Travel Days

Wednesday June 28-Thursday June 29. We pushed off the wall in Chambly in a good bit of rain. The three locks immediately here took us down over 45′ into the Chambly Basin. Very pretty and because we were the only boat in the lock at the time it was very manageable. We had purchased a season pass before starting our journey which allows us to stay at these lock walls, but there is still a small fee for electricity. Proof of our comfort in navigating the locks- we handed over a credit card to pay this fee while doing our lock navigation!

We continued up the Richelieu River (the Chambly Canal had taken us out of the river where it is too shallow to pass through) and stopped for lunch in the town of Beloeil, another charmer. We don’t fall into these places accidentally, The Great Loop website and Facebook groups have an enormous amount of resources, as well as 3 waterway guidebooks!

We ended the travel day going through the Saint Ours (every other town is Saint/Sainte somebody, 2,200 of them) lock and staying at that lock wall for the night with four other boats. The campground island had nice walking paths and we walked across the dam and down to observe the fish ladder. Neither of us have good photos from this stop except this flower box.

I am so impressed with how clean Canada has been. Not only the government run parks & locks but also the individual homes. There is rare graffiti, and most homes have flowers. I wonder what leads to this difference.

At our next stay in Parc Bellerive, which is a marina and RV campground, the Captain was proud of himself for parallel docking between this boat behind us and the dock, inches to spare. No easy feat. While here we picked up our rental car for the trip to Quebec City, swam in the pool, did laundry, groceries and washed the boat.