Category: Summer 2022

This is our saddest post yet, but if we start with that part we’ll just cry through the good parts.  So we’ll address it at the end, where it happened.

Back when we spent our summers in Phoenix, we tried mightily not to spend the summer in Phoenix.  Coronado for the Fourth of July was awesome.  There’s something special about small-town parades where people put Uncle Sam hats on their dogs and the sporadic fireworks are over in less time than it took the sweaty families to lug their lawn chairs and coolers and sparklers from the station wagon to the park.  At the same time, being stuck in, say, Philadelphia for July 4 wouldn’t be too bad either.  The point is, as a result of what in hindsight was short-sighted planning, we stayed in Montreal because of two huge holidays.  Which also was awesome.  But first, here’s a bit about Montreal.

The city of Montreal is on Montreal Island*, both named for Mount Royal, which would be easier to see from atop the Ferris Wheel if all the buildings weren’t in the way.

Yes, we’re tourists.  Plus, we’re in a no-drone zone.  So we rode the Ferris Wheel.

Tumbleweed is down there on the far end.  From a distance where we can’t pick her out, she looks just as clean as the sparkling Canadian boats.

Montreal is Canada’s second largest city, which isn’t all that much interesting but is a fact.  Montreal has a “beach,” which is interesting but isn’t all that much of a fact.

Montreal has the third-most French speakers of any city, behind only Paris and some place in Africa we’ve never heard of.  Many important people came from Montreal, including Daniel Greysolon, Sieur du Lhut, who in 1679 invented what later became Duluth, Minnesota.  Which is odd because we haven’t found any restaurants in Montreal that sell lutefisk, although lutefisk is a staple food in Minnesota.  Also, lutefisk may be the the only food more disgusting than poutine, which is a staple food in Canada.

The Molson brewery sits just around the corner from the yacht club, and—as the oldest such place in North America—has been pumping out beer since 1786.

Every time we see it, one of us recalls that time famous Canadians Doug and Bob McKenzie heroically saved the Elsinore Brewery from Max von Sydow’s evil scheming.

The Montreal Metro is everything public transportation should be but generally isn’t in the United States.  Clean.  Bright.  Uncrowded.  On time.  Safe.  Artsy.

We bopped all over the city during our extended stay.  The train sure beats walking.

That said, one of our favorite things about Quebec City—aside from meeting No Drama of course—was the fun and educational walking tour.  So we figured a walking tour in Montreal with Brent and Karen would be fun and educational as well.  Presumably whoever coined the aphorism “Good things come to those who wait,” however, didn’t wait until he arrived in Montreal to schedule a tour.  Every tour in town was sold out for days.  At the time, we didn’t plan to be here long enough.  Grrrr.**

Although unguided, we commenced exploring with our guests.  To be honest though, most of the exploration seemed to involve eating or looking for places to eat.  We won’t detail all of our meals, but the food in Montreal is legit.

PSA for anyone eating out in Montreal: pick a restaurant and get seated at least an hour before you’re hungry.  Meals are a process, not a moment in time.  In fact, sometimes it makes sense to order tonight’s dinner and tomorrow’s breakfast all at once.

Between meals and rain storms, however, we did manage to see a few non-food-related sights.  One of the Old City’s highlights is the Basilique Notre-Dame de Montréal—Notre Dame Basilica of Montreal to people from Arizona and Texas—which supposedly was the largest church in North America until one of those TV guys started doing his fund-raising ministry from a basketball arena.  Cha-ching.

We painstakingly signed up and paid for the online tickets to go in.  Very ornate.  Very old.  Very cool.  Home to state funerals and weddings involving celebrities, if you consider Celine Dion a celebrity.

We even got a surprise concert from whoever was playing the impressive Grand Casavant Organ, which has been piping since 1891.  Very cool indeed.  We also were surprised by the huge number of credit card machines tucked into nearly every holy nook and cranny.  Insert your card, and an electronic candle will light up for some period.  Cha-Ching.  Taking the whole “worshiping remotely” thing to another level, you even can do it in your pajamas from home.***  Cha-ching, cha-ching.

In addition to old churches—and we saw a few—Montreal is home to one of the oldest Chinatowns not in China, although in China they probably just call them “town.”

Mostly we walked the streets of Chinatown looking for what was advertised as a colorful awe-inspiring mural.  Hmmm.

