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!