We've made it to Canada

Tuesday, June 30, 2015 - Thousand Islands, NY, to Picton, Ontario

Over the weekend we were in the Thousand Islands area of New York on the St. Lawrence River. A beautiful place with water so clear you could see twenty feet down. Big puffy clouds over the river and a house on every inch of the shoreline. Clayton, NY, is the home of the Antique Boat Museum. Brian spent 4-1/2 hours there and I spent about 2. It’s filled with gorgeous wooden boats, canoes and skiffs. At their dock there’s a 1900 houseboat and in another building, there are boats that competed for the world’s speed record. We highly recommend this museum and the town. It’s where Thousand Island salad dressing was invented, so we bought some.

The biggest topic of conversation in the 1000 Islands was the two escaped murderers who were hiding out somewhere in upstate New York. We got all this news the old fashion way - through gossip in the laundromat and shops. It was the only thing anyone talked about. Thankfully it’s over.

We’ve gotten into a nice routine of cooking a scrumptious dinner on the boat, eating together, and cleaning up afterwards, but on Saturday evening we went to a nearby restaurant to get a pizza. It took more than an hour to get the pizza, but we sat at the bar and were entertained the whole time by the fleet of young people racing around, filling drink orders and serving customers. It was certainly more exciting than eating alone on the boat!

Monday we got an early start and headed up to Boldt Castle on Heart Island in the middle of the St. Lawrence River. Mr. Boldt started building the house for his wife around 1900, but she died in 1904 and he stopped abruptly. The exterior was finished, but the inside was only started. Now it’s owned by the Thousand Islands Bridge Authority and in 1977 they began working on the interior. It is beautiful, but they finish only about one room each year. When you drive in Canada, this is where your toll money goes.

Pearl has been reliable and comfortable. Canadians LOVE our boat! We’ve had only two problems so far. One concerned the world’s tiniest toggle switch; it was in the wrong position and we were reading the battery power wrong, so we accidentally drained the solar batteries without knowing it. We got them back up and running. Another time the boat screamed when Brian turned it on. After turning everything off and reading lots of manuals, he discovered that the problem was that he had not started up the systems in the right order. So he restarted and everything was fine.

We arrived in Canada Monday afternoon around 2:30. You couldn’t tell any difference in the river and there was no boundary, but the chart said we were there. After we tied up at the marina, Brian called Canadian Customs on a pay phone inside and spoke with a young man. Within moments of giving our names, the young man knew our passport numbers and everything about us. The only thing he didn’t know was the hull number of our boat, so I had to run back down to the boat to get it. That’s all there was to it. 

I hadn’t really focused on the fact that we would be in a foreign country. My cell-phone plan is now $2 a minute. No more phone calls. Our credit card charges about $10 whenever we use it, so no more credit card charges. We have a certain amount of Canadian money, but not enough for a month of travel, so we’ll have to work that out. The people have that slight Canadian accent, and the three that we met on Monday were very friendly. When we attached our Canadian flag to the boat, our dock-neighbors sang their national anthem. Besides the American flag on its pole, we have only enough clips for one other flag, so we have had to temporarily remove Connecticut. We’ll put it back up when we leave, or we’ll get more clips. 

We’re back to wearing sweaters and sox, and sleeping under the big comforter. I don’t know if it’s because we’re so far north or just a cool weather pattern. It rains frequently. On the Erie Canal, a section is closed again due to high water - for two weeks! We are well past there, thank goodness, but I feel bad for those boaters.

We’ve left all ten fenders tied on ever since we entered the Erie Canal, so tying up at a wall or dock is quick and easy. The boat does not look as ship-shape as it should, but all the other Great Loop boats are like this too. Soon we’ll begin the Trent-Severn Waterway with its 43 locks, and with five fenders on either side, we are ready. 

Brian and I walked to the grocery store in Picton this afternoon. It rained, and then it rained some more. Brandon, Hermione and Ellen arrived around dinner-time. Tomorrow is Canada Day and we’re heading up to Trenton where the canal begins.