September 25 - Volksmarch in Kingston - Ottawa, Ontario

After breakfast we followed the 1,000 Island Parkway through Gananoque and down the river to Kingston. Although the parkway passed directly through towns and was therefore slower than the freeway, it also was routed close beside the St. Lawrence and gave us beautiful views of the river, harbors, farms, and the small towns lining its course. That was our experience from Cornwall all the way down to Kingston, and the one time I was forced to divert over to the interstate I saw absolutely nothing worth mentioning for that entire segment. The bike path along this route, however, varied from the wonderful separate bike trail in the Upper Canada Village area to just being on the paved shoulders of a 2-lane highway, as in the Gananoque to Kingston stretch. We rode our bikes on the separate bike trail and liked it very much, but we do not in general like to bicycle on the shoulder of even a moderately busy highway, so we did not attempt to ride those 2-lane stretches.

In Kingston we first stopped at the downtown Holiday Inn right on the waterfront, but we couldn't raise anyone back at the activities center to find the box, and we were reluctant to start rifling through their storage shelves looking for it. Instead, we drove a bit inland to the YMCA in Kingston and found a start box for another pair of Volksmarches. We signed up for the walk that promised us a visit to the shore of the harbor and Lake Ontario and that turned out to be a good choice.

From the YMCA we walked east and south, and after a short initial section along busy commercial streets we were in quiet, shaded residential neighborhoods for the rest of the walk. For the most part we had a low lying light fog in the air that kept the walk about as dim as early evening but also quite cool. The few times the sun came out, however, it heated up quite quickly and we really felt it. We hit the harbor area a little to the west of Holiday Inn and ran smack into a big, old prison. I mean this thing was a couple of city blocks long and one block wide, so big that I really had trouble getting it all into a picture frame. The prison dated from 1835 and was constructed mostly by prisoner labor hewing the huge gray stone blocks that were the major building material. This place certainly fit the description of "those high gray walls" and although I'm sure it was quite modern in 1835, it looked depressing to us.

Next to the prison was a marina and that was decidedly more cheerful. Beyond the marina our route wound along the shoreline of Lake Ontario. The path was very nice and offered great views of the lake, but it was still rather foggy or hazy when we walked by. The water of Lake Ontario kind of comes to a point in Kingston and then flows northeast through the 1,000 Islands area as the beginning of the St. Lawrence River. Thus, Kingston was a natural port for transshipment of export goods from the lake freighters to the canal boats that traversed the St. Lawrence to Montreal or Quebec where the goods could be loaded onto ocean freighters. That was all changed by the St. Lawrence Seaway project of the 1960s, of course, but folks around here seem to still resent the loss of homes and good farmland that were flooded when the seaway was constructed.

Anyway, we continued along the lake quite a ways west until we reached a little park with an equally small kiddie carnival set up on its grounds. It was still early in the morning, so almost no one was there yet, but I expect that business increased when the sky finally cleared and it warmed up later that afternoon. At the park we turned inland from the lake and headed north and east to return to the YMCA, again through pleasant residential neighborhoods. All in all, we liked the Kingston walk we took, but if you come this way you should also check the walk at the Holiday Inn to see if it covers other parts of the town like the old shopping district and other parts of the harbor. I suspect that it does and, if so, you might consider doing both walks to really see Kingston well.

But we had finally reached the 10,000 kilometer mark for our Volksmarching and were pretty proud of that, so we celebrated by having lunch at Harvey's complete with a serving of French Fries for each of us. By the way, French Fries were called "chips" in this part of Canada, and we had repeatedly been surprised by the presence of many small "chips" stands in the small towns. These stands were often a small panel truck converted to the Canadian equivalent of a hot dog stand. Some of the "chips" stands also offered hamburgers and hot dogs as entrees, but I am not sure if that was always true or whether the menu varied. We never actually stopped and ate at one, of course, because we technically are both on low fat diets, which made our sinful descent into French Fries all the more delicious--the Harvey's fries were coated with some kind of spice mix that reminded me of what we had in Germany at one of our walks (see Wanderung 5), a very light mixture of paprika and some other spices, I think.

Fully refueled, we drove back to the Maritime Museum we had seen while driving through Kingston and spent a couple of hours there. The main museum has 3 permanent exhibit halls and one exhibit room for changing exhibits, and a second part of the museum is an old Coastguard cutter and ice breaker, the "Alexander Henry", moored just outside the dry-dock next door. Since the price for both was only $1 more, we bought tickets for both and I settled in for a nice, relaxed, gander at all the artifacts and explanations.

This being a nautical museum, they did, of course, have a nice selection of ship models in glass cases. The models ranged from some of the earliest sailing ships on Lake Ontario to the modern ore carrier freighters. Mixed in were the warships from the War of 1812 that fought in several of the battles on the Canadian and U.S. frontier and other special purpose ships. The one sailing ship model where the craftsman had kept a record of his time required over 4,000 hours to construct! Looking at all the painstaking detail, I could well believe it, and I'm sure the other ship models required corresponding efforts.

