Miles Traveled 38.3
Total Miles Traveled 4925
Day 287
We had a great time visiting Montreal, but its time
continue our adventure through Canada.
Today begins the National Holiday of Quebec. The feast day of Saint John the Baptist was a
popular feast day in many European countries.
The holiday arrived in Quebec along with the first French colonists,
with celebrations being noted as far back as 1636.
Celebrations begin on June 23rd with the
lighting of bonfires, dancing, and the singing of traditional folk songs. The morning of the holiday, parades are held
in major centers. A Roman Catholic mass
is usually followed by popular music concerts.
We expected to see several boats on the water today, and
had to pass through a major shipping channel and two locks. Our delay this morning wasn’t the boaters or
the locks, it was the marina. We wanted
to pump out our holding tank before leaving and were told they couldn’t do it
until 12:30. We decided not to wait, so
we pumped it out as we were leaving the
marina and left a big brown skid mark behind us…..okay just kidding, we went to
another marina and pumped out our tank before continuing on to the first lock.
To our surprise, we only had to wait about a half hour to
enter the first lock. There were only
two of us so we had plenty of room in a lock that holds ships. As we approached the second lock, a ship was
just leaving, there wasn’t much room on either side as he inched his way out.
After passing though the lock, several ships were moored
along the shore loading and unloading cargo.
We passed this one a couple of miles past the lock.
Our planned stop for the day was a mooring wall just
before the lock, at the small town of Sainte-Anne De Bellevue. Since entering the Canadian canal system, we
have only seen two or three boats tied up at the lock wall but that was before
the holiday.
As we approached the lock wall, both sides were full of
boats, some were rafted together. It
didn’t look like we were going to find a place to squeeze into anywhere, but then
we saw two people waving their arms and motioning us to come in. It was Mark and Jody from “GypSea”, new
friends we met at Waterford, NY. They
told us there was a spot in front of their boat toward the end of the wall, and
if it was taken, we could raft up to them.
We continued through the canal and sure enough, a spot was open. “Gypsea” had taken the Erie Canal route at
Waterford making a clockwise loop, and we took the counterclockwise Lake
Champlain route and several weeks later, both of us ended up at the same place
to spend the night.
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