The piece is titled “May an Old Song Open a New World,” but in French or Chinese or some combination of the two.  We think it’d look a lot better without the bus stop, but it indeed is colorful.

The day it rained, we figured it to be a great time to explore Underground Montreal.  We’ve been to Underground Atlanta, which essentially is a den of tattoo parlors and shops that are a notch or two below Spencer’s Gifts, with random junkies hanging about.  If Sherman had any decency at all, Underground Atlanta would’ve been the first thing he burned on his way to Savannah.  Underground Montreal, on the other hand, promised to be a vast array of connected subterranean walkways leading to shopping districts, restaurants, and other similarly appealing destinations.  So we went.

The first difficulty was finding an entrance.  But once we got to one, things looked promising.  We even passed a chunk of the Berlin Wall, which to our knowledge is something we’ve never passed before.

From there, however, we entered a warren of tunnels that seemingly led only to dead-ends.  The periodic “maps” weren’t at all helpful.  PSA to cartographers who design maps of human Habitrails:  Always include a “You are here” dot.  We ended up backtracking out the place we went in, but everything worked out because we found a nice spot for lunch.

Speaking of food, Rue St. Paul is as flush with awesome restaurants as Joel Osteen’s bank account is with cash.  We love Rue St. Paul.  Which, incidentally, has exactly nothing to do with RuPaul.

Now to our poor calculations.  We knew that June 24 is Jean Baptiste Day, the most significant provincial holiday in Francophile Quebec.  In 1908 the Pope identified John the Baptist as the patron saint of French-Canadians, and as a result, French-Canadians celebrate with bonfires and parades and—this is the part we didn’t know—by clogging our planned route to Kingston via Ottawa.

So we made the courageous decision to extend our stay at the Montreal Yacht Club.  Which was good, because Montreal was hosting a World Triathlon, not surprisingly drawing competitors from around the world.  A kid from France won the junior division.

The only downside to the triathlon was dealing with all the autograph-seekers from around the world who understandably thought that Doug and Brent might be world-class triathletes.

After a fun-filled ten days, Brent and Karen headed home.  We don’t get to see them as often as we’d like but have a great time with them when we do.

Anyway, we missed them immediately after they packed, said goodbye, and Ubered off to the airport.  Well, Karen packed.  Despite complaining that his suitcase had gotten smaller, Brent only half-packed.  We didn’t laugh at all when Dana discovered a drawer full of shirts he forgot to wear or take home.  Ok, maybe we laughed just a little.  Or a lot.  For a long time.

Last Saturday was circus day.  We don’t have any idea whether the kid with the trapeze in his yard ever made it to Cirque du Soleil, but we did.  Although we’ve seen their shows in Las Vegas and San Diego, the Montreal tents are home base, where every new show debuts.  Excellent performance.

The only downside to Cirque du Soleil was dealing with all the autograph-seekers from around the world who understandably thought that Dana might be a world-class acrobat.

So after the post-Saint Jean-Baptiste Day weekend festivities, we should be good to head on to Ottawa and the Rideau Canal, right?  Right.  Except that July 1 is Canada Day.  We knew that July 1 is Canada Day, of course, and from experience in 2018 we know that every Canadian with a boat will be gumming up every marina, lock wall, and anchorage between Montreal and Kingston, although mostly it’s the Anglophiles who celebrate Canada Day because it commemorates the joinder of four provinces into a British confederation, which is something the Québécois who identify with the French don’t find worth celebrating.****

Anyway, Loopers tend to be in a hurry but this time around we’re not.  So what the hell, we decided to stay in Montreal for another week.  Plenty more things to see.

St. Helens Island is famous as one end of the Jacques Cartier Bridge and as home to a giant amusement park left over from the Montreal World Expo of ‘67.  Saturday nights they launch a massive fireworks show, for which our bow provided primo seating.

Miss Lily and Pamet joined us for dinner before Pamet headed out.  If Jeff and Sue ever master Nebo we’ll try to catch up down the way.

Seemingly every town we visit has what everyone says is an amazing Farmers Market, which almost always is limited to one day a week and that one day almost always is not the day we visit.  Jean Talon Market, however, is open every day.  And is massive.  And the vendors only offer picture perfect wares.

