Leaving Kingston, we took the inland route to Trenton, traveling through the Bay of Quinte. This took 2 days, so we anchored out one night in a bay which was a favored anchorage. When we arrived, there were 10 sailboats there already--9 of which were rafted together. It was also supposed to be great fishing for walleye (they are called pickerel here) but the fishermen among us didn't have the right bait !--or so they said !The next day we headed for Trenton and had a nice marina spot in front of this park.
The next day we began the Trent-Severn Waterway. This route will take us 240 miles from Lake Ontario to Georgian Bay with a series of 44 locks. We will rise about 600 feet in elevation before beginning our decent.
Here is a picture of the swinging bridge over a gorge near Campbellford which I did not want to go on. Beautiful scenery but everyone says the best is yet to come....hmmm.
Many of the locks were adjacent to a road bridge, so the lockmaster would have to open the bridge for us too. People would get out of their cars and watch the boats go in and out of the locks.
This is a sculpture of the toonie--the two dollar Canadian coin. The designer of the coin came from this town of Cambellford. We have been getting loonies (one dollar coins) too which are needed for the laundry machines.
While many of the locks are hydraulic, many are still hand operated. This picture shows the two operators opening the gates on either side of the lock. Many of the locks employ college students---all have the lock people have been very friendly.
We saw this loon with a hitch-hiker when we were going through Rice Lake. The scenery is beautiful. The lakeside cottages are modest and there are lots of fisherman.
There are 2 double locks on this waterway. These 2 locks each were 27 feet. Leaving one lock, we'd just have to drive the boat forward about 100 feet and get secured again. This is a view from the top of the second lock.
This is Margaret Island--the name thus worthy of entering it in the blog!!
Here are some of the many many summer cottages along the way. They not only dotted the shoreline, but those away from the shoreline apparantly had water access.
Not entirely sure, but we thought these white dots on the hillside were hay bales wrapped in plastic. There were many farms also along the way...
A pretty, older home along the waterway.
In our last lock before Petersborough, we think the lockmaster was trying to set a record. Up until then, the most boats we'd had in a lock was 3 trawlers or 2 trawlers and 2 small runabouts. Here he put in Berge's and us (35 and 36 feet), 2 larger trawlers (52 and 48 feet) and the 18 foot runabout sqeezed in the middle. Since it was on the week-end, it was entertaining for the spectators !Arriving here at the marina, we'll do laundry and catch up on things like that. So far, we have been 3 days on the Trent and have traveled 90 miles and gone through 19 locks.
