Just a quick, little post after last week’s fiesty doozy of a post (sorry not sorry, it needed to be said lol – check it out here)

I found out about this natural treasure when one of my (many) wild cousins posted a short video of some insane whitecaps and what appeared to be flooding, and I immediately knew I needed to check that shit out! Turns out, it’s only a 30 minute drive from Ottawa – now I’m even more jazzed! I read up a bit about them on the Ottawa Outdoors and Explore Mississippi Mills websites and got even more pumped to go see them. Naturally, I messaged my go-to adventure buddy, Passportunities, and we headed out Friday afternoon to check it out.

BLAKENEY RAPIDS

Every year, the Blakeney Rapids are a popular destination for whitecap kayakers, whitewater rafters, and other water-borne badasses. After seeing the intense flow, I give major kudos to anyone crazy enough to canoe on these rapids – they were huge!! The falls and rapids you’re seeing are part of the Mississippi River.

I recommend using the directions pictured above, as it got us there no problem! We thought the lack of road names might be confusing haha, but in a small town like this – it was very easy to find our way there!

When you cross the bridge at Blakeney, you can feel the deep rumble under your tires of the water rushing through the bridge locks. As you can imagine, with the current rainfall and flooding in/around the Ottawa area, the water level was incredibly high. I can’t explain how wild it was to just look down while driving over the one-car bridge – the flow was just so so so powerful! There were even sandbags set up for fear of overflow around the sides of the bridge.

You park right beside someone’s house. Usually, there are a couple park benches near the water that you can sit and have a picnic at while watching the water, but they were inaccessible due to the flooding. That’s okay, we don’t mind getting a little wet and dirty in the name of exploring, so we continued on anyway, despite the water reaching the tops of our rain boots at times!

One of the cutest parts of the park is the “Reciprocal Door” – which is an art installation from 2017 by Jared McAdam. Its a very sweet hommage to healthy relationsips and advice on how to keep them that way. It was a doorway into nature, which leads to the network of trails that Blakeney hosts. See below for a picture 🙂

Heading through the door and into the forest, you’ll find a number of footbridges that lead you through the woods and take you over varying sizes of smaller streams coming diverting off the river. Some of the bridges don’t look very sturdy, but thanks to all my horsing around and shenanigans, I can attest that they are quick solid – so no worries there! There are lots of opportunities for cute bridge pictures, if you’re into that (being a basic millenial, I know I sure am) lol. Just FYI that this gorgeous and fun network of trails is very easy walking and not hiking… so if you’re hoping for a workout, this isn’t it hah.

Further along, we discovered a few rocks that brought you right to the very edge of the river, standing slightly above it. I’m not sure if we’d be that close to danger on a normal spring (i.e. one without record amount of rainfall and flooding), but it sure was adrenaline pumping this year! Being a bit of a danger-seeker, I got as close as possible without actually putting my feet in the water. One slip or fall, and you’d be gone down river – lost forever! That’s no joke, I genuinely think that nobody would have survived a ride down this river right now, the flow being so hard that it would definitely be a fatal fall. I almost lost my keys when I sat down and they fell out of my pocket onto the rock – what a dummy! The sheer force of the water was literally jaw-dropping! My friend and I couldn’t even hear each other talking from 20m away with the noise of the enormous rapids. You know when you’re by the ocean and the waves hit a cliff and water sprays up dramatically? That was happening here! It’s hard to tell in the pictures I took (see featured image, the one at the beginning of the post, and several below too), but I took a couple videos that showed the strength of the rapids, and they are terrifying! Unfortunately, I just have the cheap version of WordPress, so I can’t attach videos (eye roll), but trust me – it’s crazy!

One of my favourite features is that they’ve strewn picnic tables and garbage cans throughout the woods, so I imagine it’d be an awesome place to get away for a lunch break or a family outing or a date! Lots of places to hangout and listen to the best sound in the world – water/rapids!

If you want to check out the rapids (and I DEFINITELY recommend seeing them), I suggest that you do it in the next few weeks of April and early May! They are always at their highest/fastest/craziest during the spring with all the rainfall and ice thawing! If you have any questions about Blakeney Rapids, or have ANY suggestions of similar adventures in the Ottawa area, please feel free to leave me a comment! 🙂

Happy Exploring, y’all! *