Tuesday July 26: Ottawa - Capitol of Canada

In the past 3 days we've traveled an additional 60 miles up the Rideau Canal – the same distance we traveled in the two weeks since we left Kingston! There's not a lot to see on the upper part of the canal system as it changes from lakes and islands to river channels. Working farms are a common sight along here. We spent the night at Burritts Rapids lock after having traveled through 7 locks on Sunday. Some of the locks have bridges over the center of the lock that must be swung before we can go into the lock chamber but the interesting thing is that the bridges are just pushed open by the lock crew! Once it starts moving it just opens/closes the rest of the way. Kind of fun

I found a squirrel that really liked peanuts and was willing to come fairly close to get them. Not like the ones in Orillia that the kids used to feed by hand though. Steve was up early the Monday morning and caught a relatively small bass but the picture he took (by himself) makes it look HUGE and fake. The second picture of it is more realistic :-)

Rain the next morning so we were really glad we had spent the time Saturday finishing up the plastic for the flybridge – it worked great! The travel is now truly just a river (no more wide marshy areas) complete with the mega-mansions and large home developments as we are within 30 minutes (by car) of Ottawa.

Only 4 locks today with another 4 tomorrow and we'll be to Ottawa! We stayed at Lock 13 at another great little park like lock. Even had shore power so that was a bonus. There was a small creek that we thought would be good to kayak but it turned out we could only go up it about 20 feet so no kayaking. Instead, Steve decided to finally try his hand at pizza making on the boat. It was great pizza but he is out currently seeking an oven thermometer as there was clearly some issues with the oven getting hot enough. There was even a nice cat that apparently lives at the locks – she was helping Steve look for fish this morning but no luck.

Finally – Ottawa!!! Capitol of Canada. And the canal just goes right through the middle of the city. We found a place tucked under a bridge – busy today so we were happy to find a spot. And shore power to boot as the boat behind us was kind enough to share this plug with us. But that's the way boaters are :-)

Tomorrow – more about Ottawa. Right now, I'm looking for an internet connection to post this ….. other than the convention center internet that is $25 for 2 hours! Really??