Bonus Kingston 7-9-10

I had not expected to do a blog entry about Kingston as initially we could only get 1 night in the Confederation Basin marina due to Buskers’ Festival. This forced us to do a whirlwind round of chores in 4 hours—wash the deck and fenders, pumpout at Kingston Yacht Club, fill water tank, do laundry and grocery shopping. We lucked out after all of these exhausting chores with the welcome news that there was a cancellation and we could stay 7/8.

With only 1 day to tour and hotter than hell temperatures, we opted for the air-conditioned Confederation Trolley tour. Kingston is located at the intersection of the St. Lawrence River, Rideau Canal and Lake Ontario which gave it strategic historic naval significance. Today it has a population of 115,000 2 colleges, parks and museums, K-Rock arena, stately brick and limestone homes, a Farmers’ Market behind City Hall and lots of restaurants (recommend Wooden Head) and coffee shops (Chocolate Café). It has the lowest crime rate in the area but has a strange industry—8 penitentiaries, used to have 10 and even has a Penitentiary Museum.

We took the hop-off/hop-on bus option so that we could tour Fort Henry and Bellevue House, home of Canada’s first Prime Minister, Sir John A. Macdonald. Our costumed guide in heavy wool tartan plaid gave us a tour of this venerable fort that never had to fire a shot. Bob is a big fan of C. S. Forester’s Horatio Hornblower series and was dismayed to learn on this tour that officer commissions from ensign to colonel were purchased. Sir John A. is the George Washington of Canada as he united Canada from coast to coast in the 1860’s and he was a bit more colorful. You can take afternoon tea on the lawn but Sir John would consume something more spirited and once told one of his cabinet officers that he would have to sober up as the Macdonald government could not afford 2 drunks!

Here’s Bob on the free ferry over to Wolfe Island. It would be a great place to bring bikes but today it was just too hot. There is even a free tour of Kingston City Hall which is worth taking. Dinner on the patio at Wooden Head gave us a great chance to check out the buskers all one-upping each other in dare devil tricks. Our vote was for Fire Guy who did an outstanding comedy routine while skateboarding and playing with fire.

Riding the Rideau 7-7-10

On 7/2, we left Ottawa on the north end of the Rideau Canal to take the full ride south and do 49 locks to Kingston by 7/7. That’s more locks than the Trent-Severn Canal in 240 miles vs. 125 miles so we hustled. This waterway is where Canadians come to play on their boats and you will be doing locks with kayaks, pontoon boats, rental houseboats, Sea Scouts in canoes and cruisers of all shapes and sizes. "St. Paul, MN" on our dinghy bottom always gets some attention and we say that we've traveled 7,000 miles just to be here. Often we meet people who are planning an adventure but are still reticent so we like to encourage them to "go for it."

Everybody is happy here on the canal, eager to give tips on the best places to stay and this friendliness is in full display with the lockkeepers who always give a welcoming smile, help with lock lines, fend-off, and even find a spot for you on a crowded mooring wall.

There are easier ways to get back to the Great Lakes but we love the canal route. Each is a piece of history forged by men against incredible odds (1,000 lost their lives building this canal) and the Rideau museum at Merrickville commemorates their efforts. It’s a chance to see small town Canada, go at a leisurely pace and enjoy the scenery. This canal is a microcosm of other parts of the Loop—the marshlands of Georgia, the narrow tree-hung sections like the Dismal Swamp of Virginia, fresh water lakes that open up and then narrow to cuts of small islands and rock like Georgian Bay and some skinny water of 5 feet 2 inches in the well-marked channels and sometimes in the down locks.

We did not have an itinerary for these 6 days and chose destinations based on boater recommendations, weather of 90 degrees with equal humidity, and space availability by 2pm. Without planning, we did a pretty representative sample by anchoring in beautiful Morton’s Bay (grass and mud with good holding but you will pull up a clump), staying on the mooring walls with power at the towns of Merrickville (plenty of shops and restaurants) and Smiths Falls (nice park), and the quieter mooring walls at Burritts and Newboro (check out Kilborn’s).

There are so many places to see and explore and we've met boaters that have been cruising here for 20 years and have not seen it all yet. Maybe we will re-do the Rideau again in the future. We are now in Kingston and will tour this town, reprovision and head out to explore the 1,000 Island area for a few days.