Friday 26 August 2016

The Black Hills SD

I had very low expectations of South Dakota and Mt.Rushmore in particular. Usually if it's a well known tourist destination, I don't enjoy it. So I was pleased as punch to learn how wonderful the Black Hills National Forest is!

We didn't actually stop to see Mt.Rushmore, but we saw it a bunch of times regardless. We drove the Iron Mountain Highway (the 16A), which had a number of one-lane tunnels with a view:

Can you see the teeny tiny faces of some presidents?


There was a fun stretch of road that had a pigtail bridge, which is a spiral road built in 1932. It was a bit hard to photograph, but it was entertaining to drive!



I also took a photo of this bit of road, which Luke called 'car singletrack'.


I actually did take a couple of photos of Mt.Rushmore, from afar.



As we first started driving up the Iron Mountain Road, a crazy bunch of tractors came driving down. There were probably about 50 of them. It was pretty adorable.


It was another hot day, but Luke found me a lake to swim in! It was Horse Thief Lake and it was perfect. It has lots of easy ways to access the water for swimming and it also has cliff diving. I haven't cliff dived before, and starting with a 25 ft jump didn't seem like the way to start, so I didn't partake. Maybe next time!

The cliff diving rock

My safe dock jump

We also camped at a free campground just down the road from the lake--it's at a popular rock climbing area called Wrinkled Rock.

There was a thunder storm over night which cooled the temperatures off a bit for the next day. We still had a morning swim (couldn't resist another dip at Horse Thief Lake!) and went for a bike ride on Storm Mountain. It was a super fun ride and everything smells of sage...you can't beat that.

We climbed back in the van and headed to Montana.

Tuesday 23 August 2016

Going out west trip #3

It took us about three days of driving all day after leaving London ON to get to our first destination--the Black Hills of South Dakota.
It was soooo hot. Luke and I don't like using air conditioning, so we relied on having the van fan blowing air on us to keep us going. It actually was comfortable enough, as long as we weren't doing anything beyond sitting as we drove. After the three days, I was pretty dehydrated and it took almost a week for me to feel mostly normal again. Blech.

There weren't many highlights on the drive, since we didn't stop much. However we did stop in Sparta Wisconsin, which calls itself the bicycling capital of America. It's in the centre of 101 miles of state trails (penny farthing not required)



We also stopped at the Spam Museum in Austin Minnesota. I've never seen Luke so enthusiastic about a museum before. Unfortunately it was closed when we got there, so we had to make due with peering through the windows and taking this photo op:



Our last notable stop was in Wall South Dakota, to see the kitschy tourist trap drug store, It was full of 'wild west' buildings and souvenirs galore. It made Luke's skin crawl, so we only really had a chance to take a photo of their cheesy T Rex before we split.

my T Rex impression

We also made a stop for some groceries for lunch in some super small town, at what looked to be a grocery store but was actually more like a dollar store. They had five aisles of 'grocery' items, that were 80% junk food. We did find sliced bread though and, thanks to the fantastic tomatoes from my dad's garden, we had a decent lunch. I did however luck out and bought Luke this bonus item.


That brought us to our first official destination--Rapid City, SD.

Monday 22 August 2016

I love Vermont

After another day in East Burke and the Kingdom Trails, Luke and I drove to Montpelier, Vermont's capital. It's a small town, but sooooo pretty and lovely. It has a beautiful downtown, with lots of public art and cast iron bridges going across the river that winds through it. Luke has lots of photos of it on his blog [blog.photonstudio.net]. Check it out.

We stayed just outside of Montpelier, in a little town called Barre. They have a trail area, called Millstone, where one of the trails has a bunch of really nice carvings in the rock.














And here's the view at the end:


There are several old quarries in the area, that are all filled with water now. And you can swim in them! Here's the one I swam in:


I've never swam anywhere that obviously deep. There was a little ledge and then it dropped down about 100 ft...and you could see all the way down. Awesome.
Here are some other quarries too:



We also rode at Perry Hill, an area recommended by a trail builder Luke ran into a parking lot. Lots of climbing to get up there, but the super fun payoff makes it so worth it!