Vegetables, cheese, flowers, fruits, and such are fine, but what if one also wants to see an exposition of Barbie dolls, coiffed and dressed and accessorized by the biggest names in fashion?  Yup, Montreal also has one of those, this one having the distinction of being way more impressive and interesting than it sounds.

Another must-stop stop is the Jardin botanique de Montréal, which turns out to be world-class for real.

The most amazing thing is that the 190 acres of plants from every corner of the globe are cleared in the winter, because the ground is covered by ten feet or so of the snow that Montrealers get to enjoy during the nine months of non-boating season.  The various plants go into greenhouses specially designed for the appropriate climate.  Then an army of what must be millions of workers put it back together.  Crazy.

On our way home from the botanical garden, we passed by Olympic Stadium, built for the 1976 Olympics.  Montreal Tower—which holds up the stadium roof—supposedly is the world’s tallest leaning tower.  And 45° is a lot of lean.

The 1976 Olympics are famous because Montreal is where Bruce Jenner won a gold medal and set a decathlon world record before he found even more fame by marrying Bob Kardashian’s ex-wife and then becoming Caitlyn Marie.

Mostly we skipped Canada Day, although we managed to find the park where Mounties were shooting off very loud cannons.

So that’s Montreal.  We did and saw and learned a bunch of other stuff, but this already is the longest post in history so we’re skipping over it.  The travelogue portion of this post started with a photo of Mount Royal, so it’s only fitting to end it with a photo from Mount Royal, which we took after hiking to the top.

Although we’ve loved Montreal, not everything about Montreal will be a happy memory.  So now the sad part.  Today we said goodbye to Oscar, who has been an important member of the family since we adopted him fourteen years ago.  We’ve been crying messes on Tumbleweed and the girls have been crying messes in California.  On one hand we could write multiple posts about our last baby, but on the other it’s hard to put our profound sense of loss into words.  This one will be very difficult to get over.  Goodbye Poopy.  You were the best dog.

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*The aforementioned Coronado claims to be an island.  It isn’t.  It’s an isthmus, an extremely handy geographical fact when you’re in Coronado and desperately want fish tacos from the Tin Fish at the end of the Imperial Beach Pier.

**Fortunately we were able to schedule a walking tour of Old Montreal after  deciding to stay awhile.  Dana enjoyed it immensely and picked up several of the tidbits found in this post.  Doug unfortunately had to meet a service guy about a niggling issue with the boat.  Grrrr.

***We vaguely recall the biblical story about Jesus using a whip to drive the pilgrim-fleecing salesmen out of the temple, because it was a place of worship, not commerce.  How times have changed.  Hopefully they’ll start selling Indulgences again.  One of us could use a few.

****In fact, Canada Day in Quebec more often is called “Moving Day,” because most leases begin and end on July 1.  On this matter the whole French versus English conflict thing is too bad, because from a logistical perspective it would be quite efficient if they coordinated, so as to put Moving Day right after Boxing Day.

This abbreviated post mostly is about the Ottawa Locks spectacle, or as we call it, the Giant Pain in The Butt.

This flight of locks promised to be challenging but fun, with a bevy of on-lookers admiring all the pretty boats going up and up and up.  At the end of this post lives a 98-second video of all eight locks, taken with the mistaken belief that mounting the GoPro facing backwards would produce an awesome look down.  Meh.  But first, we had to get to Ottawa.

Yesterday was a brilliant travel day, in both the British and the American sense of the word.

Mostly smooth.   Mostly cloudless.  Reasonably cool.  Totally awesome.  Not much to see, however, although along the Ottawa River there’s what in Canada counts as a beach.

Then on into Hull Marina, which technically is our last stop in Quebec but it’s basically in Ontario, just like Liberty Landing technically is in New Jersey but it’s basically in New York.

The idea was to get over to the blue line for the 9 a.m. first lock through.  Yeah, about that.  The good news is that we avoided the buses.

The bad news is that eight boats beat us there.  Boats were rafted.  Boats were on the red line, which is reserved for ferries and such.  Well this sucks.

As a result, we waited nearly two hours and the trip to the top took us nearly three hours, the combination of which sapped all of our desire to explore Canada’s Capitol.  Ken from Nice Goin’ took a picture that made it look like we were having fun—and we put on a happy face for the tourists who lined the enclosure where we were on display like zoo animals—but mostly it was just hard work.

