Day 31 – Towards Carleton Place and the rest of Ontario

Day 32 – Ottawa to Appleton

Today we started from Renzo and Leslie’s place in downtown Ottawa and headed towards Carleton Place along the bike paths. We headed east for about 1km, then hooked into the bike path along the Rideau Canal. All was well until we got to the parliament buildings, where we once again got quite confused as to how to follow the bike path. We took some more photos of the parliament buildings and of the new statue of the famous jazz musician that the Queen unveiled June 30 this year. I was a bit impatient (more so than was necessary) so we asked for directions and finally found the ramp to get to the Ottawa rive pathway. We followed the Ottawa River for quite a while and it was beautiful. Along the way, Adam returned the message from Patricia, a reporter from the Carleton Place Canadian Gazette, who was interested in our trip and did a phone interview with them. It was quite exciting to us as it was our first media interview ever!

We met many cyclists along the way who asked where we came from and where we were going, many wanting to chat to us about our trip. We later met two guys out cycling, and it turned out that one of them, Jeremy, is planning to cycle from Ottawa to Vancouver in September. We traded some tips and advice. He had the exact same bike as Adam! We continued to the very limit of the Ottawa bike path system in Kanata and were getting quite low on water. The last road in Kanata that we crossed on the bike path led us right into the shopping district and we stopped at a Price Chopper and loaded up. While we had lunch at Price Chopper we met a nice lady at the picnic table and had a nice chat.

After that, we headed down the trail to Sittsville and stopped just before Carleton Place in Appleton. The trail was really nice, another old rail trail, fairly flat and well maintained. In Appleton, we pulled up to a campground that I found on Google maps in the morning and ran the buzzer for reception. The owner that answered stated that they did not have any tent sites available. Adam called him back to ask about other campgrounds close by and I headed for the washroom. When I came out, his wife had biked up the hill and had assured Adam they would make an exception for us! We were quite relieved! We introduced ourselves and Shonna even gave us cold water, pop and some homemade banana muffins! They tasted awesome after a hot day in the sun. As we registered, she told us about her friend Megan from San Diego who had suffered a brain aneurysm, recovered and then cycled around the entire USA (across to Florida, lobbied the Government in Washington, up the East Coast, then to the West Coast and back down) raising money for research. She said her friend was 62 when she did this and that we should be encouraged that we will make it! Shona definitely made us feel welcome and was wonderful to us. She even took our food into their office for the night to keep them away from the chipmunks and racoons. Thank you so much Shona! We had nice chats with many people at the campground, and then had our dinner, sardines with rice – thanks Auntie Susie ;).

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