Cruising Canada

Hello Everyone! We have been traveling without WiFi for over ten days. Some of our friends and family have been calling us to see if we fell off the earth, but no, just a low signal in a remote area. Let me try to catch you up on where we have been. We continued up the Trent-Severn Waterway through many small towns and lakes, and some interesting locks.

We hooked up with our old friends, John and Mary on their boat Passport, who we met in D.C.. They are from Chicago and leaving their boat in Mackinaw City.

                                    

This lock that you see Passport entering is called the Ranney Falls Flight Lock 11/12. In this flight of locks, you move out of the first one and directly into the next one after the gate opens.

It's an impressive flight lock as it will raise us a total of 48 feet up. It's operated hydraulically. I am on the bow looking up at the giant closed doors.

This is the other boat, Passport, behind us as the back doors slam shut.

We hold onto cables that are hanging off the sides of the wall as the water starts rising.

As we rise, I look up and it reminds me very much like a prison wall.

Beyond Lock 12 there is a swing bridge that the lock tender opens before you can depart.

                                     

The city of Campbellford is on both sides of the river, so we tie-up on the municipal wall and walk into town where there are supermarkets, pharmacies, bakery, liquor store, and numerous restaurants and specialty shops.

Here off in the distance you can see the Ranney Gorge  Suspension Bridge, that was built by the Canadian Military.

The Kawartha Lakes, once known to the Indians as "happy lands and bright waters," stretch across Ontario in a series of long loop-like passages. They offer unlimited cruising, both on and off the main Waterway route and are almost 70 miles long.

Boaters can enjoy a dozen or more lakes ranging from tiny Lovesick Lake to 14-mile Sturgeon Lake.

Canadians live, boat, and swim on on the water. There are so many people outside, enjoying their homes, waving to us as we pass by, and they all have their Canadian flags flying.

As we pass through these lakes, most homes have boat houses where they can slide their boats out of the water during the winter before everything freezes, including the lake (a daunting thought.) This house has it's own float plane.

Canadians are also very big on trailer park living, many times with a lovely view of the lake or river. This was a large trailer park on the hill where lots of kids were swimming.

This is what it looks like to come up to a lock. The lock master's office looks like a small house in a park setting with picnic tables and bathrooms. Many Canadians come to these parks with their families to watch the boats go up and down in the lock. They give you cards describing the animals and birds of Canada and the have coloring books for the kids. It's such a happy place.

This is a very funny picture. There were 4 boats in front of us and I'm taking a picture of another 4 boats behind us in this lock. You almost never see 8 boats in a lock but everyone was friendly and we helped with the lines and we packed them in and had a good time.

As the lock gate opens you can see old fashioned man-power as the two lock masters are walking a rotating bar in circles to open the gate. Old ingenuity is still at work here in Canada.