Back, eh?

Yup. And therein lies the first observation about Ontario. They do say "eh," but the near-universal affirmative is "yup." This comes more naturally to people from other parts of the US of A, where "yup" is heard in the land. Those of us brought up to some variant of "ayuh" have to school ourselves more carefully.

The trip from the North Shore to Gananoque, ON takes seven hours, according to Google Maps.  All but a tiny piece of this is on divided highways. This  time assumes drivers who don't have bladders or use some sort of underway elimination device, and who drive much faster than my spouse when she is doing her shift behind the wheel. The Google estimators must also drive vehicles with 25 gal. tanks that cruise at 26 mpg. Or better: those numbers would just barely get one there. So not only does one have to empty one's personal tank now and then (not to mention eat), one has to fill the vehicular tank. Twice, if one is foresighted. In upstate NY, gas runs about $3.87 a gallon. Not cheap, but hop over the bridge and it's $1.29...a litre. Do the math, eh? At any rate, anyone without this combination of blessings can expect the trip to take more like eight hours. Having got used to six hour trips to Ithaca, and seven hour voyages to Rochester, NY, as college parents, we soldiered on moderately well.

We must have hit some sort of slack spot crossing into Canada, because our wait was less than five minutes. The Canadian border person was young, professional, and personable, a good representative of a country that takes tourism seriously. Hold that thought until we get to the return visit.

Whenever we make this trip, we stop by our insurance agent and get what is colloquially known as a "Canada card." This certification of insurance coverage saves time and red tape in the event of an accident north of the border. We also patiently endure the lecture about how seriously Canadian provinces treat speeding offences. The patience is necessary because Canadians driving Highway 401 haven't heard it. The speed limit is 100kph (do the math: the metric system is good for you). I set my cruise control at 100 and very soon felt like we were standing still. Even so, it's only a few minutes to Gan, where we had three important errands. My wife wanted to get literature on the St. Lawrence boat tours (our rainy day fallback) and on everything else available in the area. While she was doing that, I dropped in to the LCBO to supplement the emergency supplies (Molson) that I had brought from home.

Bless us and splassh us, Precious! They has craft beer!  After much, much ado over the past decade, the provincial monopoly has caved in a limited way to market Canadian craft beer. Like everything else in the LCBOs, it's overpriced (I paid $2.80 CDN for 473ml cans), mostly comes in singles, and without having advance word on what was there and what the reviews were, I had to take my chances. I bought three Barking Squirrel lagers and three Hops and Robbers IPAs. Here are the brewers on the lager and the IPA, and here is the Beer Advocate on the former and latter. Barking Squirrel is better than off-the-shelf Canadian lager, but as BA says, still a "faux craft beer."  Hops and Robbers merits the BA's 79/100 rating, and could get better.

After the first two errands, we went to the Gan Metro. This is the down-home supermarket chain. Presumably the big stores, say in Windsor and metropolitan Toronto, have all the promoted comforts. The local here took over a former A&P location. It has the same footprint, similar limitations in merchandise, and the prices? A 2 litre carton of milk costs $3.99 CDN. Let that speak for the rest. When I consider what they pay for beer, gas and groceries, I admire the general good nature of Canadians* even more.

Our digs are the same as in 2005 and 2006. The owner is in semi-retirement, so she only takes reservations from people who have stayed there before. Once we had stashed the perishables, the first order of business was the kayaks.

Lest the reader forget, the main business of the trip is kayaking, not eating and drinking.  Thus the boats and their accoutrements got the lion's share of our attention at the start and finish of each day.  The placid body of water in the background is the St. Lawrence River. Choose your source, but past these riverside cabins flows something between one fifth and one third of all the fresh water on the planet. When one is on it, it's easy to forget that it is a river, because here in the Thousand Islands, the scale is so far beyond anything "river" means in most of the eastern USA. The weather forecast suggested that we would be able to spend all of our paddling time on the river. On past trips, high winds had led us to retreat to inland lakes with relatively less wind.

It must have been a Canadian who coined the term "Thousand Islands," because it's comparatively modest. There are actually 1864 land (or rock) masses that meet the agreed-upon definition of an island: above water 365 days a year, with at least two trees growing on it. It's largest island is bigger than Acquidneck Island, Rhode Island (with about a tenth of the population, even in summer). The smallest barely meet the standard. We passed by one that was inhabited by one woman and a dog, living in a tent and traveling by canoe. An American would have called it the Ten Thousand Islands and slackened the definition.

And Thousand Island dressing really was invented there, but we'll save that for another edition.

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* I make an exception to this compliment for Habs and Laffs fans.