Monday October 10th – Tuesday October 11th
On Monday we awoke to more blue skies and sunshine, so we drove to our marker bright and early so that Mark and Cam could take advantage of the weather and have a good morning skate. Mark was feeling better this morning than Sunday, and he put in the morning session in good time and took us to the outskirts of Trenton where we braked for lunch.
Since it was Thanksgiving Monday the schools were closed, so while Mark rested and prepared for the afternoon session the rest of the team was able to unwind by playing basketball on a school yard. It was a beautiful day to spend the afternoon outside!
Once this unseasonably warm weather started to cool, Mark and Matt set out for the afternoon session, again winding through farmer’s fields, through small towns, and ultimately to Brighton where we called it a day.
As it is getting very late in the season we are having more and more difficulty finding campgrounds that are still open, however we were lucky Monday with a nice spot not too far from where we had left off. We headed to the campground, BBQ’d some chicken and called it a night.
On Tuesday we awoke to what they are predicting will possibly be the last sunny day of the trip, so Mark and Cam hopped on the road where we’d left off and put in a really good morning in great time. Mark was feeling even better, and we had good smooth pavement with lots of decline to start the day.
We are now close enough to Toronto that there is always a community nearby during our afternoon break and today was no exception, as we had lunch on the lakeshore in Cobourg and walked around the area as we took our break.
No sooner than 2 km after we started the afternoon we ran into yet another route problem – our recommended route that we had ended the morning session on suddenly became quite busy after Coburg, and with no paved shoulder was deemed unsafe to skate. After some more quick scrambling, we were able to find an alternate route that paralleled the Highway within 10 meters at points, and seeing the road signs really made us feel we were close to home.
At Port Perry we crossed to the south side of the 401 for the 1st time, and headed down Lakeshore Road as we paralleled the lake itself. A couple kilometers out of town we called it a day, set our marker, and then had to drive almost 45 km north to the only campsite we could find that was still open in the region on Rice Lake. RIce Lake was the first place Mark ever went camping as a child, and it was funny we were camping on Rice Lake for the last camping night of the trip – small world indeed!
We determined it was most likely our last night in a campsite for the trip, and made sausage pasta, reflected on the trip so far, watched a movie and called it a night. We have seen dozens of phenomenal campsites all across the eastern part of the country, and have experienced some truly phenomenal views on this campaign, but tomorrow we head out of the countryside, into Oshawa on the outskirts of the GTA, and will be skating through mostly urban areas the rest of the way home.
See you all Saturday.
Stay tuned….
