July 11, 2005
Hot Knots Marina, Orillia, Ontario (on the Trent-Severn Waterway)

For a change we are actually sticking to our plan... more or less. Joanne got her pedicure in Clayton and then we went to Potter's Beach on Grindstone Island for a bit of swimming and bottom-cleaning (the boat's, not ours). The water is crystal clear and warm enough once you get in it. We anchored so that I could stand up and walk all around the boat cleaning it with a nautical equivalent of a scotch-brite pad. Had to use the mask and snorkel for the bottom...

The uneven tan so evident in that picture has been evened out thanks to a lot of hours splashing about at that beautiful beach. We spent a couple more days exploring the American side of the Thousand Islands and then entered Canada at Gananoque, a delightful town approximately across the St. Lawrence River from Clayton. Canada has more of the Thousand Islands by actual count, but both countries have about the same land surface because the U.S. islands tend to be fewer but larger. The Canadian side seems even more breath taking than the American side.

Before we came to Canada we were told that things are cheaper here because of the exchange rate. Don't believe it. Most things not only tend to be more expensive, but there is a 15% sales tax on just about everything but raw food. Gas is about $4.00 Canadian per gallon, so even with the exchange rate it is far more expensive than what we paid anywhere in the U.S.(highest price was $3.00/gal. in an uppity marina in Virginia), and then you add that 15% tax on. It's possible to get some of the tax money back on items costing more than $50 that you take with you, but that is it.

Aside from feeling like we are bleeding money, we are having a great time in Canada. The people are really nice here. When we got to Kingston they even threw a party for us complete with fireworks.

This is a picture of the party in the park by our marina. If you look very closely you can see PUDDLE JUMPER in the middle of the photo. It's true that we were there on July 1, Canada Day, the Canadian day to celebrate nationhood, but we like to think they held the party just to celebrate our arrival in Canada.

Kingston is a great little city. It seems that just about every restaurant has a patio area tucked behind it and every meal we had their was tasty.

This is the courtyard of Chez Piggy, Joanne's favorite restaurant in Kingston.

And this is Joanne having a great time making a pig of herself at Chez Piggy.

This was the wood-fired pizza oven inside one of my favorite restaurants. The pizza was really good, though only thin crust was available. Our favorite place for breakfast was a bakery, Pan Chancho, that served the best latte ever with all sorts of tasty treats and interesting breakfast dishes. Sorry, no photos as we were too busy luxuriating with the lattes and stuffing our faces with the pastries.

After four days in Kingston we decided that we better head west before we got too fat to move so we took off toward the Trent-Severn Waterway. First stop was lunch in Picton, nice little town but then there are a lot of them here. Then up to the Bay of Quinte where we anchored for the night. Next day it was off to Trenton and into the waterway. Didn't actually stop in Trenton. The first place we stopped was a nice anchorage after the seventh lock. Most of the locks here seem even smaller than those on the Erie, and the gates are opened manually in most of them.

Note the two guys in the upper right walking the lever around to open the gate. When we went through most of the first 18 locks we were the only boat in the lock, but as we got farther west we started locking through with more and more boats. In some of the locks they were getting the boats in three abreast. The other boats were a mixed bag of runabouts, small and large cruisers, and sometimes large houseboats. We shared one lock with a large tour boat and its captain made us part of the entertainment. It can be a bit unnerving coming into and tying up in a lock with 50+ people watching as the tour guide points out over the loud speaker what we are doing.

And the next lock after we got incorporated into the local sightseeing tour we locked through with two young ladies who were out for a bit of exercise on the waterway.

This is Lock 21, a hydraulic lift lock. See the "pan" on the right side of the lock? It is like a very large bath tub and there are two of them. The second is at the bottom of the lock. We go into the "down" pan and tie up. The back of the pan closes, the lockmaster lets about a foot of water (130 tons) into the "up" pan, which forces it to go down and the down pan, along with us, to go up, and voila' we get lifted about 30 feet. There are two of these on the Waterway. At the second one we got to go all the way to the front of the pan and hang in the air 50 feet above the canal.

It sounded more exciting than it actually was. That could be said for most of the Waterway. It is interesting, and as far as canals go this is the most aestheticly pleasing, but with all the locks and the 6 mph speed limit on much of the waterway it seems to take forever to get anywhere. Some days doing 20 miles is considered a good day. Our personal best is about 42 miles (and eight locks).

The towns along the waterway are nice, but with one exception they were not all that special. The one exception was Campbellford. Two really good restaurants (if you are ever in Campbellford make sure you eat at the Blacksmith Restaurant!), a farmers' market (best price on quality beef since we got to Canada), and chocolate factory (the samples they give out at the Tourist Information office are barely edible but the chocolate covered raisins/cherries/blueberries/almonds are outstanding). But what really made Campbellford special for us was getting to meet an artist whose work took our breath away. Literally.

This is a very large statue of Canada's two-dollar coin, the "Tooney". It's called that because the one-dollar coin has the image of a loon stamped on it and is called the "Looney". The man who designed the polar bear on the "Tooney" is Brent Townsend and his gallery is in Campbellford just a very short walk from the municipal marina where we stayed. When we walked into his gallery the art on display was stunning. Townsend is not just talented, he's gifted. In our opinion he is easily as good as Robert Bateman (world-class wildfife artist), but he works in a wider range of subject matter than Bateman including landscapes, portraits, human activities and wildlife.

As we walked through his gallery painting after painting reached out and grabbed us so hard it almost hurt, but in a very, very nice way. We mentioned to the young lady who was working there that Townsend's work was absolutely the best we had seen in our 6,000+ miles of travel and she asked if we would like to meet the artist. We almost said "no" because we were reeling from the outstanding quality of his work, but fortunately we said yes instead. A few minutes later Townsend was there and for the next half hour we had an exhilerating, almost spiritually uplifting conversation about art and life as an artist. We finally managed to tear ourselves away from there, but it took several days to come down from that high. A part of it is still with us and probably always will be. Great art has a way of doing that to you.

You can see Brent Townsend's work online at: www.brenttownsend.ca

We're here in Orillia to get the engine and stern drive 100-hour service done, then it will be on to Georgian Bay about 40 miles and four more locks from here. Sorry we couldn't update the journal more often, but good internet connections are few and far between along our route. Several places claim they have wireless, but most of them don't have it operational yet. Previous Entries:
October 29, 2004
November 5 and 8, 2004
November 18, 2004
December 9, 2004
February 17, 2005
March 12, 2005
April 3, 2005
May 26, 2005
June 8, 2005
June 25, 2005

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