That weekend we drove to Montreal, to visit Luke's brother and his family. The wait at the border to get into Quebec was brutal--it's really not big enough for the people wanting to pass through it. But we had a wonderful visit!

We had a day off before we were due to be in Ottawa....so we turned around and went back to Vermont for the day. That's how much we love it there. The border was still awful, even on a mid-morning on Monday. We stopped in Burlington because you can't not stop there.
Then we went on to Wains, to the Camel Hump State Park. We were in the clouds all day, so there was a nice drizzle/mist the whole time keeping us cool.

The next day we drove to Ottawa to see my brother and his family. We learned our lesson and opted not to cross at the Quebec border but drove over to Cornwall to cross instead. We had a great visit with them as well, and went to the Museum of Nature to see the ultimate dinosaur exhibit (yay!).

After Ottawa we stopped in the Belleville area to meet up with our friend's dad for a visit. He took us to Goodrich Loomis for some riding and then we had a great lunch, with great conversation, in Trenton. After lunch we stopped by the fantastic bike shop of the area, Bloomfield Cycle, to pick up some new grips for my bike (I feel like I'm always buying new grips).

We also stopped in Cobourg to go to the beach. I had no idea their beach was so good! It was a super hot day though, so even in the water I was toooooo hot. I stayed and played in the waves as long as I could though :)
Then we headed back to London for a week to visit and regroup for....our trip back out west!

Sunday 14 August 2016

Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Maine and Vermont

Our first plan was to drive the Cabot Trail around Cape Breton. We stayed a night in Ingonish to enjoy their beach and ocean. The swimming wasn't too great, since there was lots and lots of seaweed, but Shae and I got in the water so she could have her first official dip in the ocean! There is a cute tiny shop called The Groovy Goat Soap Co. in town, where you can buy homemade goat milk soap and visit the goats (and pigs and ducks) in the barn out back. Very cute!

The next day we did the drive around to the west side, stopping for a lovely little hike to a beautiful waterfall and also stopping at Pleasant Harbour to enjoy the sea.


That night we were lucky enough to get a campsite at right by the sea. The campground was essentially a parking lot, but the water and beach was just a flight of stairs down the small cliff.

The next day we stopped at the Celtic Music Interpretive Centre in Judique, totally just to indulge me. It was pretty small, but I found it to be fun. There were fiddles you could play, step dance instruction videos and a little computer that taught you phrases in Gaelic.
We drove to Truro, to spend a night at a campground that Ed, Tricia and the kids stayed at on their way down. The big draw was a giant bouncing pillow, which was inflated and rubber, in the ground. Luke figured out how to bounce to get Shae and Tegan flying high, and soon there was a group of children swarming Luke to also get in on the high bouncing fun!
Luke and I were actually quite impressed with Truro. They have a really good bike shop (yay Bike Monkey Bike Shop!!), quite a lot of trails, and a really nice gorge with waterfalls.

We then made our way over to Bar Harbour Maine and Acadia National Park. When the Rockefellers owned it, they built carriage roads all through the park which are now closed to cars and wonderful for biking. There were piles and piles of people there for biking!
We stayed at a surprisingly nice campground (usually the commercial RV parks don't have much nature or privacy, but this one did a good job).  There were blueberry bushes everywhere, so we picked and ate blueberries to our heart's content.

Next was Vermont! Luke and I stopped in the Carrabasset Valley on the way. We were soooo impressed! Besides it being *stunning*, they have so so many trails and a full time trail crew always improving what's there and building more. It was super quiet while we were there, which makes me feel like this is a somewhat hidden gem....that we need to spend more time there!!!



As we continued west we saw a beautiful little old mill, and had to stop to take a picture:



We met back up with Ed et al. in East Burke Vermont later that night, after a beautiful drive through the mountains of New Hampshire. We stayed at the campsite closest to the Kingdom Trails and spent the next day riding our bikes. It was a hot but fun day, and Shae and I cooled off in the river (even though we had found one, large leech on a rock. Brave.)

