Monday, July 18: Newboro, Ontario

We've continued moving on since our exciting stump adventure – thankfully it's been rather boring travel! The map below will give you an idea of where we are and where we are headed. The red is where we've been and the yellow is where we will be going. This small loop is sometimes called the Canadian Loop with a total distance of about 800 miles. The Rideau continues to be a beautiful area with more granite and trees than cottages.

Seeley's Bay was a nice stop – small town of about 300 residents. I was surprised after returning from a bike ride to see 2 horses at the boat ramp! The gal explained that they are trying to get the younger horse to not be afraid of the water – didn't seem to me that he was buying that :-) Saturday morning came early as many bass boats began arriving at 6 am for a fishing tournament. Who knew! Lots of boats though and since it was going to be a two day tournament we thought it best to be moving on.

In the meantime, the library didn't open until 1 pm so we took the opportunity to work on the plastic. It's a lot of put it up, fit it, take it down, back up, etc. Not hard work just pain in the neck work! Steve did the snaps (great use of the samsel post that holds the windless as it is VERY solid and good to pound on) while I used a hot glue gun to finish fitting the pieces of plastic together. It's about 90% finished now but it was just too hot to finish. We left Seeley's about 3 pm and headed out for Morton's Bay – one the nicest anchorages we've ever been to.

The Rideau has many very narrow passages (which are also very deep) running in between islands. The controlling depth of the canal system is only 5 feet. So even though most is deeper than 5', there are some places that are 5 feet and that's it. Last night we spent at Chaffey's Lock (that lock had electric which was nice as we were air conditioning most of the afternoon. The temps here have been about 10 degrees higher than usual making it miserable when traveling through the locks with the sun out all day.

Strange things seen today: I actually saw a tree fall! Never had that happen before (other than when cutting a tree down). I heard a kind of cracking and when I turned toward the noise this tree just fell down across the canal by the lock. Fortunately there were no boats nearby or they would have been toast. Second thing was a no wake sign – along with a shark sign :-) Somehow I don't think the canal folks put that one up! Third was do-it-yourself ferry. You drive your car onto the ferry and then use the winch to pull yourself to the other side. The guide book noted that if the ferry was on the other side of this small channel, you would have to swim across and then bring the ferry to the side you needed!

Currently we are at the Newboro lock. There isn't any power at this end of the lock but that's ok as it's not that hot today and not quite as sunny as yesterday was. The storm that rolled through in the middle of the night seems to have cooled things down for now. Newboro itself is very small (200 residents) but we found a place for lunch and also found the library – not open and no signs indicating when they are open but we saw a guy in his car using his computer so there is an open wireless that I'm headed up to use shortly :-) More lock information – Colonel By was the person responsible for building this canal system and unfortunately it cost something like 7 times what they thought it would. He died before receiving recognition for what he had accomplished.