This museum was much richer in elaborative text than most of the nautical museums I have visited previously. For the half hull models used to help build ships in the old days, they not only had a nice selection of them but they also explained in detail how the half model was used. In particular, they clarified the differences among the 3 basic types of half hull models, and that was very gratifying because I had seen these different things in other museums but never understood how they were used.

They did a similar painstaking job on topics like underwater diving and the step by step construction of riveted steel ships. The process of riveting, for example, required 4 different men, the riveter, the holder, the heater, and the passer. I was very surprised that while the first 3 of these jobs had specified rates of pay (40%, 32%, and 28% of the total pay, respectively), the last one did not. The "passer" job (throwing hot rivets to the person inserting them) was paid by the shipyard, and the other three could tip him depending on how good a job he did. How did that system ever develop, anyway?

One of the interesting stories was of Captain Calvin, who had a mid 1800s shipyard industry that eventually took over all of Garden Island. He was a fascinating character, to say the least. On the one hand he was definitely paternalistic and concerned about the welfare of his workers (keeping them working during recessions, for example), but on the other hand he detested unions. He also believed in paying a living wage and in not bargaining down to the last cent because, as he put it, "Don't try to get the last cent, the other fellow has to make a living." I wondered how many businessmen today would agree with those sentiments?

We rounded off the afternoon with a visit to the "Alexander Henry" moored next door, which is still currently in use as a floating bed and breakfast. We were quoted rates that depended on whether you wanted to stay in the Captain's cabin ($95) or a lower rank like a Chief Cook ($60) or Bottle Washer (technically, "Waitress", at $55). Bear in mind that these rates are Canadian dollars and that you are docked within easy walking distance of the main harbor and downtown areas, so it seemed rather inexpensive to us. And you definitely have bags and bags of "Coast Guard Cutter" atmosphere, including barking your shins on doorsills, banging your heads on the pipes, and falling down the steep stairs! You can't get THAT just anywhere!

Our self-guided tour led us from the forecastle area back through the cabins and up around on the bridge. The interior of this cutter was very nice wood paneling, one of the last ones furnished that way, and the lounges and cabins really did look quite basic but very comfortable. In the mess room area I also saw a television set, coffee maker and microwave with specific directions for popcorn, so remember to bring some of that along if you do come to stay a night or two. We also saw a lifeboat and a launch on davits, but I don't think they let you take them out for a spin, unfortunately.

I had fun, of course, standing at the wheel and pretending I was the helmsman ("Hard a lee, or was it a port?"). Down in the stern we also saw the emergency steering wheel that was even larger, and I had even more fun turning that one! The tour did not, unfortunately, go down to the engine room and I missed that, but I expect that it was cramped and dangerous to do so. I know when I got to the stern end of the propeller shaft tunnel in the "Cap San Diego" in Hamburg harbor and suddenly thought about all that water waiting just outside the shaft seals ready to come pouring into that cramped, narrow gangway with only one exit about 50 feet away, I was just as happy to skeedaddle out of there. An overactive imagination I hear you say? Perhaps, but ever since I had that hydraulic jack fail and two tons of Buick come settling down on my chest and pinning me underneath, I've been a bit more leery of being inside or underneath large masses of metal with no alternate exit strategy, so to speak.

Anyway, we had a lot of fun with the parts of the cutter we could see, but that only took about half an hour rather than the approximately 2 hours we spent in the Maritime Museum. Most normal folks could do both in a lot less time than we did, but I really did not read every word in the museum this time, and I'm sure that would have taken at least another hour or two. So depending on whether you are a "read every word" person or a "once over lightly" person, these museums could take anywhere from about an hour to three or four hours. Our feet were a little tired after 2 hours of marching and 3 hours of sauntering around the museums, so we called it a day and drove back along the parkway to our campground.

Dinner was the remaining 3 slices of raisin bread and crackers with peanut butter, jelly, and cheese. Not all on the same cracker, of course, we're not gauche or anything, but the fact remained that our food supplies were running low. That was just one sign that it was really time to head home. We also had to pay our monthly bills, at least if we wanted to maintain any kind of credit rating, and, truth to tell, by this point we just both wanted to get home for a while. Some folks can live permanently in an RV, but we seem to like to return to a hearth and home with a basement, if not a view, now and then.

We worked on the computers after our "dinner", Monika backed up all the pictures onto CDs for duplicate storage while I brought the journal up to date. We turned in early that evening to try to get a good night's sleep because our plan for the next day was to attempt to drive all the way home to Virginia in one fell swoop. That way we could pay our monthly bills before the end of the month, making our creditors happy!