July 12: The Rideau (pronounced ree-dough) Canal

The Rideau Canal connects Ottawa to Kingston, Ontario. Now if you can’t find either of these two Canadian powerhouse cities on a map, don’t beat yourself up too much. But I wouldn’t be smug about it either, because one is the nation’s capital and the other has a lot of wicked cool bars.

The whole thing is a 127 mile long hodgepodge of lakes, rivers and marshes all connected by canals and locks, and all completed decades before they had the kind of machinery that you’d expect they’d actually need to accomplish such an engineering feat. Some of the locks are true nautical works of art and all are still hand cranked by high school and college students as their summer jobs.