For this years Thanksgiving trip we decided to head north again to Canada - This time to the Ottawa region.
Day 1 - Millis - Syracuse
We left on the Sunday before Thanksgiving and headed directly out the Pike. It was one of those typical New England days where you get all 4 seasons in one day. When we left it was bucketing down with rain. Halfway along the pike, the rain turned to snow - great big fat flakes.
At least they didn't stick to anything, and by the time we arrived in Syracuse the sun was out...
We stopped very briefly at the Lee Premium Outlets for lunch. I was looking for a Subway and I didn't realise that that one was in a outlet mall. Thankfully there weren't too many people around and we were able to get a park and a table without any problems.
We stayed overnight at a SpringHill Suites out by the airport. Nothing exciting - a very small pool for a quick dip then dinner at the nearby Ruby Tuesdays.
Day 2 - Syracuse - Kingston Ontario
We had breakfast in our hotel then were on the road. The first stop was Downtown Syracuse. I was a bit worried that it was going to be rush hour but the downtown was pretty deserted. Some nice old buildings though
Especially the Art Deco Niagara Mohawk building.
Then we turned north towards Canada. The first part of the trip we sped straight up 81 to Watertown.
It wouldn't be a Ryerson road trip without a Josh asleep in the car picture!
At Watertown we missed a turnoff and had a bit of a tour of some not so salubrious back streets, but finally found our way back onto the 12 heading for the Saint Lawrence river. At Clayton we stopped in at a Distillery for a break. We were lucky enough to catch one of the workers just coming in so even though they weren't meant to be open she let us in anyway. Had a nice little tasting and bought some really nice gin and moonshine. Another stop at the Thousand Islands Winery and we were ready for lunch. I had found a really cute looking little place that I wanted to try for lunch so we headed over to Wellesley Island to visit Thought Island Park.
It was a beautiful drive along the St Lawrence river.
But when we got there we found that the whole town was closed for the winter. The pub and stores - closed down. The houses wen't just closed, they were wrapped up....I wonder what winter storms must look like in this place.
So no lunch here....next stop was Canada. We crossed the border at the 1000 Islands border crossing and headed down the Thousand Island Parkway towards Gananoque. We had stayed here 15 years ago on our Honeymoon but I would never have been able to tell. Nothing was at all familiar. There was no reconciling my memories with what it looks like now. And it's not just that it's grown up - a lot of the buildings are way older than 15 years but we must not have spent much time in that part of town - we must have been on the outskirts and that's been totally built up now.
We just wanted something simple for lunch so decided to stop at Maccas then the last drive for the day was down route 2 to Kingston.
Another beautiful old town. We drove around downtown then headed for our hotel. The Ambassador. We chose this hotel as it has a pool with a slide, unfortunately the slide didn't open till 6pm so we relaxed in our room till 5:30, then headed down for some fun.
A late dinner tonight - we headed back to downtown to the Kingston Brewing Company and had a great shared meal of Poutine, Bacon and Cheese Dip, Wings in Ghetto sauce and a salad.
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