Trends

Debates, discussions, news articles, cultural differences stories and everyday life blah blah.

On The Road

Follow me in China, in Central and in South America, in Australia, in South-East Asia or in Europe. Enjoy the pictures and some crazy travel stories!

Immigration

How to immigrate to Canada, how to apply for Canadian citizenship, and how to tackle the challenges newcomers face.

Just Blogging

Blog contests, memes, interviews, photography hunts, random facts… Let’s connect, share some blogging fun and some little snippets of life.

The Saturday Series

The ten post Saturday series: how to immigrate to Canada, how to find a job, interviews with immigrants… and more!

Home » Snapshots

The St Lawrence And The Thousand Islands

Written by on July 7, 2008 – 2:00 pm15 Comments | 12 Read this

On Sat­ur­day, we decided to fol­low the St Lawrence sea­way and to drive from Ottawa to Gananoque, one of the gate­way to the Thou­sand Islands. The Thou­sand Islands is an arch­i­pel­ago around the U.S — Canada bor­der, in the St Lawrence river. The total num­ber of islands is said to be 1,793 but some of them are barely rocks above water, while some are home to cas­tles and resorts.

Gananoque is a small Cana­dian town, with a pop­u­la­tion of about 5,000. A main street, a clock tower, a few churches and a nice lit­tle har­bor is about all there is to see. The town was busy with a biker con­ven­tion (?!) and we stayed away from the crowd (by crowd, I mean, 20 peo­ple max.) and hung out by the old locks and the shore.

Gananoque Gananoque, The Locks
Spider Web On The Locks The Shores

The weather was pretty dark but it was hot and hazy. It made the shores look even more untamed…

The Shores The Shores

We then drove to Rock­port, a few miles away. A town­ship located by the Thou­sand Islands bridge, it offers a great view of the islands. And yes, we almost got attacked by a fam­ily of hun­gry ducks.

Ducks Rockport\'s Dock

We took the Thou­sand Island park­way and crossed the bridge to Hill Island, right by the inter­na­tional bor­der with the USA. The island was very quiet and we took a small gravel road, deep into the for­est. A few miles later, I spot­ted a deer in the wild. We stopped the car and I slowly walked towards it. We stared at each other (well, mostly I was star­ing, I guess he saw humans before… but I don’t see deers that often!) and I got a chance to take a pic­ture before it escaped. Later on, we spot­ted some­thing else on the road… yep, a big black snake. I got off the car and walked as close as I could (not afraid of snakes!). Funny enough, the road we were dri­ving on was “the black snake” road, as the sign said!

Deer Spotted In The Woods Snakes Crossing The Road

Back to the entry on the island, I climbed the sky­deck to get a bet­ter view. You can see the Thou­sand Islands Bridge below, as well as one of the many islands.

One Of The Islands The Thousand Island Bridge
The St Lawrence Seaway The St Lawrence Seaway
The St Lawrence Seaway The St Lawrence Seaway

Related arti­cles:

  1. Trang Islands
  2. A Drive To The Other Side
  3. Rapides-des-Joachims, Québec
  4. Images of Singapore
  5. Pic­ture of the Week: Crazy frog

Tagged with:

15 Comments »

  • Zhu says:

    @Ulquiorra — Thank you! It was a nice place.

    @Seraphine — I like light dress­ing too… The Thou­sand Islands is actu­ally one of my favorite, had it when I first came to Canada not know­ing why such a name!

    @Linguist-in-Waiting — Same here! Appar­ently, the name has var­i­ous ori­gins. Could refers to the mul­ti­tude of small specks of pickle usu­ally found in the dress­ing (10 000 islands…). It is also said the dress­ing was pop­u­lar­ized by George Boldt, who had a famous cas­tle on one of the islands.

    @bluefish — I don<t mind snakes ;-)

    @Annie — Thank you for vis­it­ing and read­ing, and even more for your nice words!

    @Froggywoogie — I want to be paid in Euro though ;-)

    @Celine — I think this one wasn’t too scared of us, because well first the car didn’t scare him nor me get­ting off to take a pic­ture. But I kept my dis­tances and once I got closer, it ran away.

    @Liz — It had been rain­ing for a while in Ontario, that explains the green. I know, weird for the bik­ers, isn’t it?

    @barbara — Same here, I love explor­ing and going to small places. It’s relax­ing and let’s face it, it’s a chance too con­sid­er­ing I wouldn’t prob. live there full time — to much of a city girl!

    @RennyBA — Let’s just say I’m not scared of snakes, but I know how quick they can be. And although a snake bite would be a great post and I’m pretty sure this is wasn’t ven­omous, I just don’t want to try! :lol:

  • Aiglee says:

    wow, it looks beau­ti­ful and peace­ful, I hope to start see­ing all those things out­side Toronto some­day :)

    Aiglees last great read…Toronto Zoo

  • Max Coutinho says:

    Hey Zhu,

    Gor­geous!! What a lovely place!!
    I must say that I had never heard of St Lawrence and the Thou­sand Islands, so it was nice to read about it and see them pictures.

    5,000 people…it sounds like a good place to raise a child: quiet, peace­ful (unless those 5,000 are a bunch of lunatics lol, which I doubt)…and then when they reach the teenage take them back to the city LOL (oth­er­wise they’ll go crazy lol)…nevermind me, I am just think­ing out loud here!

    I really loved the last set of pic­tures: so many trees, so much water…mystical!

    Cheers

    Max Coutin­hos last great read…Man­i­festo against vulgarity

  • Eh Zhu! I haven’t stopped by for a while because I’ve been fol­low­ing from my reader. Looks like you’ve been doing some redec­o­rat­ing here. Look­ing good ;)

    Lis of the Norths last great read…All my pic­tures of you

  • Scarlet says:

    These pho­tos are so beau­ti­ful, they almost look fake! Wow! I love that deer and the pics of the lake. We don’t get to see any­thing like this liv­ing in South Florida! Thanks for sharing!

    Scar­lets last great read…a day to remember

2 Pingbacks »

Leave a comment!

Add your comment below, or trackback from your own site. You can also subscribe to these comments via RSS.

All comments are welcomed!

You can use these tags:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

This is a Gravatar-enabled weblog. To get yours, head to Gravatar.