).  The Hill was incredible, and we learned a little about the formation of Canada, but the hot dog stand in the Major's Hill park was in the section also under reconstruction, so we headed back to the Byward Market and had deli sandwiches prepared in the Byward Cafe.  We’ll have to come back another time for those hot dogs.  We also didn’t hit any of the museums save the little stone building next the Rideau Canal entrance that gives a nice history of the canal itself.  Ottawa has a War Museum, a Natural History Museum, and a National Art Gallery among others.  Next time.  Cruisers are allowed 48 hours at the seawall downtown, and we felt it best to move on so other cruisers could enjoy the city.  

From Dan:

Wednesday afternoon while we were waiting at a bus stop, Kathy observed an older fellow, quite thin and wearing a mask, bend down to pick up a cigarette butt which he rubbed off on the steps of a nearby building and then very carefully folded up in a napkin which he pocketed.  A few minutes later he tapped me on the shoulder and asked if that was a life ring or a drone.  I was confused and he repeated the question.  I explained that we’d come from a marine store where I’d bought the life ring for our boat.  He then launched into a story about how everyone these days was talking about drones - flying them, doing all kinds of things with them - and then orated on the subject of his numerous trips to Europe to visit his many relatives, which he listed by name and country.  He spoke of his wife of 35 years, now deceased 11 years, who for years refused to travel with him due to her fear of flying and how hard he tried to get her to come with him, even sending her to a therapist.  He eventually got her onto a plane to Europe, warning her the engines would be noisy and the plane cavitating upon take off.  Well this plane was delayed in takeoff - as had a previous flight, which was why he always purchased insurance, because insurance took care of you during such delays, with meals and rooms and such - and there was icing and then de-icing and more delays and finally the plane took off.  An hour or so after departure she turned to him and asked when are we taking off? So apparently her phobia was over.  They spent many months in Europe meeting long lost relatives of his and hers, months because they wanted to see the seasons change.  Once home, they were planning another trip - she was chagrinned she had waited so long to get on a plane - and the story turned to how she had fibromyalgia and went outside to pick up a package and how it had rained and there was this water-filled hole she stepped into.  In the meantime he let us know he was a mechanic and his son-in-law was having car trouble and he told him to bring the car over, but for some reason his son-in-law asked him to come over to their house instead.  After some background information of the son-in-law’s family and how many children and grandchildren were in the entire family, some adopted, some biological, he came back around to letting us know his wife had fallen into that hole, hit her head and drowned.  He and the son-in-law found her - we're not entirely clear on when, and if it was related to the car trouble - performed CPR and waited for an ambulance, but she had died.  He sued the ambulance services for not getting there quick enough.  

About this time the bus finally came, and the story ended on that note.