The Maritimes- ah the Prodigal Son returns

So we have made it to Fredericton- the capital of New Brunswick. Tyler has never been to the Maritimes and I haven't been to this area for 15 years since my family left Nova Scotia where I was born. Certainly getting a different view then my hazy recollections of Fundy Bay. We have been rocking out on secondary roads in the St. John River Valley. The roads are in good condition with little if any traffic. It is very scenic farmland and forest area as well.

In New Brunswick culture, we have witnessed the big money of prominent NB families at work. We camped in a campground outside of a Irving lumber mill and have seen over a half dozen stores of their province wide gas station chain. One day near Grand Sault/Grand Falls we biked by a McCains plant and that same day we camped in Floranceville the "French Fry Capital of the World" which has a giant smelly French fry plant, the McCain Corporate headquarters, McCains R&D division, and New Brunswick only potato museum.

We started our New Brunswick portion in L'Acadie so it was very similar to Quebec though people were generally bilingual especially in Edmundston which made it much less of a production ordering Subway with our mangled French. Saw a few Acadian flags though they were mostly paired with Canadian and New Brunswick flags. But we moved into English New Brunswick fairly fast and wont be back to the Acadia portion until Shediac and that coastal region.

Now is time for a flashback of our last few days in Quebec. We dealt with horrendous headwind upon leaving Quebec City. And La Route Verte map wasn't too accurate on the location of a campsite so we ended up camping behind a gazebo beside a church in the very foggy hamlet of Saint-Denis. At least it was free. The next day we had lunch at Riverie-du-Loup. From there to Edmundston, NB it was 135 kms on an unpaved trail of an old railbed. A little hairy in the rain but pretty fun. And no traffic save for a furtive car or two taking illegal shortcuts. Tyler only lost 2 spokes- w00t. We camped our last night in Quebec under a shelter with a fireplace in a Cabano campground. The next morning we ran into Brian and Pat- two trans-Canada cyclists we had met in English River, Ontario- about 2500 kms ago. Their website is here and has a picture of us.
Now we are going to get some tuneups tomorrow and leave towards Moncton. We'll be thru PEI and into Nova Scotia in no time.

Je voudrais une poutine et demi-litre bouteille du vin s'il vous plait

Well, we are in the heart of La Belle Province now. Quebec City is really nice even if it is a giant tourist trap. It is celebrating its 400th anniversary so it is particularly hopping this summer. The people are super friendly as well- while biking around the city looking confused we were asked if we needed help four times. Three of them were fellow cyclists who spoke decent English and each of them just told us to follow them so they could show us the best route. Paul McCartney is here preforming (not sure who figured that one out- he's not exactly linked to Quebec is anyway or even speaks French). As a result we can't get to Plains of Abraham, or the Citadelle with its Van Doos museum. Tyler is convinced McCartney has a personal vendetta against us. That aside Quebec City has alot to offer.

In general, Quebec is the most bike friendly province so far. In Montreal I scored a English guide to La Route verte which is a Quebec-wide bike route. It go through some classic Quebec rural villages each with the requisite massive Catholic Church. Great views of the St-Lawrence Seaway are easy to come by as well. It's interesting how you can see much of the original seignural system of land distribution of the long narrow farms so everyone had access to the river.

Quebec is also the home of poutine my favourite dish. I got a poutine avec cheese curds, chicken and peas for dinner tonight at the Chez Ashton a Quebec fast food chain. Probably the healthy thing around. Between poutine, crepes, and half-litre stubbies of wine you can get from any depanneur we are eating well in la belle province.

La Belle Province

So far both Aiden and I have been very impressed with the cycling in Quebec. The province has a series of bike paths that connect the majour cities under the name "la Route Verte." There is a map book that you can by to accompany your journey along the paths that lists cyclist friendly accommodation and other things that interests cyclists: condition of the shoulder on the road (when the route goes on the highways) or things like elevation charts for hilly areas. I heard some bad stories about the roads in Quebec from some of the other cyclists I've run into that have done this trip, so far we haven't seen any of it, so we're hoping they took a different route...

On our way into Quebec City we ran into three different cyclists that went out of their way to help us. The first showed us the best way to get downtown, which happened not to be on la Route Verte, and the second and third both helped us to find our way to our first night's accommodation in Beauport. We were staying in two different places in Quebec City because it was next to impossible to find a place to stay and this wasn't the first time this happened on the trip. The first time it was hard for us to find a place was in Saskatoon, SK. The night we showed up was in the middle of a particle accelerator convention; I kid you not, that is what it was, and as a result most of the hotel rooms in the city were gone (Saskatoon, apparently, has the only particle accelerator in Canada.) The reason for the lack of hotel rooms in Quebec City was due to Paul McCartney performing on the Planes of Abraham for Quebec's 400th anniversary. I'm not much of a Beatles fan, and even less of a Paul McCartney fan. I saw him and his motorcade zipping around the city today, I wasn't impressed and wish I had my seal pelt on.

