Day 80 Bobcaygeon Lock 32

Today we saw one of the most picturesque areas of the trip so far. Stoney Lake is breathtaking with giant red granite rocks jutting out of the water forming small islands with sturdy trees. On many of the islands, there's little cabins only accessible by water. We went through another Hell's Gate but this one was filled with bolders that you have to weave through. Fortunately, it is well marked, but the hard part is watching where you are going because the scenery is so distracting. They refer to the Kawartha Lakes as the shield since it's where the glaziers stopped making this area so rocky. The locks were challenging today because the attendants packed them - every square inch of surface water had a boat of some shape or size on it. This is the end of a three day weekend here - Civic Day is today, so tons of boaters were out over the long holiday. Now everyone is heading home. John had the lockmaster take a picture of us squeezed into the smallest lock of the system beside a huge houseboat. By the way, houseboat renters get all of 20 minutes of boating instruction before they start their excursion. Scary. When he transfers the pic to the iPad, I'll add it to the blog. But that's not the smallest space we fit into today. The lock walls where we wanted to spend the night were full, so after passing through the lock, we just hung around in an inlet watching and waiting for some room to en up on the wall. Someone half our length finally left and some friendly guys moved their boats up a little and waved us over. John did an excellent job of parallel parking with the help of some good hearted boaters. I think we MAYBE had 43' of space. The big draw at this site is the famous Biggley's Store. We heard about this establishment at every lock we stopped at - it was a "must go to". So I went, of course. Well, now I know why Canadians love our TJ Maxx prices. This store had every shoe brand name you could imagine, but the prices were top dollar. They also carry designer brand clothing and some Canadian ones I had never heard of, but their summer sale of 10% off was not too impressive. I did manage to find a cute summer shirt at a bigger discount, thank goodness, I would have hated to walk away from this iconic place empty handed. Tomorrow we're going to Lock 35 where  we reach the top of the Trent- Severn Canal. Rosedale will mark "the highest point in the world that a boat can reach from the sea under it's own power". We are at an altitude of over 800', but in 4 more locks, we start our descent.