Our Ottawa Visit

Milly and I left Eastman at 9:30 am on Monday May 11, 2009. The journey to Ottawa area was uneventful. We went north of Burlington VT through New York to Cornwall, Ontario and on to Ottawa. The mountain views across northern Lake Champlain were magnificent. We spent two nights at Ottawa Municipal Campground located in a forest about 10 miles west of downtown Ottawa.

On Tuesday May 12th, we spent the day in Ottawa. After briefly visiting the Canadian Parliament area, we headed to Dow Lake and Commisioners Park to attend the Tulip Festival. We saw many, many Tulips in all different colors and hues.

We saw no boats on the canal when we drove the length of it down to Dow Lake from the Parliment area. We knew the locks were closed and thought that maybe the canal was closed to all but the excursion boats. All the signs indicated that you couldn’t access to launch a kayak. We persisted and asked an attendant at the Dow Lake Pavillion. He told us we could put our kayaks in on the boat ramp that was locked.

We had an outstanding kayak paddle on the Rideau Canal in downtown Ottawa. It was strange but very neat to be paddling while so many others were biking, rollerblading or walking almost right beside us. We essestially had the canal itself to ourselves. We saw two canoes and one excusion boat in our 2 hour paddle on the canal.

Unfortunately, we have discovered the campgrounds in North Bay, Ontario area at which we planned on staying tonight are not open until after May 15th. This means that we may experience our first Walmart RV overnight. Our plan for next several days is to stop on way to hike and kayak any “attractions” we pass and then stop later in day at a Walmart. We have found that there are many WIFI locatioons in moderate size towns ahead.

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One Comment

  • Colleen says:

    Well, how was Walmart?

    The top of this page sort of overlaps your left side memu making it hard to read. anyone else seeing that?

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