Into La Belle Province

Back again after not being on internet for awhile....I will try and keep this one shorter than last time though!

We biked from Sudbury to Ottawa in 3 days. Before we left Sudbury, we went to the bike shop to see if we could fix Leah`s tire and luckily the cause for the numerous flat tires was found! We fixed that (redid the rim tape) and then headed out towards North Bay starting at the lovely time of 11:30a.m. Luckily the road was fairly flat most of the way - actually we found it to be slightly uphill all the way to Sturgeon Falls (where we stopped at the boulangerie for butter tarts and blueberry tarts as well as poutine...and ice cream...and a pogo stick...) and then slightly downhill from Sturgeon to North Bay. We also greatly enjoyed the ice cold water that the construction workers handed out to us on our way into North Bay!!! What a treat...you definitely appreciate the small stuff while biking! We stayed at the Marrs`house in North Bay - a friend of Katie`s from first year res! - which was great. Luckily I was able to catch up with Melinda the next morning as she and her parents came in from Moosonee at 3:00 a.m.!

From North Bay, we biked to Deep River...which was definitely one of the toughest days - if not the toughest - on this trip. Perhaps we weren`t mentally prepared for the hills as much as we were around Lake Superior but it was a tough 170km of continuous ups and downs. By the time we got to Deep River, it was 7:30p.m. even though we left North Bay at a reasonable time... we made our regular stop at Subway (in Mattawa) for the Sub of the Day & cookies. We stayed at the Koslowsky`s in Deep River - a friend of Katie`s from Queen`s Nordic - where we enjoyed a wonderful meal of lemon dill salmon, pasta, veggies, salad...and we can`t forget the dessert of multicoloured raspberries (from yellow to black...with yellow being the sweetest...or was it the black..I can`t remember!) and ice cream. After a vicious game of euchre - which Martin and Katie won - we headed to bed getting ready for our 200km+ day into Ottawa.

Our bike into Ottawa (or Kanata for Leah and I...Dave was heading downtown to meet his parents) was definitely much flatter than the previous day which we are eternally thankful for! On this trip, Katie got a couple of flats and we were worried that we were running out of spare tubes so Leah had to go fishing in the garbage can to get one that we thought was popped but we later realized it wasn`t!. While we were changing one of the flats, a kind couple who ran a furniture restoration business stopped and asked if we needed any help. So if anyone living near the Ottawa area and needs some furniture restoration, we do have their business card so let us know!!

While Dave continued the bike into Ottawa to have dinner with his parents, Leah and I stopped at Anita Melnyk`s house in Kanata...where we were served a lovely dinner! We thoroughly enjoyed the whole meal with the cheesy pasta and savoury chicken and pork..and the homemade lemon meringue pie as well as looking at the wedding pictures! Katie then headed off to meet Tom & another Melnyk (Adam) in downtown Ottawa and Leah stayed for the eventful night of the last book of the Harry Potter series coming out at midnight! By mid-day the next day, Anita and here mum was already a third of the way through the book!

The day off in Ottawa was spent in the bike shop, eating bagels and chocolate, at the beach in Gatineau park, dinner with Katie`s parents...we didn`t have time to update the blog! A great day off - and well deserved...since it was our first day off after 10 days of biking from Thunder Bay!!

Reaching Ottawa was a big milestone as we were then biking off into fairly uncharted territory for all three of us. We biked 130km on Sunday - 30km of this was with Katie`s mum biking with us along the bike trails and the Parkway and past the Parliament buildings through Ottawa. We took a quick break at Victoria`s (Dave`s girlfriend) house east of Ottawa and headed along the Hwy 17 and crossed into Quebec at Hawkesbury. We were too late to buy groceries that day (we forgot that it was a Sunday and that the stores closed early) so we **surprise!** had dinner at Subway - Dave`s favourite restaurant on this trip.

The roads in Quebec were indeed much nicer than the ones in Ontario...Hwy 138 was particularly nice and we enjoyed going through many small towns in Quebec with beautiful houses nestled among trees. I really hope that they do some house tours through some of these towns...some of the houses were incredible!

After 3 days of biking from Ottawa and after spending $30, $10, $35 for the campsites on our way to Quebec City, we awoke 60 km west of Quebec City and biked in to Leah`s brother`s friend`s (Brendan Green) place - right downtown, walking distance to Vieux-Quebec which was great. We took a day off (it was still a day off even though we biked 60km!!) and spent our day walking around the city and seeing some sights and being the most touristy we`ve been on the trip so far. We enjoyed the food here - went out for lunch and dinner and poutine and we are also going to have breakfast tomorrow at a restaurant so we can experience crepes.

Thanks for everyone`s notes - we really appreciate getting them! It`s wonderful to hear from everyone back home and it was great to see our friends and family in Ottawa.