We did. Look at this photo of Rock Chalk entering the Kirkfield Lock. We are 70 ft. over the canal below and we motor the boat right up to the edge of this pan, as you look over the edge. Yikes!!! This is a marvel in 1905 engineering. There is an identical pan filled with the same amount of water down below. Boats like us enter the top pan, and those going up enter the lower pan. The weight of the boats are irrelevant. They add one ft. of water to the upper pan, and wow down you go just like an elevator, while the other pan goes up. It is so cool. This was our first lock today and our 37th of the Trent Severn Waterway.
This place is beautiful. The weather was cool today after a night of rain. High was 74 and tonights low will be 61. Ummm.....Canada.
As you probably know, we turned off our Verizon. Since we left the major city of Kingston, we have had little if any internet connections. Hence no blogs nor emails. This is our sixth night on the Waterway, most have been in remote areas which are really beautiful. We stay on the wall near the lock which is free unless the Parks personnel come around. They have missed us most nights, which makes the budget work well.
Carla and Roger are here, and they are getting to be experts an working the locks. The Smith's love to "dry camp" and that is what we have been doing these nights, even though the boat is quite a bit different than their pop up camper.
Since we left the "Loopers" rendezvous in Norfolk on May 11, there were 50+ boats heading north from there to do the loop. All were many weeks ahead of us because we took the month of June to leave the boat and go back to Austin and LA for Charlie's wedding. I can tell you we have now caught up with a bunch of those Loopers. That means that we took six weeks off for the wedding, one week in New York with Shana and the grandkids, and one week on the Erie Canal for repairs. That is six weeks we staked them to a lead, and now we are passing them like dead flys. I think my partner Mike, had the under and his bet is looking good.
Tomorrow we finish the Waterway and come down the last several hundred feet to Port Severn on the Georgian Bay part of Lake Huron. Doing the canal has been and was one of our goals and highlights of this trip. But even better will be Georgian Bay. As I have been doing our planning we have 3 weeks to explore the Bay, then another 3 weeks to bump down the Lake Michigan coast to be in Chicago by Sept. 15th. Here is the challenge. Just how will be spend three weeks in 150 miles? Three days maybe, but 3 weeks??? We'll just have to try.
It will probably be a while before the next post, as I think the internet hot spots are rare. We're going to go explore some more back woods wilderness that are part of the Canadian Shield, so I will post another blog when we can find a hot spot. All the best. Marc
Maybe you should go back and do the Northern part of the loop by Quebec...you have time.
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