Why I Ottawa… In the Land of 1000 Islands and Daytrip to Ottawa Canada

We left the Syracuse area to drive another 147 miles north where we pulled into the Lisbon Beach Campground in the area known as the 1000 Islands. This is a nice town park with full hookups and 50 amp service on the banks of the St. Lawrence Seaway which flows between the USA and Canada.

We are booked a few days so one thing we did was drive around this area to visit some of the small towns in upstate New York. One town was Potsdam NY which is home to Clarkson University, State University of NY at Potsdam and Crane School of music. As we were driving to Pottstown I kept thinking I knew someone from there and sure enough our good friend, Rose who lives in our former home town College Station is from there (small world). Well, we did stop and do a walkabout around the town. We found it to be a neat little town with some character and there was even a small music venue in Ives Park!The music wasn't our type but it was nice nonetheless.

The trees are beginning to show their Fall colors as we noticed a lot of purple leaves in this area. Our next stop was another town nearby in Canton NY. It was another small college town with some interesting looking architecture in some of its older buildings

The next day we took a trip to a nearby city as well but this one was in Canada. The main reason we came to Ogdensburg NY was to visit the capitol city of Canada, Ottawa. Because of our past unpleasant experiences we dislike crossing borders since it seems we are hassled at each one. Mostly our problems have been upon returning to the USA but I was also detained many years ago when I visited British Columbia. Fingers were crossed in the hope that maybe this time would be different. Sure enough the lady officer at the crossing into Canada though not exactly friendly did not hassle us at all! Maybe our luck has changed

The drive up was pretty simple but finding parking was not! We finally did find a underground city garage with public parking lot at the Art Museum after looking around for about 30 minutes. As we emerged from the lot we were awestruck by the magnificence of the Parliament Building on Parliament Hill, with its grand Victorian architecture. What an absolutely cool building. Not to be outdone were several other grand government buildings and statues. On Wellington Street was an extremely long table set for dinner.  We discovered there was an event called Dinner for a Thousand where chefs from all over Canada converge to prepare dinner for a thousand people! Sounds fun!

We walked all around this bustling city enjoying its many gems. We walked along Rideau Canal which reminded us of San Antonio’s river walk. We happened by a mirrored building reminding us of the Bean in Chicago and enjoyed finding our reflections in the geometric mirror tiles. We also checked out the Byward Market lined on one side of the street with beautiful produce stands and the other side with bakeries and restaurants filled with people enjoying the beautiful sunny day in the city.

We soon realized our feet were tired and we were hungry so we stopped at the Auldinger Pour House. They had a quaint patio overlooking a busy intersection in the Byward Market area. We had a great view for people watching and lucky for us adding to the ambiance was a musician playing guitar nearby hoping to score a few bucks from passing shoppers. His music was very good and went really well with the IPA from Mills Street Brewery in Toronto and our Poutine Fries. Yum, a real road treat!!!

The drive back was a bit more stressful since we didn’t have GPS because we were only up for a day and didn't activate our phones for use in Canada. So our one hour drive back took almost two hours because of road closures and detours. Crossing the border in the USA was surprisingly uneventful and a few minutes later we were back at home.

Today we leave and head a bit further east…

NOTE: We are currently in Ogdensburg, NY an our nest stop is in West Chazy NY and then on to Graniteville Vermont through the Labor Day weekend.