We are on our traveling road show. Headed generally for Algonquin Provincial Park, Michigan's Upper Peninsula, Oshkosh WI, Western WI and Western MN. I'll be reporting periodically based on the time I have available, and the Internet connections we get.

For those of you who weren't with us in years past, Liz and I have always wanted to see our country slowly and thoroughly. With my career change we had the time available to do so. Two years ago we tried to cover Michigan's fairs, festivals, factories, etc. We did it all but the UP. Last year we took on WI, and saw most of it except the western and the northern parts.

This years trip takes us to Algonquin Provincial Park,in central Ontario first. As most of these trips develop, we mapped the best way to our target, Michigan's UP, and we discovered the shortest way is thru Canada. Talking it over with Liz, she asked if it would take us past Algonquin. We went canoeing there on our honeymoon many years ago. It did, sort of, so I plugged it in. Algonquin was too far for one day, so we decided to stop in the Thousand Islands area. Neither of us remembers being there before.

We had set our start date for July 1.We stopped in upstate NY in a nice little park for an overnight. On Friday we crossed the border into Canada, and went up a 400' tower to take pictures of the beautiful thousand islands and get a birds eye look. We could see for miles. In one picture, look on the horizon for windmills. They are on Wolf Island a large island off the town of Kingston.

We found our park, Ridau Acres and got a rally site out in a big field, because of the double holiday, July 1 is Canada Day and the 4^th, But we had water, and elec, and the weather was glorious.

A little about the thousand islands, There really are over 1800 and are mostly on the eastern end of lake Ontario and the western end of the St Lawrence. Some with houses. A very popular and beautiful vacation area. There are boats to take you on cruises, and we took a 5 hour cruise which included a tour of the Boldt mansion. Boldt was a penniless Prussian immigrant who came to the US, worked hard and -after a failed attempt at chicken ranching in TX- ended up creating some great hotels in including the Waldorf Astoria. He built this mansion for his wife... who died suddenly in 1904, at 40. He never finished it, NY ended up with it after a couple of other owners, and they have been restoring/completing it. Boldt owned numerous islands in the chain some to farm produce for his hotels.

Lots of small cities , Kingston, Gananoque, etc. were interesting to visit. We went in a maritime museum, and toured a Canadian CG Icebreaker. Kingston is a Canadian Military base, and we toured their Communications and electronics museum. More interesting for me because of the work I did at my old company with Li batteries for radios for the military, but Liz found some interesting things as well. It reminded both of us that our knowledge of Canadian history is lacking in a lot of areas.

Liz had purchased a new Kayak, so we took it down to the St. Lawrence and christened it. It handled well, and the water was nice, waves about one to two feet. It reminded us of kayaking in Lake Michigan 2 years ago. We had a blast then, paddling out through the waves and then surfing back in again and again. This trip had a few more watercraft to deal with, and we enjoyed what we did.

On the way to Algonquin, we noticed Peterborough on the map, and a little town on the way called Bowmanville. Petergorough will wait till another post, but we did stop at Bowmanville, and the picture is proof!