As a city, Quebec City is certainly beautiful. We spent most of out time walking around inside the city walls of Old Quebec City. It is like old Montreal, but much larger, and seems more genuine. It was definitely like visiting a well preserved European city, and gave me a good idea what it would have been like here a long time ago (something that is rare for a North American City.) There was quite a bit I couldn't see today because of Sir Paul and the security associated with his concert (bahhhh) so I think I'll be back.

So Close, Yet So Far

We made it to Montreal in one day, and in one piece. Google Maps told us the distance from my place in Ottawa to my brother's place in Montreal was 198 kms, but we were hoping that we'd be able to push it over 200 kms. Alas those folks in Mountain View know what they are doing so my cycle computer recorded the final distance as 198.20 kms. Guess we are going to have to try again to get a double century.

The actual ride was nice, we had a solid tail wind blowing us to Montreal all day long, and the highways so far in Quebec have had more than enough of a shoulder. About the only gripe I had with the route we selected was that the 40 kms or so before Laval we were obviously on the route to the Montreal garbage dump. It was a nice little secondary highway, but our experience was punctuated by full garbage trucks passing us on the way out of town and empty ones heading back into town. In case you were wondering, there doesn't seem to be a great difference in the smell associated with a full or empty truck.

Aiden had another bit of bad luck with a sharp little piece of metal on the way through Laval. The leak was slow enough that he was able to make it all the way crest of Mt. Royal along Cote des Neiges before he elected to change the tube. It turned into quite the ordeal getting the tire back on and involved ruining another tube in the process, needless to say it wasn't something either one of us wanted to do after cycling 190 some kms. Luckily for us, Aiden's mom is here to visit so there was the promise of a good meal waiting for us. Today is a rest day and we'll be heading out tomorrow to start our way onto Quebec City.

Back to the Beginning (Kind of)

I’m now back to where it all started. Well at least where all the planning, the training, and the purchasing took place for myself. The cycle from Sault Ste. Marie to Ottawa was a fairly good one; pretty flat until we got to Mattawa where there were quite a few hills until we got to Deep River. The scenery along the ride was nice, but nothing spectacular. It was what I expected all of Northern Ontario to pretty much look like, so to reiterate again, I was certainly impressed with the Lake Superior region. Aiden was unfortunate to get the second puncture of the trip on the morning ride into Sudbury. We weren’t completely sure if the jagged metal shaving that punctured his tube was a piece of nickel, but we’d like to think so. It'd almost of made changing the tube worth it. Almost.

For the most part the campsites along the way kept up the Ontario streak of being overpriced. In Deux Riviers we campe clost to paying $31.00 for a campsite as we were told by the tourist info center in the previous town that it was the only one. Luckily for us, on the way into Deux Riviers we saw what looked like another campsite so we decided to check it out. It was indeed a campsite, but it wasn’t quite open yet. It had new owners so they were renovating and weren’t normally accepting customers. The owners were very nice and offered to let us stay there for free, and even offered to let us sleep under the big tent they had setup for a party the week before. Had it not been for the mosquitoes we would’ve probably taken them up on the second part of their offer. Aiden was convinced they were South African, I thought they were Scandinavian, needless to say we never really figured it out, but they were still great hosts for not taking any of our money (and would have been even if they had taken some.)

I was pretty excited to be travelling through Deep River and Chalk River, hoping I’d be able to catch a glimpse of the nuclear reactor. There were, unfortunately, too many trees in the way so you couldn’t see jack. Aiden says I need to go to Pickering, apparently you don’t have any trouble seeing the plant there. Coming into Ottawa from the North West was kind of neat, I had never entered the city from that direction so it was interesting to see how close it was to being in the forest. Out in Kanata, where I worked for over a year, always seemed like it was surrounded by farm land, but from what I’ve seen now it is more like it is on the edge of a forest that stretches all the way up to the Arctic Circle.

Thanks to everyone in Ottawa that gave me food and drink, and for those that I didn’t get to see I will certainly tell you in person about the trip when the whole adventure is over. It’s off to Montreal tomorrow which should be interesting; Google Maps tells us the trip is going to be 191 kms, so if that’s correct (or if we make it that far) it’ll be our longest day ever!

