Cycling Trip - Day 11

Aug. 26th
Brockville to Kingston KOA

This was supposed to be a short day. Sigmund says we did 99km. Brockville to the outskirts of Kingston was fantastic. The ride across Kingston to the KOA was a form of physical and psychological torture... oy! It was much further than we thought it was, and extra long because we were planning to go back into town. But let's start at the very beginning...

The 1000 Islands Parkway (Hwy #2) was beautiful, with a paved fietspad beside the road, beside the St. Lawrence River. We were able to enjoy conversations with each other without shouting over traffic or fearing for our safety. We enjoyed meeting a fellow cyclist who had a lot of cross-Canada cycling experience. As we said good-bye his parting words were, "Hope you don't have any flats (tires)." Ten minutes later P's bike was turned upside down and we were fixing another puncture ;)

Further along... ahead on the path we saw a shadowy figure duck into the bushes right where we wanted to stop for a break. A few minutes later the cyclist emerged from a bathroom break and turned out to have the most interesting job - she examines road-kill. Her job is to ride the same 25 km every day 6mos/yr looking at and cataloguing the animals that are run over on this particular stretch of highway. The conservation authority is researching the different habitats in the area and how human activity impacts them. We will never see a dead animal on the road in the same way again.

Lunch in Gananoque that required a few lessons for P on how to pronounce it's name (pronunciation: gan-ah-knock-way).

We will skip the details about the poor road conditions and ignorant drivers in Kingston. However, we would like to sing the praises of the KOA Kampground bathrooms - where they have different coloured sponges at every sink, music, flip-down seats in each shower and a bottle of our shampoo now. Also a total lack of mosquitoes made us wonder how this McDonald's of campgrounds managed to make camping life so unnatural.

The evening was a fantastic time spent with the Melles family. They are friends of the Jellema's from days in Uganda and had been looking forward to meeting S. It was a blast! A fantastic dinner (anything but pasta!) and lively conversation. Time spent playing in the tree house with the kids and a very comfortable lift back to our tent. We hope for more chances to cross paths with them in the future.