Friday 19 April 2024--I drive up to Spy Rock this morning to take in the view over Westport. Then I'm off. I'm not going all the way home today--I don't much like six-hour driving days anymore. Head east into Brockville, then along the St Lawrence River on route 2, as usual avoiding the 401. Just before Cornwall, I leave the main road to drive along the Long Sault Parkway, which links a string of islands in the river. These were once merely hills in the countryside, before the landscape was flooded by the construction of the Saint Lawrence Seaway. I suppose the government was obliged to compensate landowners, just as Colonel By was. Many of the heritage buildings in the communities that were lost were moved to Upper Canada Village, a living history museum that illuminates rural life in bygone days. I passed it some miles back. I've long wanted to visit, but it is, of course, not open this early in the year.

I cross the bridges from Cornwall into the US, and turn eastward. Pass through the town of Fort Covington, which I have done before, in the middle of the night, while hitchhiking home from Toronto in the early '80s. The bar where I stopped for a beer with the local Akwesasne Mohawk is long boarded up. Were I to turn north here, I would come to the border again, at the beginning of Québec route 132, which runs all the way out to La Gaspésie. I continue east.

Eventually I come to Rouses Point and the bridge across Lake Champlain to Vermont. Before long, I am pulling into North Hero House, which I've driven by many times. I always thought it looked like a nice place to spend a night, and I was right. I have a room in a lakeside building across the street from the inn. The restaurant is very good, and the bar is convivial. A good choice.