Saturday, June 13, 2009

We were up with the frogs and pulled anchor shortly before 7 am. We were hoping to cover a few more miles today and stop in Peterborough to see what it had to offer. We arrived at Peterborough’s Lock 19 around noon and the lock tender informed us of all the activities taking place in town this weekend. Of special interest were the Dragon Boat races in Little Lake which were a fundraiser/awareness event for breast cancer. And the weather was perfect for this sort of gathering! We tied up to the lock wall to walk into town. At the bend where you leave Lock 19 and turn into Little Lake, is some beautiful prime real estate – problem is, you have to die to reside there! Past the cemetery is the city park and marina where the races were being staged. We walked through the park, picked up some lunch at a stand and walked up to the marine store, Boater’s World.

Our next stop was the Canadian Canoe Museum. The exhibits tell the story of the Aboriginal, French and British cultures, take you on a journey through a Mi’kmaq encampment, an original 1876 trading post, the voyageur era, and mapping expeditions. From time to time they will also have canoe making workshops. It was well worth our time and the extra walk! The lady in charge let us put Lucy back in a meeting room, near the restrooms, while we toured the facility since it was a little too hot to leave her unattended outside for very long. When we finished at the museum and stepped outside, we found ourselves in the midst of a pretty good rain shower. We had left the hatches open on the boat because we weren’t even thinking about rain when we left. When we returned, we found that we had “lucked out” and stayed (mostly) dry.

Since this was the weekend, the locks stayed open until 7 pm. Earlier, the lock tender had told us that he leaves work at 7 pm and doesn’t come to work until 9 am the next morning. He also told us that he doesn’t drive by the lock after he leaves work, “If you get my meaning.” In the Canadian locks, boaters are welcome to tie up to the lock walls but are supposed to pay for a “mooring pass” to spend the night. Evidently, some of the lock tenders do not monitor passes very closely or even ask for them. We were back at the boat from our afternoon walk about 4:30 pm and decided to take showers and clean up. At 6:30 pm we left the lock wall and motored into Little Lake to tie up at the Peterborough Marina dock. They told us we were welcome to keep the boat there while we walked into town for dinner. The young man at the marina suggested that we try Hot Belly Mama’s, a New Orleans Cajun style restaurant. We went with his recommendation and shared an entrée of thyme & coconut marinated steak with mashed carrots and sweet potatoes, salad and some raspberry pie. Very good! By the time we got back to the boat, it was after 9 pm and getting dark. The sky was also looking somewhat iffy, so we simply motored out into Little Lake and dropped an anchor instead of going back to the lock. We had some rain during the night, but no storms.