Day 42 — Thursday, July 31

Stonecliffe to Haley Station
I woke up and took my rubber tubing down to the beach where I did a brief workout. It was pretty nice down by the lake/river. It was foggy above the water and it still looked nice. In the meantime, a couple people were fishing off the dock.

After packing up everything and being ready to go we got a visit from a different old guy who likes to talk. Enter the guy from last night. Good.

Vanessa and Kelly were talking to them about the trip. I was sitting in the passenger seat when one of the guys referred to me as “a quitter”. Not once, but twice. Based on his own laughter, it’s likely the most hilarious thing he’s said in years, or centuries. Albeit jokingly, it didn’t sit well with me. One look at his tubby physique, I could tell he certainly wasn’t a quitter — particularly at the buffet table.

We finally got out of there, but still at a decent time. Allan drove the entire day and we stopped at a town called Haley Station. It was less than 10 km from the Ottawa River. The photo to the right is one of an interesting billboard I saw. You'll have to click it to enlarge it.

Two larger centres we went by today were Petawawa and Pembroke, we racked the bikes and drove into Pembroke for lunch at Tim Horton’s. During lunch today we thought it might be a better idea to cross into Québec before Ottawa so we don’t have to deal with Ottawa and Gatineau. Instead we would just have to deal with Gatineau. We’ll do that tomorrow.

We stayed at a campground that had waterslides, mini-golf, a petting zoo, and dismal showers. It was a pretty nice place. The waterslides were about to close for the night, so we didn’t bother. Instead, Allan, Vanessa and I played 18 holes of mini-golf where I showed them who was boss. And by that, I mean, winning by just one stroke. Here's a video of the excitement:



We went and had supper at a restaurant shaped like Noah’s Ark which appeared to be somehow connected to the campground. We walked 2-by-2 up the ramp into the restaurant and had some food, as well as went on the internet. We met a guy there who was with his wife and daughter. They were pretty interested in our trip and asked us for some literature on the U of L. Unfortunately we had none to give.

We played some Frisbee and then hit the hay.