hello everyone! hope y'all had a great thanksgiving!
six of us headed down to bloomfield, prince edward county (on lake ontario)
to do some light cycle touring. left mcgill saturday afternoon, stopped at
wendy's on the way (yuck), got into bloomfield round 9:30 and pitched out
tents in the dark.
woke up in the morning to be greeted by katie and rick, the owners of the bloomfield bike company, whose back yard we were tenting in. they are super awesome generous biker hippies. they fixed our bikes, offered us food and gave us advice on where to bike. on sunday we did a loop through the south side of the county. it rained on us pretty hard so we were happy to stop at the milford bistro for hot chocolate, pumkin soup, butter tarts, salad, etc (yumm) by late afternoon the sun was out to dry us and we got some nice views of windsurfers on the lake. even checked out a pottery place...
that evening we talked about economics, health and enviromental issues with rick and his friend, ian. upon entering the cowan family tent, we noticed a lake in the middle of the tent (a combination of unfortunate topography and a poorly placed tarp). nurlan, being smart, took his sleeping bag into the barn and slept soundly. three of us (masa, catherine and myself) struggled to keep warm on the shores of the lake until 5:15am at which point we also retreated to the barn. only dave and natalie, sleeping in another (dry!) tent, managed to brave the cold . there was a nice layer of frost in the morning.
after precious few hours of sleep, we were up eating breakfast, breaking camp and on the road. this time we headed up to big island, a very small peninsula at the north end of the county. the sun was bright, the sky clear and the air brisk. we saw more cyclists than cars and we generally had the road to ourselves. the roads are well paved, the scenery quaint, the cycling amazing. after saying goodbye to rick and katie we hit the road and raced back into montreal for turkey :)
hands down, prince edward county has the sweetest cycle touring i've seen in canada. there is also alot of off-road biking which we didn't get a chance to check out. if you like biking, go check it out!
memorable trip quotes: