Viva the Rideau Waterway!!! 7/8/08

Hello All:

We are in Kingston, Ontario after 4 wonderful days on the Rideau Waterway, a series of canals, rivers and lakes connecting the Ottawa River and Lake Ontario. It was a wonderful experience - with all kinds of scenery from the suburbs of Ottawa (beautiful lawns and terraced gardens) to marshes (bird sanctuaries), pristine lakes with rock cliffs and narrow passageways between. There are 47 locks which are easy to manage. All the locks and many of the bridges are hand operated - an interesting process.

We stayed on the lock walls or town docks (no power or water) but lots of nice people and pleasant little villages. We just had one small problem (hopefully small. . . .) which happened today. We hit bottom on a very narrow stretch of canal and then hit a log or rock. There was no way around this shallow area. We reported it to the lock master at the next lock and they were going to try to locate whatever it was that had moved into the channel before there is serious damage. We only draft 3 1/2 feet - many boats are 4, 5 or even 6 feet. Both small boats in front of us also hit it. We're going to have a mechanic on the boat tomorrow - so we'll see.

We'll be here in Kingston until Friday. Then we're going to Trenton, about 45 miles west on Lake Ontario and then we'll be about a week on the Trent-Severen Waterway.

See you out there somewhere . . . .
Ann & Rob