Along came a Spyder

So Simon is back in Newmarket now- he was with us from T-Bay to almost Sault Ste. Marie. I'm not positive if my liver has recovered from our daily 24 pack demolition. A true test of endurance that most cyclists shy away from I'm afraid. It was great having him along though. Our dinners and breakfast quality really improved while he was around. But we have quickly managed to find our way back to canned chili and oatmeal. Our last night with Simon was at Montreal River Harbour which has great sunsets, one store, one campground and 7 registered voters. So a little small.

The terrain got less hilly on the way to the Soo. We ended up there on July the 4th but didn't catch any fireworks from the American Sault Ste. Marie. It was our first sight of the States since Osoyoos, BC. The next day we had off and we ended up going the Canadian Bushplane Museum which had about 20 old bushplanes. The pride of the exhibit was the first De Havilland Beaver ever made. They also had a De Havilland Twin Otter and one of the few surviving Fairchild Huskies.

We have been making good time and are in Sudbury right now (yes we did see the Big Nickle) and our destination tonight is Sturgeon Falls. And today we ran into Fraser- Simon's brother in law on the old highway 17 so that was pretty cool/random. We should be in Ottawa by the end of the week.

Northern Ontario Wildlife

As of this writing we are in Wawa, ON which Aiden would like to mention is the birth place of Chris Simon (one of my personal favorite ex-Calgary Flames.) Northern Ontario has had some really nice scenery, I've been thoroughly impressed. I was expecting just a lot of trees on some rolling terrain with a view or two of a lake thrown in. Sure it has been like that but they have been some great looking lakes, and some good looking rugged rocky stuff. Certainly better than I thought it was going to be. What hasn't been better than I than I thought has been the bug situation; at times it has been horrific. The mosquitoes are pretty standard, not much I can complain about there, but the black flies are something else. They just won't leave you alone, no matter what you do. What's worse is that just putting on pants and a long sleeve shirt isn't enough, the sick little creatures will crawl up under your clothes to bite you on the exposed skin. Pretty savage.

As for larger wild life, on Canada Day, Aiden and I both saw a bear and moose. It was pretty cool, we had been waiting a while to see either of these two. The bear was up on a ledge overlooking the highway, upon catching a glimpse of us, he stood up to take a better look. It wasn't too long before he decided he wanted nothing to do with us and turned around and went into the bush. It wasn't a large bear, Aiden says it was probably a teenager and was certainly not a grizzly so posed little threat to us. The moose was pretty much the same deal, it was just standing there on the side of the road, took one look at us, wasn't very impressed and then turned around to walk casually back into the woods. Given how quickly all of this unfolded and the pathetic zoom on both of our cameras the pictures left a lot to be desired. They might be salvagable and uploaded at a later date when we have more time.

In Thunder Bay Aiden's Uncle Simon joined us on his Spyder (essentially a three wheeled motorcycle) and it has been great having him along. He normally goes ahead, does his own thing for most of the day, and then sets up camp at a predetermined site. It's pretty awesome because by the time Aiden and I roll in some hours later he has dinner pretty much already made, a fire going to keep those savage black flies away, and of course some cool beverages to quench our thirst after a long day on the bike. I don't know how much longer he is going to be following along with us (or ahead of us...) but it is definitely most appreciated.

On the way to Nipigon, ON my front pannier rack broke again. Yes, this is the third rack I've broken, so I'm getting pretty tired of it. Luckily there was a welder in town that could weld aluminum so the rack is better than new with his heavy duty welds. I should have special ordered in the custom rack for the bags instead of the cheaper ones in the store; certainly didn't save any money... Anyways, he was a really great old guy with plenty of stories to tell as he was doing his work so it was a fairly entertaining experience. One thing he told us wasn't a story of his, but a current event, and that was that two cyclists had just been killed in Manitoba and two others were injured.

There is no reason for things like this to happen; there is plenty of room on the road for everyone. Manitoba has had the worst section of Trans Canada that we have been on, there are no paved shoulders and the road in general is in poor shape. It is ridiculous and the province holds part of the blame, that is for sure. This is exactly why Aiden and I are avoiding the Trans Canada at all costs, just too many cars, as such we did almost all of Manitoba on secondary highways. Thankfully the Trans Canada here in Northern Ontario has a paved shoulder almost everywhere. I have no idea how much more money it costs to add that extra couple of feet of pavement but I imagine it would be negligible. Aiden and I get passed by hundreds, if not thousands of cars a day, and we haven't had a problem yet, and the drivers passing us don't seem to have a problem either. So I can't help but to wonder what the person in the Honda Civic was thinking, but that is most likely the problem, he wasn't.