We awoke to rain but set forth across the Upper Rideau Lake towards Newboro Lock 36 (down 8 feet). After all the exhausting locking up from Ottawa, locking down is much more relaxing - like sitting in a bathtub and pulling the plug, the water drains out without much fuss and you’re on your way.  Locking up is often more of a challenge as the water comes rushing in from underwater pipes and gateways that push the boat all around and requires a lot more diligence.

Leaving Upper Rideau Lakes, we continued the voyage via interconnected lakes.  A elderly man at the Newboro Lock station told me that the Rideau Canal route was not devised by the Europeans but rather it is built upon the traces of the more ancient Native American water routes and portage paths – that the British simply replaced with locks and canals.  From our perspective, it sounds like a reasonable hypothesis as we went from Newboro Lake to Clear Lake to Indian Lake each connected to the other by short very narrow canals – each one presenting issues when encountering a vessel coming the other direction (and it happened!).

Then came Chaffeys Lock 37 (down 11 feet) to Opinicon Lake, then Davis Lock 38 to Sand Lake, which emptied via a long winding narrow stretch of the Rideau River to Jones Falls Locks 39, 40, 41 and 42 (down 60 feet!), which brought us to Whitefish Lake.  

We stayed on the wall at Hotel Kenny, which supposedly has a great restaurant that for some technical reason was closed this night.  The rain that had pursued us off and on all day long, then threatened to begin to fall as we tied up amidst strong gusts of wind and looming clouds.  It rained all evening - we stayed in, made black bean soup and watched satellite TV as there was virtually no town to see and no place to eat for miles in the darkness beyond the hotel lights.