Normally for Thanksgiving I forget the whole celebration thing and go out to some woodland trail to get a good look at the beautiful leaves. This year we decided to get a little turkey and invite the family over. We did that on Sunday though, so on Monday we actually did go for a little ride to look at leaves. Not as far as usual, and not down any woodland trails. We did drive down one road I’m not sure I’ve ever been on before, and found something that tickled me so much I had to get a picture of it. I’ve certainly never seen this before, but now I think everyone who has an outdoor oil tank should do something similar. This paint job just made my entire day!
Eventually we got to Smiths Falls and looked up a couple of caches while we were there. One was in a very public place, with cars going by all the time, so it was hard to find and retrieve the cache without anyone seeing. Hopefully the people in the cars were busy looking at the traffic and didn’t notice us poking about. This is why I don’t care for urban caching. I’d much rather go to some rural place, wander down some trail I didn’t know was there and find something somewhere where most likely nobody will catch you poking around. Our second cache was also in town, but at least it was on Parks Canada land. After more than 35 years of driving right past Old Sly’s Locks, we actually got to explore the area. First thing I noticed is that this is a double lock, with one emptying into the other with no basin in between. I hadn’t realized that. The second thing I learned was that what appears to be a retaining wall there is really the top of an old 23 foot high dam that used to run across the main channel of the Rideau River. The area between the dam and the railroad was filled with dirt in the later part of the 20th century.
There are even steps leading down and under the railroad bridge, and a bit of parkland on the far side that I didn’t know about. The people with homes along that part of county road 43 would have full access to the park.
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