Day 278 – 7/8/24

Starting location: On a mooring ball at Camelot Island in the Thousand Islands area on the St. Lawrence River, Ontario, Canada

Weather: 66 am, 84 pm, sunny to partly cloudy

Ending location: On the wall before the first lock of the Trent-Severn Waterway, Ontario, Canada

Statute miles: 91

General summary: Woke up to a loon vocalizing. A very distinctive sound, sort of between an owl and a coyote, to my ears. They are the provincial bird of Ontario and are depicted on the Canadian one dollar coin. This is why it is nicknamed the “loonie”. Saw it dive and swim under the boat – really strong and graceful swimmers!

After a nice morning walk on Camelot Island we stowed the dingy, detached from the mooring ball, and started back up the St. Lawrence River. You could spend more days to weeks here, but we wanted to get further North as the days continue to warm up. Also, there will be a huge influx of government workers coming from Quebec in late July to early August, as this is their yearly summer vacation period, and we wanted to get ahead of them before things got crowded.

It was a long day of motoring, but the water was mostly flat with little wind, so nice conditions, and the resulting air flow from the windows cooled us off a bit. Our plan is to take another Parks Canada managed waterway called the Trent-Severn, which connects Lake Ontario to Georgian Bay and Lake Huron. Another engineering feat from the late 1800s joining rivers and lakes with canals and locks. We filled up with gas in Trenton, in preparation, then motored to tie off at the wall just before lock #1.

This waterway will likely take us a week or two to complete, with mostly rural stops, so I plan to just do one all-encompassing post when we reach the end.