Tuesday July 3: Bobcaygeon - Again

Finally - success in finding the best Chelsea Rolls since the bakery in Bobcaygeon quit making and selling them.

And at Young's Point's general store of all places! The sign indicated a bakery but it's kind of not open at regular hours and what you want needed to be ordered.

No problem - called and ordered a chelsea roll for the next morning (last Thursday). Steve walked up and picked it up - no charge because the lady that makes them wasn't happy with how this one came out. She didn't think it was done enough and as it was the first of the season for her, she said to just take it! Truthfully, she was right - it wasn't really done but that didn't stop us from enjoying it anyway. And the outside ones were definitely done enough. We ate a couple and left the rest for the lock staff as no way we needed to have it in the boat! Good thing it's a just once in a while thing!

More great weather was around - in fact it was getting to be unseasonably hot - like mid 80's headed to mid 90's.

We were leaving Clear Lake and headed to Stoney with the initial intent of anchoring out. That quickly changed as the temperature continued to increase.

Now the challenge was to figure out where we could dock and be in the shade. The answer was to stay below the lock at Burleigh Falls.

Below lock at Burleigh Falls

There is a long relatively narrow channel leading into the lock - running mostly east to west. As we pulled in, it was the perfect spot :-) Enough sun to power the solar panels but plenty of shade and more to come as the sun moved to the west.

Looking forward toward lock doors.

This lock is one of the two on the Trent system that were originally double locks (two locks together so boats were lowered in one lock and then moved into the next lock to be lowered again). The problem was the lack of technology that allowed a lift or drop in excess of about 25 feet in a single lock. The old lock walls actually form the canal which leads to the new lock.

It was a very pleasant night and we were up early and through the first lock up of the day.

We traveled a whole .5 miles and decided that was far enough! Our favorite, SHADY, spot had opened up so we called it a day.

Plus one of our breakfast stops was down the road just a bit and was air-conditioned.

Perfect :-)





Plus it is a great place to kayak. It was a pretty neat place but no spotting of turtles or very many fish.

Four or five years ago a terrific wind went through this area and blew down some very large trees. The root system on these trees is extremely shallow - they are basically growing on top of the granite rocks which make up much of the shoreline around the area.

Over time, the weather has washed away most of any dirt that was on the roots with the result being some beautiful wood sculptures. I'm thinking the folks in Toronto would really go for these - perhaps there is some money in this???

In the meantime we moved on to Buckhorn and were able to plug into power to run our air conditioner for the day. So hot.

And we spotted an Albin just like ours (well, mostly). Nice couple on it - from the Ottawa River. They said we should stop by if were ever back on the Rideau Canal again.

Who knows - maybe someday we'll take them up on it.

Tuesday we moved onto to Bobcaygeon as we are meeting Randy and Cindy (from Banana Bay tomorrow in Fenelon Falls.