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.

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

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.

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!

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.

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