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July 21, 2012  Day 71   Hastings to Peterborough    Total miles to date:  1349.4

Following Our Time across Rice Lake

Today was a long travel day as we left at 7:00 am to travel over 39 miles to Peterborough.  We followed Our Time and Outbound. The Trent River immediately turned into Rice Lake as we left Hastings, so we enjoyed a wider body of water today for most of the trip.  We still had to stay in the channel because of rocks and shallow areas. We entered the Otanabee River around 9:30 and once again the water became more narrow.  There are many houses along the water – both cottages and large homes.  We only had to go through one lock today at Scotts Mills and it is right before we arrived at the Peterborough Marina.

Peterborough is a community of around 80,000 which is large compared to some of the smaller villages and towns we have been in recently.  We did walk downtown and later visited with Lisa and Ron on Outbound. They have their standard poodle, Gizmo, with them who has a fun personality.  He barks every time they go under a bridge!

Peterborough has a free concert every Wednesday and Saturday in the park next to the marina. So we enjoyed Suzie McNeil’s performance tonight.

Tomorrow morning (Sunday) we will leave the marina and go to the lock wall to tie up.  This is Lock #20 and we want to walk up to Lock #21 to see it operate before we face it on Monday. It is the Peterborough Lift Lock which was built in the 1920’s. We will drive into the pan and it will lift us 65 feet. There are two pans – one at the top and one at the bottom. They will add a foot of water to the one at the top and it will cause the bottom pan to raise with us in it– like a seesaw. Should be an exciting ride and a great view.  We are explaining it in advance because we won’t be able to post pictures until we are able to get wifi again in a few days.