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| Fountain at Lac Leamy Casino |
We left Marina LeBlanc with the intention of going right to the locks, but seeing as we are now "really" taking our time, we decided to call the Casino at Lac Leamy to see if they had room. As luck would have it, they had lots of room! It's 50$ to stay at their marina, but for that cost, they give you a 50$ voucher for any restaurant in the casino, electricity, water and free ice at the dock. We thought that was a really good deal!
The next morning we made it to the Ottawa locks, went up and we were lucky enough to have a spot with power.
We stayed three nights there, on the second day Looper friends that we hadn't seen since we parted ways in Demopolis Alabama caught up with us! We had fun sharing and showing them a bit of the Ottawa (with the help of friends who still live here in the area). There were special events on the Parliament Hill that they got to experience. On the third night we went to a hotel to get relief from the heat - not having AC has been a bigger issue than we thought... Oh well, we had the option to rent a room - so we did :)
Moving on from Ottawa, we passed under the Pretoria Bridge... It says it has a clearing of 10 feet... we draw about 9 1/2 feet.... Need I say "I was pretty nervous" as we slowly passed under it? We made it to Burritts Rapid and stayed at the top wall, where they have power, for a couple of days.
The "vacances de la construction" have started, which means that most of the boaters from the province of Quebec have their vacation at the same time, and a lot of them do what is known as the "triangle loop" - Montreal to Ottawa via the Ottawa River, to Kingston via the Rideau Canal, then back to Montreal via the St Laurence seaway. We slowed down and decided to stop at the bottom of the lock at Black Rapids (they also had power there). We saw lots of boats go by!
Our timings have been pretty good! When we finally made our way up the locks at Merrickville, they still had room (without power) on the wall. And by rafting up with our buddy boat, a couple other boats were also able to stay. We moved over to the dock that had power the next morning. Merrickville is always one of my favorite stops.
We met the Kawartha Voyageur on our way! Yikes - they had the right of way...
Check out all the boats who were rafted up together at the end of the day! We counted 24...we've never see that many at one time! Crazy!!!
Smiths Falls! One days travel left before we get back to the marina! It's the place to do groceries, laundry, rent a car to go get our car to bring it to our marina, and do people watching. We had the best seat in the house to watch as the boats come out of the lock and move through the basin to the next lock.
Tomorrow, we plan on doing the last two locks to get to Lower Rideau Lake, once there, we'll be crossing our wake and arriving at Rideau Ferry Harbour Marina!!! That means.... if all goes well, we change our white AGLCA burgee for the "Gold" burgee! OMG!
Tina & Papi
"In life, it's not where you go, it's who you travel with"
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