Day 9 - Clarence to Ottawa (Home)

60.3 km - Total so far 690.4 km - https://ridewithgps.com/trips/9822261

After a quick coffee and breakfast with our hosts, we were off to Rockland to have coffee with Helene's parents. Within minutes of cycling in the morning heat, we realized it was going to be a tough ride to Ottawa.  

We decided to save ourselves a few kilometers to Rockland by riding along Hwy 17 for about 1.5 km. With the speed limit set at 70 kph for that portion of Hwy #17, we had no concerns using the road.  We made it quickly to the McDonalds and had a nice breakfast with Simon et Réjeanne.

Looking across the Ottawa River at the site of the Thurso ferry 

We decided to take the back roads to Ottawa and avoid the ever increasing traffic found on Hwy 17. We stumbled onto Route Arrows as we left Rockland and since the arrows pointed towards Ottawa, we decided to follow them. On our last day with only 60 km, we threw caution to the wind. As you can see in the picture below, those arrows are very easy to spot.

To add excitement to our ride we decided to follow these arrows

The arrows took us onto the Sir George Etienne Cartier Parkway and we continued following them to the Aviation Museum. We parted ways at that time in order to head to the DQ for a quick stop.

The bike path near the Sir Geoge Etienne Cartier Parkway

Encadreur! qui s'encadre sous la supervision d'une Encadreur(e)!

Our bikes were described as "F&%#$^% KILLER setup".
We could not agree more.

On the Sir George Etienne Cartier Parkway, we took the shoreline bike path that is covered in stone dust. That stone dust just gets in everywhere and we had to take drastic measures to get it off our bikes. I discovered that a 'leafblower' is a great stone dusting tool.

I mentioned previously that our set up attracts quite a bit of attention and generates many a conversation. We had such an encounter just as we were walking our bikes into the garage of our apartment building. 

It was a short but much-needed bike trip. We discovered what we needed to know about some of our new equipment, namely: alcohol stove, air mattress, and bike trailers. We also reaffirmed what we like most about bike travel and that is meeting people.