Day 113: Gatineau, QC to Johnstown, ON - Two Far 2017 - Florida to the Canadian Maritimes - CycleBlaze

August 18, 2017

Day 113: Gatineau, QC to Johnstown, ON

After our late night last night, we were glad to have an excuse to sleep in this morning. It was raining, as forecast, when we woke up, so we had a lazy morning and didn't leave the hotel until 10:45AM.

Pierre came over to escort us out of town. (I think that's what the sheriff used to do with the bad guys, wasn't it?) There was a light, misty rain coming down when we left, but it stopped in less than 1/2 hour.

The ride through Ottawa was almost all on bike trails. We were on a very scenic trail along the Rideau River for several miles. I had everything packed up for rain, so I didn't stop to get the camera.

We said good-bye to Pierre after 16 miles. He rode back to Gatineau and we headed on south. The route was good for cycling most of the way. Once we got south of the city, the traffic thinned out, so even though we did not have a shoulder to ride on, it was not a problem.

Since we had powdered sugar doughnuts for breakfast, we were hungry for "real food" for lunch. We stopped at a little pizza place for salad and a slice, which was OK. When we came out after lunch, we started seeing a little sunshine. As the skies cleared up, though, the headwind increased. We had a pretty strong headwind the rest of the day.

I expected that it was going to be 30 miles between lunch and the next convenience store. However, after only going about 10 miles into the wind we were both getting tired and we stopped at a feed store for a short break. The owner was very nice and let us use the washroom and fill our water bottles.

From there, I thought it would be another 20 miles before we could satisfy our Diet Coke needs. We were really happy when we saw this after going only about 7 miles:

An unexpected delight - I thought it was 20 miles to the next store
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People often ask us what has been the best experience of our trip. In that moment, I would have said it was seeing this store!

Once we had our Diet Coke and snacks and a nice long break, we were ready to finish the ride. With our late start and longer breaks, it was 5:00PM by the time we got to the town closest to our motel where we needed to get food for supper.

We found the Scorpion Restaurant and had a long, leisurely dinner. From the restaurant, we had another 3 miles to ride to the motel and it was 6:45 PM when we finally got checked in to our room.

Since the only picture I had taken all day was of Shelly's store, I decided to go get a couple of pictures of the St. Lawrence River. This motel isn't much, but the view is gorgeous.

The St. Lawrence River from our motel
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Another view of the river looking southwest. That's the bridge to Ogdensburg, NY in the distance.
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It was a long, tiring ride today. It wasn't hilly and we've had longer days, but the headwind coupled with being spoiled by riding unloaded that last four times just got to us. That extra 50 lbs makes a huge difference.

Tomorrow we head on down along the river to Gananoque. It's only 50 miles so maybe we'll have a little energy left at the end of the day!

Today's ride: 65 miles (105 km)
Total: 4,482 miles (7,213 km)

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