Day 24 to 29 – Rest week in Manotick and Ottawa

Day 24 to 29 – Rest week in Manotick and Ottawa

Apologies again, we have been a little behind on our blog. We haven’t been on our bikes for the last week as we were visiting friends in and around the Ottawa area. You haven’t missed any biking adventures, but we have other great stories!

We spent a number of days at Dave’s family cottage on Golden Lake, being lazy and enjoying the cottage life. Our white water rafting trip with Dave and Ali was a really fun time. We went with a company called River Run Rafting. Our guide (Kevin) was fantastic and we had a great time (Thanks Dave and Ali!). We were on the 12-person raft as opposed to their smaller 6-person rafts. We got to meet some very friendly people and managed to not flip our raft or lose anyone 🙂 We even managed to surf the rapids on our first few tries for well over a couple minutes, which is usually unheard of with the 12-person raft. It was mostly thanks to our awesome guide Kevin. At the end of the day they showed us a quick summary video of our raft trip and he got quite the ovation!

One day at the cottage, during a thunderstorm, we witnessed a mini-tornado (in this case a water-sprout we were told) pick up and blow away Dave’s family’s inflatable trampoline that was out on the lake. This all happened as we were relaxing on the front deck, and Dave’s expression was priceless (see the before and after photos below). We later retrieved the trampoline with a canoe, which was also quite comical. Earlier in the day we visited the local bonnechere caves. Katherine and I had never heard of these caves, so our expectations were low, but we were really impressed in the end. It more than met the definition of a real authentic cave, and our young tour guide (since we were much older, does that make us old now??) did a great job.

We eventually had to say our good byes to Dave’s aunt Steph and his cousins Kathleen and Victoria, and we headed back into the city. Dave gave us a quick tour around Ottawa, including Westboro and the Gatineau park. We stocked up on some gear at the outdoor shops in Westboro (a non stick frying pan and two stainless steel plates) and stopped at The Works for lunch. Amazing burgers and fries that were also soy free for Katherine!

We were treated to fantastic hospitality again at Steve and Lynn’s house (Thanks Steve and Lynn!). Their house was always lively with their 2 dogs Winston and Jake and their 2 cats Arthur and Sylvester.

Tomorrow we are finally leaving Manotick and will be going back to Ottawa to stay with our friends Leslie and Renzo, and to meet up with Christine for dinner. We have planned out more or less our route to Kincardine from Ottawa after much thought. We won’t be taking highway 17, 60 or 7, or around the 401 area, so that leaves us only one other choice (which we expect to be the quietest) – through Bancroft and Orillia. We are thinking that it will probably take us at least a week to 10 days from now to reach Lake Huron.

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