The Flight of Bear Canada
Day 13 - July 13th
Tiverton, ON to Grimsby, ON
Back on the Road...and lost again...
I finally leave Tiverton and head south. My initial plan was to avoid Toronto and it's congestion. So I get directions from Stu and head southeast. I miss a few highway turnoffs and follow some nice country backroads. The weather and the riding is good. I'm not even safe from other biker's at breakfast. At one stop a friendly rider drops off a poster for a local ride & BBQ. I decline stating that I'm riding from BC to Newfoundland. He then leaves only to walk back and ask, "You're going where?" I ride through some more scenic rural Ontario. Well I end up on the 401 and roll past Toronto. There was a little traffic snarl but nothing to panic about. I head off the highway after a while in search of a bathroom around Whitby, ON and then as luck would have it, I find a community hall where they are doing a charity bike wash. So I feel charitable and let the ladies was the bike. The charity was for providing a camp for children with spina-bifida.
These ladies did a good job, they made sure to remove five provinces worth of dead bugs off the front end of my V-Strom.
Yup these ladies did a good job, I think I'm going to take the Strom to more of these. It'll be about the only time the bike gets washed anyways.
Then after consulting my map and realizing that I have made a navigational error, I decide to backtrack through Toronto. After handling Vancouver's traffic, I thought Toronto can't be that tough. Well TO has one thing that Vancouver doesn't...trolley tracks. And these edge traps can be quite dangerous and they sit right where I usually ride. (on the right side of the lane) I did discover that Toronto is really spread out and there is a lot more older brick buildings giving TO a bit more historical feel.
Tomorrow I'm off to Niagara Falls and maybe back through Toronto and onto Ottawa...provided I don't get lost again.
Oh and one more thing...
Today was a tough day...and oddly enough I'm not disappointed in spending an extra day in Tiverton either. Funny, eh?
Day 14 - July 14th
Grimsby, ON to Ottawa, ON
I head east a bit and hit up Niagara Falls. I arrive early in the morning and find a place to park. Some of the places can be expensive, so I ride down the road a bit to park near the gardens. I find a spot for $4.00/hr. Well that's a lot better than the $20.00 per car entry just a few feet up the road. I get off the bike and walk the promenade. The falls are an impressive display of natural beauty. The roar of the rushing water and the mist which hits me from close to a quarter of a kilometer away. At the end of my walk I head up to the Dairy Queen at Clifton Hill and I'm hit by the tourist trap of epic proportions. Everything thing up there proclaims that it is the must see and no trip to Niagara Falls is complete without it. Well I guess that my trip is incomplete, since I didn't check out Legoland.
Niagara Electrical Development Building
Niagara Falls. I'm still getting a mist from the falls from this distance.
Then it's transit time. I hit the Queen's Expressway and head back towards Toronto. I do make a detour and hit the Distillery District. On Sunday when I rode through I rode past the Public Market in full swing, however it was closed today. Then as left, I headed up Yonge St. and braved downtown Toronto once again. Now I know you'd think I was a glutton for punishment, but Yonge St. did look better than the Don Valley Expressway that I took into the city. The road in was packed heading out.
Toronto's Distillery District
Back out on the 401 I steamed east and then north, through farmland. I decided to hit a hotel in Ottawa, so I kept riding later than I usually do. When I got to the capital, I decided to stay two nights to spend a day exploring the city.
Contents Copyright (C) Michael Fodor 2012.