Rideau Waterway

Where is a good place to put in and paddle on the Rideau Waterway. I've seen the web site for this already...thanks. Coming up for a couple of days next week and want to camp overnight one or two nights. Any suggestions?

There are probably hundreds of places to put in. It would be helpful to us if you gave us some more information such as: - where are you 'coming up' to? (Kingston, Ottawa, inbetween somewhere) - how far are you willing to drive? - how far are you interested in paddling? - do you prefer lakes, river or mixture? - are you going to pay to use the locks, or portage? - do you want to return to base each night or travel from one point to another over the course of the trip?

My thought is to stay over two nights camping at locks or wherever else is convenient. Portaging over locks is not a problem but we may want to go through a few. We are coming from Vermont and want to also go to Ottawa but the northern part of the canal does not interest us too much because we hope to be able to swim in the Lakes. So the driving thing is not much of a concern since we will be in the area between Kingston and Ottawa anyway. We are experienced paddlers and can cover 35 miles in a day if we have to but prefer a more leisurely pace of mabey 12 miles a day. I think we want to have a base in some small town with a hotel and restaurant, go camp and paddle up the waterway for two nights, then mabey take a bus back to our base and go get the car. Any suggested intineraries?

Don MacKay is 'the guy' when it comes to paddling the Rideau. The page above has a couple of trips that might suit your needs, or you can download Don's PDF guide. Sometimes he comes to the various paddle shows, and he's an incredible resource if you take the time to speak with him.

Keenan

Merrickville