The next day we stayed on for another day of bike riding, while Ed and his family started heading back west towards Toronto.

Next post: more wonderful amazing Vermont!

Catching Up

So, I continue to be a lazy blogger. We've finished the trip and are back in Ontario....so I'm going to whip through the second half of our trip out east!

On our last day in the St.John's area we drove out to Torbay and biked the East Coast Trail. There were amazing views, and even though it kept looking like rain the bad weather stayed away for us.






And here's a very short video of a cliff with gulls:


We then drove back west to Corner Brook, which is an interesting town. The layout isn't terribly visitor-friendly, since it took a fair bit of exploring to figure out where things are. It is very pretty (except for the large paper mill) with lots of hills and water. Here's a sunset view of the city (from a surprisingly nice look-out from a strip mall parking lot)


We took this photo on a Sunday night, and the McDonalds was the only thing open at the strip mall. I couldn't believe how busy it was--everyone in town must have their Sunday dinner at McDonalds! The seagulls in the parking lot were happy though.

We went to Margaret Bowater park, since it was a good place to park for a bike ride. Luke had just left for his bike ride when I jumped on my bike and my front shifter promptly broke in half. I collected the pieces of my shifter from the ground, loaded the bike back on the van, and went for a hike instead. (miraculously Luke was able to put the shifter back together that night, and got it to work (more or less) even with a missing spring)
They have a fantastic little swim area in the river at the park--with lifeguard--so it was the perfect thing for me after a hot day's hike. The water was icy cold, just as I like it!

The next day we did some chores and Luke got a haircut. When we first got to Newfoundland I had asked Luke if he thought it would be a good place to get a haircut (I needed one pretty badly). He told me they'd give me bangs and make me look like I listen to bad country music, and even though that was a joke I didn't dare risk it. So I had to laugh when Luke's hairdresser commented that "you're not from around here" when he asked for his city slicker longer-on-top/shorter-on-the-sides cut. And I teased him that they had given him 'corners' at the back (which they did).
Since it was our last full day on the island, we bought some NL jam (the same as from Luke's childhood) and got a last order of Mary Brown's taters. Then we drove to Port aux Basque to catch the ferry the next morning.

One of the views on the drive to the ferry

Port aux Basque, before the thick fog rolled in

The next morning we took the ferry to Sydney Nova Scotia, which took all day. The ferry ride was 6 hours, but they also told us to come line up two hours before the ferry left for some crazy reason.

The pay-off was that our friends Ed and Tricia and their two kids Shae and Tegan were waiting for us on the other side. We had travelled with them last summer out west, so this summer the trip was out east :)

Friday 5 August 2016

And more Newfoundland

Once we started heading east, the sunny and warm weather turned to foggy and rainy weather.  It's all still beautiful though!


We stopped off at Terra Nova National Park for a pit stop, and much to my delight they have free showers! We had tried to have a shower earlier that morning, but couldn't find a good place to set up our camp shower...so it was a very welcome surprise.

Later that day we arrived in St.John's and we did a driving tour of Luke's old neighbourhood (Luke grew up there). A whole lot has changed since he moved away and it is a whole lot more affluent and larger. I loved all the colourful houses and the art and culture in the community.

I also dropped into the Nonia store, where they sell hand knit items made by women in the surrounding communities for charity. The had *beautiful* things.


We wandered up and down Water St for a while. Then sat down for some coffee. Mmmmmm. There's a particular coffee shop that we liked called The Jumping Bean, where we spent some quality time.

Since we had another rainy and very windy day the next day, we did some touristy things and went to Signal Hill.


Here is Cabot Tower, where Marconi received the first transatlantic wireless signal.


And here's one of the views:


We had planned to hike around a bit, but the wind was so strong that we cut the hike short.

We also went to Cape Spear, the eastern-most point of North America. We walked around the WWII bunkers that remain from when it was a strategic spot in the Battle of the Atlantic, mostly used as protection from German submarines.


The gun barrel, that is mounted on a disappearing carriage that allows it to be hidden from sight.



The ocean was a bit rough from the wind and rain.


I had too much rain on my lens to take any more photos!