A day out of the city

I will apologize, I had told myself to keep the blogs short and sweet but today we saw to much and I wanted to share, I knew Tanya wanted to see more of the Rideau Canal, well here it is.

I had planned so many things for today but when lunch came and we were still on item number one, I knew I was in trouble. We will try to do more of the list of Friday.

Anyway, first thing I wanted to do today was explore more of the Rideau Canal away from the touristy Ottawa area.

We set off early and our first stop was Manitock, where on the canal we found the Watson Gris Mill, which was very similar to the one our family ancestors had in Chicago.




Down the road we went until we reached Burritt's Rapids, a really cute little town with several historic buildings and just above the lock this swinging bridge that has to be hand opened for the boats wanting to navigate thru.

A little further we came across the Nicholson Locks, it is a National Park site and really in the middle of nowhere.

Just a short way away we found the Clowes Locks, here a wide part of the river had a wonderful waterfall cascading across. The aroma from the flowers was so wonderful, a beautiful spot for a summer picnic.

The town of Merrickville was so cute, many historic buildings all restored beautifully.

There were a series of three locks here and when we got there they had one door open, they then closed it and the lock filled back up with water.

Smith Falls is a very important railway town but also has the biggest drop in the canal system.

Below shows the water at the bottom of the lock and the water on the other side of the gate was right at the top.

Here at Smith Falls is where we had our picnic lunch and it was very warm, we found a beautiful RV park and one day would like to come back to this area as we now realize we have to leave the canal alone and get on with other things to see, so off to Kingston.

Our first stop in Kingston was the Bellevue House which was one of Sir John A MacDonalds homes, he apparently moved quite often. It gives you such an insight on these important figures when you get to know a little of their private lives.

I was shocked with the kitchen, I guess I forgot the era that we were seeing and it was

pretty rustic. Note over on the right the oven.

Once we got to Kingston the rain started to fall but once we got to Fort Henry it really started to pour. It made it really hard to enjoy and I know Ron would have wanted to stay longer had I not been so cold and wet. Still we tried to enjoy what we were seeing and we would certainly go back another day when we get back into this area.

So we left the Fort at 4:30pm, it actually closed at 5pm, and started our way up the St Lawrence on our trip home. The rain was coming down pretty good but we had a few good views of all the islands on the 1000 Island Parkway, another area we have to one day go back and explore more.