Cedar Island (2013-08-08)

N 44° 13.725', W 076° 27.039'

The weather forecast for Wednesday was for winds of 30 kph with gusts to 50 kph.  After getting our butts kicked by Lake Ontario on Tuesday we decided to stay put and have a nice down day.


Nick and Wendy on M/V Corvette Conversion IV went in to Picton on Wednesday to visit with some friends.  They are on their way to Belleville on Friday to meet up with some family coming to visit.  We really enjoyed our time travelling together with them (well, other than the bouncing about on Lake Ontario bit :-)), and we're hoping to hook back up with them next week when they start heading back up the Rideau to return to that thing called "Real Life".

Last night a series of thunderstorms went through most of Eastern Ontario.  At first it looked like it was going to bypass us to the north, but I guess Mother Nature noticed me watching and decided that we shouldn't miss out on the fun.  Luckily the winds had died down around sunset, so at least we didn't have that to worry about on top of the thunderstorms.  All in all it was a spectacular light show.

Today we decided to head back to Kingston to get in place to have some visitors of our own on Saturday.  We were going to give Cedar Island another try, but we weren't holding our breath on there being room.  Sure enough as we approached the island we noted that all the docks were full.  We were about to head over to Deadman's Bay, our fallback plan, when two guys in navy workdress in a small boat with "HMCS Ontario" written on the side suggested that we try the next island in the park, Milton Island.  I did some digging afterwards and found out that HMCS Ontario is a summer sea cadet training centre.

So, off we trundled to Milton Island, which was a couple miles further east from Cedar Island.  We had the same luck there as we did at Cedar, and it was all full as well.  Looking like Deadman's Bay was it, we headed back.  As we were passing Cedar Island, Dar happened to look over and noticed an empty space at the northeast docks!  Quick as a flash we scooted in and got ourselves docked and tied up.

M/V September Dream at Cedar Island

The dock is a little small for us, but a friend of ours is at the dock on the west side of the island and is leaving tomorrow, so we made arrangements to be waiting as they leave and take over their spot, which is much better suited for larger boats.

After a nice supper we decided to go for a walk on the trails on the island.  Cedar Island is a part of the Thousand Islands National Park, and there are walking trails on all of the Park locations.

First we walked around to the tower on the southwest corner of the island.

This is known as the Cathcart Tower, was built in 1848, and is a part of the defensive structures built in Kingston in the 19th century.  It not only is a very impressive bit of engineering just in it's construction, but the design is incredible as well.  It would be impossible for infantry to physically assault this tower without being exposed to fire from at least one of the small bulwarks at the base of the tower.

As we were walking to the tower we had seen a deer crossing the trail ahead of us.  We snapped a few pictures and then went on to check out the tower, leaving the deer to it's own business.

As we were returning from the tower however we noticed there was not one deer but three.  We managed to get some nice pictures of two, a young buck and probably his doe, and also got a short video of the buck checking us out.  When I get access to some wifi this weekend I'll try to post the video up to youtube.

Photogenic deer

After the encounter with the deer we headed back to the boat to relax for the evening.

Cedar Island sunset