Burleigh Falls, Ontario

We left Peterborough Marina at 8:30 on Thursday August 2 so we could be on the blue line waiting for the luck to open.  There were so many boats in the marina that we didn’t want to be stuck in a long queue.  Luckily we bought, we were the first in line!  This was the Peterborough Lift Lock, the largest of its kind in the country.  Boats actually tie up onto a huge tray and the entire tray is lifted up to the higher water level while the tray across from it is lowered.  It’s an amazing piece of equipment and is definitely one of the gentlest locking experiences we have had. Jonny had taken photos f it from land the day before.  You don’t get quite the same view of it from inside but we have photos of both.

We went through a total of seven locks, many of them within a mile of each other. For most of them, we were with the same boats  - one was a big refurbished houseboat.  They are usually hard to control especially in the confines and turbulence of locks, but the owner of this one was very capable.  Here’s a photo of the houseboat next to the lift lock.

Everywhere we go people are so friendly.  We received some more advice about towns to visit and where to rent a car in the Georgian Bay for our upcoming side trip to Toronto. 

We were torn between anchoring in Stoney Lake (called that for good reason) or by the lock wall in Burleigh Falls.  We cruised through Stoney Lake but didn’t find a good place to anchor immediately due to the number of rocks and cottages. 

So we went on to check out the lock wall in Burleigh Falls.   It was located in a very small area with what looked like minimal grounds to explore and it was also next to a highway.  Fortunately, we found a good wide open anchorage just around the corner and set our anchor there.  Our anchorage was in a very pleasant spot with no other boats around and within view of the lock so we could make another early start.    

Lynn spent an hour with Verizon getting them to fix the fact that she was not receiving any phone calls.  To relax, we each took turns paddleboarding on the calm waters.  Jonny made a delicious omelet for dinner with the colorful mushrooms from the farmer’s market.  And after another fabulous sunset we called it an early night.  As of this date, we have gone through 27 locks on the Trent-Severn and have 17 more to go.  We’re past the halfway point in numbers of locks and a little under halfway through in terms of mileage with 114 miles traveled out of the 240 mile waterway.