Days 83-84 20-21 Aug 2015 Balmy Beach, Ontario to Kingston, Ontario

Day 83 - 20 August  - Balmy Beach to Kingston, Ontario - 294 miles
Blue chickery on the roadside near Owen Sound.

Flesherton, Ontario on Route 10 en route  from Owen Sound to Toronto

Traffic on the motorway from Toronto to Kingston, Ontario. There are no motorways around Toronto so we had the shock of heavy traffic going straight through.

Day 84 -21 August - Kingston, Ontario to Montréal, Quebec - 197 miles

We spent the night in the rain at Seven Oaks Motel. A dated, but pleasant motel several miles from the CBD. In the morning we went to Bellevue House, the one-time residence of John Macdonald, the first Prime Minister of Canada.

Inside the house

Macdonald's office on the second floor

Kitchen garden for Bellevue House

Gazebo in the back garden.

Queen's University is only a few blocks from Bellevue House. We went to the the University's Agnes Etherington Art Centre. Because they were hanging new exhibits, entry was free.
There was a collection of African masks.

An exhibit of Dutch paintings.

And we had a peak into a room where they were hanging Ulrich Panzer’s The Blind Man's Song

We left Kingston by driving north to Kingston Mills where there is a set of locks which are part of the Rideau Canal that goes to Ottawa from the St Lawrence River. 

The locks are still hand operated by staff from Parks Canada.

Top lock 

From the locks we headed down the St Lawrence River toward Montréal. We got off of Route 401 to take the 1000 Islands Parkway closer to the river.

We pulled into a rest area on the highway to Quebec. The food court was crowded. McDonalds was selling Poutine, a Canadian dish, originating in the province of Quebec, made with french fries and cheese curds topped with a light brown gravy-like sauce.  There was also a Tim Horton's, home of the double-double, doing a roaring trade in coffee and donuts.

In contrast, none of the picnic tables at the same rest area were in use--except the one where we had lunch.

We crossed the border from Ontario to Quebec 

and drove on to the KOA outside of Montréal.