We set out towards Campbellford with Nikki on the boat and Fred driving.  Finally, after 11.5 months on the water, I got the girls interested in helping with the locks.  We’ve always done locks with just me holding a line.  Molly and Madelyn have helped with some of them, but they hadn’t shown a strong interest.  In the Trent-Severn they ask you to shut down your engines, making it much harder for us to manage the boat with just one line.  Fred and I had each been holding a line the previous day.  So I enlisted the girls to help.  Molly and Zoe were one team and Sophie and Madelyn the other.  And all of a sudden the girls did all the locks and I supervised a bit here and there!

They did a great job throughout the day.  Fred went from lock to lock to find us along the way and take pictures.  His pictures are significantly better than mine!

He arrived in Campbellford ahead of us and secured our reservation for the night on the town wall.  He also found Dooher’s bakery and purchased our first BUTTER TARTS!!!  We arrived in Campbellford and hopped off the boat.  Rain was threatening so we wanted to walk around a bit first.  Town was small but nice.  We took another quick stroll past the bakery and told the girls we’d come back in the morning for breakfast.  But we did pick up some good rolls for burgers that night for dinner.  Fred also found fresh Ontario sweet corn for dinner to go with our cookout.  The rain continued to threaten so we went back to the boat.  But then the rain still didn’t come so Nikki and I took the girls to a couple of shops on the main street in town.  And then Ben and I took the girls down the road a short bit to the park.  It had been sort of cool with the clouds so I didn’t mention there was another splash park here.  They seem to be everywhere in Canada.  Molly ended up so hot that she (and then Maddy) ran through in their clothes.  I promised we’d come back the next morning in swim suits before we headed out.  Eventually it rained a bit and we were treated to a perfect rainbow.

After dinner that night we did a quick early birthday celebration for Fred and Sophie.

The next morning we headed to the bakery first thing and were met with quite a line.  The girls all got smores donuts.  We also picked up another carton of butter tarts.  The butter tarts are every bit as amazing as everyone told us they would be.  They are hard to describe – butter, sugar, gooey center, delicious.  After the bakery we walked across the bridge to see the larger than life Canadian 2 dollar coin called a Toonie.  I have no idea why this statue is here, but we figured we should take a look.  Then I took the girls for the promised quick trip back to the splash park before we said goodbye to Campbellford.

We pulled out of Campbellford with Fred on board and Nikki driving the quick trip to Hastings.  We had another six locks and the girls were up for the job again.

The towns on the Trent so far have not been that interesting but the waterfront is gorgeous.  It has been somewhat stressful for Ben as the water is very shallow and the bottom is all rock.  We’ve talked to three different people who hit bottom and had damage from under the bridge at Campbellford.  I’m not sure how but we went under that bridge 3 times and managed to miss that spot thankfully!

The girls really wanted to stop and swim so we swung up to the lock wall at Hastings and picked Nikki up and headed back a mile or two and anchored.  The sun was shining but we were again waiting for a storm moving in.  We had some rain with sun and then the rain stopped.  Nikki and the girls were working on finishing up a 12/12 all the way down to 0/0 dominoes game.  They were determined to finish before having to head home.

Once the rain cleared the girls all jumped in and played while we watched the storm sort of looming but never really hitting us.  They played on the lily pads and Ben dragged them all around by a boat hook.

I’m not sure why that was fun but they loved it!   There was also lots of synchronized jumping off the side of the boat.

After swimming we locked through the Hastings lock and got tied up on the lock wall for the night.  We headed into town for fish and chips.

 

 

Sunday morning we headed out onto Rice Lake to anchor and swim before Fred, Nikki, Sophie and Zoe had to leave.  We found a great spot and the girls jumped right in.  They did all sorts of jumping contests and got the lily pads down again.  Then they got a rare treat – they jumped off the front of the boat.  They’ve never done that before but they were able to climb over the rail and stand and hold on until they could all jump together.  Fred caught some great shots of them!

After a great morning swimming and a quick lunch it was time for goodbye hugs.  Always hard.

Once we said our goodbyes and they pulled off in the car for the long drive home, we headed back out onto Rice Lake. We had planned to anchor for the night but the winds picked up as we crossed the lake and it was kind of gusty so we decided to continue on to Peterborough and stop at the lock 19 wall for the night.  It was a great few days having family with us.  We settled in for an early night in anticipation of FINALLY meeting the Pronk/Zomer family the next day.