We ended up on the wall with no shore power, but that’s become the new normal so no big deal.

The other thing is that today most of Canada has been without internet, crippling much of the economy.  True fact.  So restaurants and shops either are closed or only taking cash.  And our supply of money with Queen Elizabeth on it is very limited.

Anyway, it took some doing to figure out the GoPro again so we might as well include the video.

Next post will include some tidbits about Ottawa.  Maybe they’ll even be interesting.

First off, Ottawa is Canada’s capitol city, which probably makes it really interesting to Canadians.  We confess to being a tad underwhelmed, however, because we’ve been to Quebec City, and Montreal, and Halifax, and Calgary, etc.  That said, we did manage to see some stuff.

At first glance, this might appear to be a photo of Parliament Hill, where the Canadian legislature plans to fully return after renovations are done.  In 2028.

Back around 1815 they planned to build a huge fort on the hill to protect the city from dirty Americans, but such an attack never came, probably because the Americans concluded that a people who are nice and polite and eat poutine don’t pose much military risk.  But it’s not a photo of Parliament Hill. It’s actually a photo of yet another one of those absurdly unseaworthy tiki bar boats and the first eight of the 47 locks on the Rideau Canal.

Speaking of buildings that might fall down any second, we passed 24 Sussex both by boat and by foot.  24 Sussex is the address of the Prime Minister’s magnificent official residence.

Except Justin Trudeau can’t live there, because it’s falling apart.  True story.   It’s also true that the name of the joint is “Gorffwysfa,” which sounds like a middle-earth mountain where Bilbo Baggins might fight dragons.  But it does look cool.

The Governor General—who is Queen Elizabeth’s representative and thus attends all the Royal Parties and such—has a much better home with the much better name “Rideau Hall,” located just down the street from Justin’s dump.*  There’s a nice statue that appears to be of a horse named Elizabeth II in front of the entrance.

In 1613, Samuel de Champlain—who we’ve discussed at length before—spotted a waterfall just past where the Prime Minister would live if he didn’t fear a roof collapse.  Proving to be far more original than whatever copycat serially used “Bridal Veil,”  Champlain named the waterfall “Rideau,”—which apparently is French for “curtain”—and thereby also named a river, a canal, and the Governor General’s house, among other things.

Here’s the Royal Canadian Mint, which pumps out loonies and toonies, which in turn makes us jealous because American coins don’t have fun nicknames.  Plus, we don’t even have a $2 coin.  Do we?

Because we’re damn classy people despite what our blog might suggest—or possibly because the giant spider lured us—we also visited the National Gallery of Canada.

Very cool stuff inside.  Like a completely relocated chapel.  And giant pills, the reason for which wasn’t immediately apparent.

And among other things the walls were hung with Monets, Renoirs, and Picassos, by Van Gogh.**

On one stroll around town we passed the Spanish Ambassador’s house, which only is significant to us because the Spanish Ambassador’s son Pepito is a Bad Hat.

Anyway, we saw a bunch of other cool stuff and the canal at night from our bow was awesome but then it was time to leave.

Sunday morning, we headed roughly south.  Yup, the canal is awesome in daylight too.

In the winter the canal freezes over and becomes a huge ice-skating rink.  We’re sure that’s neat and all, but we’ll be in shorts and t-shirts playing pickleball at Cholla Park, thank you very much.

This may look like just another bridge, but it’s the Heron Road Bridge, which more technically is the “Heron Road Workers Memorial Bridge.”

It’s a bridge, but also a memorial, because nine dudes were killed when a chunk of it collapsed during construction in 1966.  Some were buried in wet concrete, which has to be a horrible way to go.

Although portions of the Rideau Canal are, well, canals, the waterway also is full of scenic lakes and spectacular stretches of the Rideau River.

At one point we popped out of a lock into traumatic flashbacks of Maine lobster-pot minefields.

Turns out it was some sort of paddling competition, because a guy with a bullhorn advised all of us boaters that there were “athletes on the course.”

Hey look!  Another “beach.”

This is a first.  We greatly admire anyone willing to sacrifice a good hat for the sake of being funny.

Quick stop Sunday night in the weeds at Hurst Marina, where we bottomed out but somehow made it up to the cute restaurant without sucking anything into the strainer.

