TUESDAY, JULY 10, 2012
We were up at our usual early time of 6:30
a.m. Yesterday the lockmaster had
told us that there was a Tim Hortons just up the road. A Tim Hortons is like a
cross between a Dunkin’ Donuts and a McDonald's. He said it was only about a 5-minute walk. WRONG. It was about a mile up the
road. Walking there and back was a
good way to kill time waiting for the 8:30 lock opening, which is usually closer
to 8:35 or 8:40 or 8:45 because of all the stuff they do before they can open
the lock.
There was a small, open field near the
lock before you got to the very busy highway that was filled with commuter
traffic. Someone had cut the tall
grass, weeds and flowers into a spiral.
I wondered what the significance of that was or if someone just thought
it looked nice.
I also took a picture of the boat on the
way back and the ducks sleeping on the floating dock behind the boat. I didn’t know ducks could stand on one
foot to sleep like flamingoes.
By now it’s about 8:30 and we’re ready to
go. We were out of Black Rapids Lock (Lock 13, down 9 feet) at 8:45. This lock is one of only three locks on
the canal that use hydraulics instead of muscle to operate the locks.
We’re back in the houses by the water
scenery. You can hardly see many
of them because of the trees.
Here the Rideau Canal leaves the Rideau River to
miss the falls. That seems like a
very good idea to me.
This is only one of many canoes and kayaks
that we started seeing just before the next set of locks. This one had the most people
in it. Right beside the locks, the
banks and water were covered with canoes and kayaks. They even had buoys across the entrance to the locks that
were measuring distance for the paddlers.
We think there was a rowing, canoeing and kayaking club there.
We went down Hogs Back Locks (Locks 12
& 11, down 14 feet) near the passel of paddlers about 5 miles before
Ottawa.
Now we have a pedestrian walkway on one side of the boat at first, then on the other side of the boat and finally on both sides of the boat as we get closer to Ottawa. No one is walking though. Everyone is running or jogging or biking or rollerblading. I did not see even one person walking.
Next came our last locks before the
city. While we were in Hartwells
Locks (Locks 10 & 9, down 21 feet), a small fish got caught on the lock’s
sill when the water was going down.
In all the locks we’d been through this had never happened before. It flipped and it flopped and finally
worked its way back into the water.
That’s what I call perseverance.
Ottawa is in sight. The Pretoria Avenue Lift Bridge is the handsome stone and steel lift bridge ahead. Since it only had a clearance of 10 feet, we had to have it raised.
The entire black middle section is what moves vertically to allow boat
traffic to go under. This was
unusual since the bridge doesn’t go up big towers but is lifted from the bottom
instead.
As we approached the next two bridges, we could see what looked to me to be a castle. I’ll have to find out what it is later. We continued under the other two higher
bridges and moored by the wall. We
made it to Ottawa. We will be here at least 2 days.
We traveled 9
miles in almost 2 hours. The total
miles now are 1857 miles.
More about Ottawa tomorrow.
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