Tues July 19: St Jean to Chambly Lock #3 Wall

 

Tuesday's re-cap is brought to you by Mike Duffy;)

Our second full day started slowly as the poutine from last night was still deciding whether or not to release us from our carb coma.  The Blue Horizon had spent the evening tied up in a very quiet short section of the canal in the village of Saint Jean Sur-Richelieu. We were the only boat along the wharf and were between an old but operational rotating railroad bridge  (see below)

 

and the lock on the right.  (Again...see photo below.)

This serene scene set the stage for an awesome day on the water.  Before I get into the day's adventures, let me share some history.  (For those with a low tolerance for information, I promise to keep this short.)

We are in the Chambly Canal which is a Canadian National Historic Site.    The canal system is 179 years old.  Originally conceived in 1784 it opened to full navigation in 1843 with its nine locks and one bridge.  It is being maintained with its original design and mechanical components.  All of the locks require the muscles of a team of Canada's finest college-aged students as each lock door has 2-3 hand cranked water vents and door opening/closing stations.  They made it look so easy to control the movement of many tons of water.

After a nice breakfast we spent most of the day along canal sections like this:

Linda became an expert lock hand helping through the other five locks.  (Linda here: The up-side of dropping one of the lines was that I got to use the French word "Désolé" I picked up while reading the Inspector Gamache series.)

(Mike back at the keyboard:) Rick allowed me to step into the "chair" and navigate us through the canal and some of its trickier parts.

Nature was all around us.  We saw a wild mink and a big dock spider (which Linda made me take a picture of because it was "HUGE"!) 

 

 

It was a quick journey and we arrived in Chambly in time to tour the local area, buy some groceries, get some Canadian money (it's not real money if it has a window in it) and settle in for the day.  Rick and I explored the local fort and went inside to view the exhibits which were primarily geared towards kids.  (Our twelve year old selves would have really enjoyed trying on the soldiers' costumes.)  We learned that at one point in time the fort supported 1200 soldiers and to feed them the fort's cooks had to bake 1-1.5 loaves of bread each day/soldier. 

Back at the boat, Rick made us all some awesome marinated grilled chicken with couscous and cabbage salad for dinner. The day ended with a pretty sunset and some local crème glacée.

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It was truly another great day.  This vacation is a first for me.  I am switching jobs and have never had any time off between.  This time my current job has wrapped up and my new one awaits but await it will.  Several times this day Linda and I both paused and thought how blessed we were to have this time with Rick and Melanie.  There was some anxiety prior to the trip but it rapidly melted away and we have really enjoyed the voyage with my good friend and his awesome wife.  Two more days to go and I expect they will feel much too short.