Yesterday was a pretty easy run down to Smiths Falls.  And just pretty as well.

We’ve now done something close to two-hundred locks, but stopping in the middle of the road is novel.

At one corner we rounded upon what looked like smoke from a forest fire.  Almost made us homesick for Arizona, but then we remembered it was 74°, so nah.

A brief moment to recognize the Parcs Canada workers—mostly college kids—who operate the locks and bridges the same way college kids have been doing it for a couple of hundred years.  All by hand.  No touchy electronic controls to go haywire just as we’re in harms way.

Wait, did someone mention loonies?  Dana bagged a real one, not the one on the $1 coin.

This part of the waterway is farm country.  The silos give it away.

Then on in to Smiths Falls.  Smiths Falls is the “Crossroads of the Rideau,” because the river met the railroad which met the road and led to grist mills and tractor manufacturing and such.  The actual falls aren’t as impressive as, say, the Rideau Falls or the Chute Montmorency we passed in Quebec a few summers ago, but with Tumbleweed as a background it’s still photo-worthy.

The best part of Smiths Falls was catching up with New Horizon, who we last saw at Coeymans south of Albany.  They’re heading the other way, back to Massachusetts, so this probably was the last time we’ll all discuss tea.

Because today there was a “Severe Thunderstorm Warning” with a 100% chance of wind and rain, we decided to stay put for a pedicure and oil change, which only the one of us who now sports pretty toenails enjoyed.   At one point it looked like the weather apocalypse was approaching so we dashed back to the boat from town to avoid a certain drenching.

Meh.  It didn’t even rain before the sun popped back out.  At that point all our weather apps said 0% chance of rain.

But then it started raining.  Hard.  And kept at it for two hours.

Tomorrow we face more locks and shallow spots and narrow spots and insanely gorgeous bits of Ontario.  It’s not supposed to rain any more for the foreseeable future.  Which means exactly nothing.

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*Her Excellency the Right Honourable Mary Simon serves “at the pleasure of Her Majesty,” which is very British, and also may be one of the reasons French-Canadians are testy.  When we asked our twenty-something waitress what the Governor General actually does, she basically said “Hubbada hubbada I don’t recall much from grade six social studies.”  The tour guide at Rideau Hall didn’t really do much better.  All she could add is that the Governor General signs documents for the Queen and ceremonially opens sessions of Parliament.

**Credit to Woody Allen for “Picassos, by Van Gogh.”

The early bird catches the first lock, as the old saying goes.  Plus, not much left to see of Smiths Falls.  The Wednesday morning plan was to head up to the blue line at 8:30 for the first opening at 9, but then we saw that Dog House already was there, so we hustled around and pulled into the number two slot shortly after 7, which in turn triggered everyone else, and thus by 8 a bunch of Loopers were piled up at the Smiths Falls lock.  That’s Lock 31 for those scoring at home.

Waiting for two hours did give us time, however, to ponder a plot twist to the age-old question about roads and chickens.

Anyway, at 9:30 they put us through with Dog House while everyone else waited.  If we wanted to, we could post a cool photo at all 47 locks.  We don’t want to, but here’s one.

Remember all those cottagers from Georgian Bay?  They’re all here as well, although maybe not the same ones.  Damn near every island has a cottage.

We may or may not have mentioned that the two-year Covid-related Canadian border closure created enormous pressure, such that the opening this year released a stream of Loopers like water from a fire hose.  It’s all good for the Canadian economy and good for meeting great people, but not so good for finding parking spots.  The entire armada leaving Smiths Falls, for example, was headed to Westport, a touristy town with restaurants and shops and a small marina.  At the last minute we decided that a huge cluster of Loopers was one boat too many, so instead we headed to the Newboro Lock.

This stretch is crazy.  In the span of minutes we went from four hundred feet of water—which is like six hundred Canadian—to five feet.  The narrow and shallow stretch leading to Newboro, however, was as cool as anything we’ve seen by boat.

Not much social life at the lock, but damn picturesque.

Newboro isn’t at all touristy, but Newboro does have one thing the Westport Loopers missed out on.  That’s right.  The famous Newboro Loon, which we walked a full five-hundred yards to see in all its deteriorating glory.

