Peterborough, Ontario

We left Hastings on Friday July 6th to much more comfortable temps.  The morning was clear and cool with a breeze that picked up throughout the early part of the day.  Our cruise Friday took us from the Trent River out onto Rice Lake which we crossed and then entered the Otonabee River.  This river winds some 20 miles through farm lands and past cottages.  There are rolling hills and everything is very green and lush.  We eventually came to lock # 19 the Scott's Mill Lock and after passing through this lock we stopped just around the corner at Peterborough Marina.  We plan to have two nights here.

Marina restaurant

View of the lake at one end of the marina

Saturday morning we biked to the Peterborough Farmer's Market.  They had a very nice selection of vendors with produce as well as some with baked goods.  We purchased several things including 2 dozen fresh eggs to make deviled eggs for a dock-tail party later in the day.

Farmer's Market in Peterborough

After the farmer's market we put a quick coat of deck sealer on Southern Style's outside wood decks.  While the decks were drying we biked over to the Peterborough Lift Lock.  We will be going through this lock when we leave Peterborough. This is the world's highest lift lock.  It was built in 1904 and even today it remains an engineering marvel.  The hydraulic lift lock works like a simple balance beam scale.  The boats enter a large, rectangular chamber shaped like a giant sheet-cake pan.  Parallel to that chamber , but 65 feet up on a huge piston, is another chamber exactly the same.  There are 330,000 gallons of water that weigh 1,500 tons in each pan.  When the upper chamber is filled with an extra foot of water this adds 130 tons  to the chamber.  The increased weight in the upper chamber forces it downward while the lower chamber rises on its piston, boats and all.  It does not matter how many or what size boats are in each pan.  The boats displace their own weight keeping everything even other than the added water in the chamber going down.  (This is really Bill Nye the Science Guy stuff-cool eh).  The ride only takes about 2 minutes and it is over and you exit the lock chamber.

Peterborough Lift Lock (view from the bottom)

Lift lock (view from the top of one pan)

Here are boats being loaded into one of the pans

Boats in the pan on the right are coming down and boats in the pan on the left are going up

Now the pan on the right is all the way down and the pan on the left is all the way up.

Boats in each pan will slowly exit

I can not imagine what this ride will be like.  We will soon be finding out and hopefully I can get some good pictures as we go up.