Since our marina reservations wouldn’t start until Monday, we dropped the hook right outside the marina and hopped in the dinghies to shore. While searching for the dinghy dock, we ran into a very nice guy on the dock who offered for us to use his marina slip for the day!
We headed into town and found a brewery where I was reunited in person with Liana, someone I had met 14 years ago at a Harry Potter Conference, but not seen since! We were actually able to see her several times during our stay in Kingston, which was lovely!
On Liana’s recommendation, we had booked tickets for the Kingston Penitentiary Tour, which was really informative! This was the largest maximum-security federal prison in Canada (and the only one for quite some time).
Then afterwards we did an escape room. We decided to extend our planned stay in Kingston through the end of the week – it was nice to spend a few days in the same place after so much cruising on the Rideau! After spending 20 minutes clearing out the solid pile of weed on the entire chain and a huge ball of it on the anchor, we pulled into the marina for the remainder of the week. We had some lovely dinners and did a second escape room :).
After Kingston, we planned to spend some time in the Thousand Islands, first on the Canadian side, and then we’d do our border crossing back into the US. We spent our first night on anchor, and then headed to Gananoque. Unfortunately the marina was full, so we dropped anchor outside of town. We headed into town for a mediocre brunch and then had mediocre beers at a brewery while playing a couple of rounds of Hanabi before a sprint back to the dinghy, getting back to the boats seconds before the sky opened up into a huge rainstorm. At least there was a cool rainbow!
For our last stop in Canada, we ended up on the hook in Grenadier Island where we took the opportunity to swim even though it wasn’t actually very hot! (I just love swimming!!)
Thus completed our cruise in Canada as we would next be crossing the border and heading to visit some Castles in the US side of the 1000 Islands!