Okay, it’s possible that the list we found about things to see in Newboro was a bit outdated.  But Newboro also has an indescribably bizarre and wonderful store that sells fudge and designer shoes and high-end furniture and books and wall art and kitchen implements and authorized gear from the Yellowstone Dutton Ranch.  Crazy, and pretty nondescript from the outside.

We actually thought about scootering the five miles to Westport to see everybody but then it looked like another downpour was looming, so nah.  When the rain settled in and the temperature dropped into the low 60s, we were much happier enjoying our view of the park in pajamas and fuzzy socks after hot showers than we would’ve been, say, scootering back five miles on a busy road whilst being pelted and mud puddled.  So basically we made two entirely different brilliant decisions to skip Westport.

And then it stopped raining and the lock was even extra cool.

Yesterday morning we woke up to loons making loon sounds and an awesome sunrise.  We know they were loon sounds because while we were enjoying the rain in our pajamas Wednesday evening, Dana pulled up some loon audio clips on her phone.  Even with no phone help we knew it was sunrise, because the sun was coming up.

Yesterday, just more fabulous countryside visible only by boat.

To any folks who think “Wow, these morons post a lot of pictures that look exactly the same,” tough noogies.  This actually is a very small sample of the ridiculous number of pictures we took that look exactly the same.  Because when you slowly pass cool stuff, you take pictures of it.

When we were last boating through Ontario, we commented on the ubiquity of LCBOs.  LCBOs come in handy when you need to buy alcohol, but dang, is there a law that every place with three residents has to have one?  This very small fishing camp not only has an LCBO, but also The Beer Store.  Yup, we love Ontario.

As we traveled south, we started seeing more and more swan families.

These are mute swans.  For obvious reasons Dana did not pull up any audio clips on her phone.*

Mute swans—as opposed to trumpeter swans—are considered an invasive nuisance up here because—among other things—they poop a lot.  Which is ironic since Canadian Geese not only stop traffic willy-nilly, they poop three times their own weight every four hours.  Okay maybe that’s not a scientific fact, but it looks that way when we’re trying to walk across grassy areas in Canada without sinking our shoes in the massive piles.

Wait what?  What the hell is corn doing in the middle of our gorgeous scenery?  One minute we’re enjoying a narrow jungle cruise and beautiful invasive waterfowl and the next minute we’re in frickin’ Iowa?

No offense to our dear Iowegian friends Sharon and Angie, but mercifully the cornfield either was a mirage or an anomaly and we quickly returned to Ontario and cool stuff like Dog and Cranberry Lake.

We tried to research how the name came to be but the best we can surmise is that there’s a Dog Lake and a Cranberry Lake and they’ve kind of morphed together, which doesn’t really explain either one.

Yesterday we planned to stop above Upper Brewer Lock, because they have hydro, which is what Canadians call electricity.  Except when we got there we discovered that each pole only had one 30A outlet, and thus our reverse-Y wouldn’t work, so we went to the bottom of Lower Brewer Lock and parked under a huge willow tree instead.  Which was even better.

And which also set up a short run to Kingston.  Meaning the last of the 47 locks, which is a lot of locks.

Well here’s a plucky dude, peddling around the lake.  On one hand he’s got a canopy and a coffee mug, but it still looks like a lot of work.

Then we met a Dude with a capital D, waiting on the blue line.  We took some photos for him when he shoved off.  Ryan is paddling, by himself, all the way to Ottawa, catching fish to eat and camping along the way.  It doesn’t look like he has air conditioning, or a refrigerator, or even canopy.

With hindsight and Ryan for context, pontoon-guy is kind of a wuss.  Probably had potato salad in his basket.

Then on into Kingston and Lake Ontario and a reunion with Confederation Basin.

Which means we’ve done the entire historic Rideau Waterway.**

Check that bad boy off the to-do list.  Now let’s see if Kingston is more enjoyable than last time.  Last time it was hot and muggy and mosquitoey and miserable.  Kind of like Oklahoma, except not ugly.

We’ll be here all weekend.

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*We know, we know.  Mute swans aren’t actually mute.  It’s a joke.

**Special thanks to the hundreds of guys who died of malaria and construction accidents before the locks were completed in 1832, just so the canal could become a UNESCO World Heritage Site and we could cruise through it.  Some of those guys were from regiments of Royal Sappers and Miners, which sounds like a fun bunch.