We didn’t get many pics while travelling today. It was brutally hot with not much shade on the trail. And even though we left the Memorial Gardens very early, like near sunrise, the mosquitos were so bad on the trail that we couldn’t stop to take any pics.

The Chrysler Greenway Trail held promise that we would be travelling on a nice pea gravel groomed trail with at least room to pass. But that’s just not the conditions we ride into this morning. Poor Dax had no choice but to run in the weeds along the side of the trail and I had no choice but to fight my way through the weeds that were growing up in the middle of the trail. There were two very thin dirt ruts that ran on either side of the waist high weeds in the middle of the ungroomed trail. This left very little room for my fully loaded bike and trailer or for Dax. The both of us were completely covered in flower pollen, mosquitoe bites and possibly ticks by the time we cut through this section of the trail. It’s totally uncut. No maintenance had been done to it in a very long time. I’ll not ever use this trail again nor recommend it to anyone to walk or ride. Dax and I spent almost two hours working our way through that mess before we finally got to a portion of the trail that had been cut and groomed. We were almost in Harrow at that point. Just another 2 hours of riding before we reached this little town. We were done for the day. Exhausted from the heat and the struggle to keep ahead of the bugs.. We stopped at the little park on the main strip, had a lunch break, bought an ice cream and met Robert Tanner and his friend who were out enjoying their bikes on the south end of the trail. Robert generously donated to my fundraiser. Greatly appreciated that Robert! Big thank you!!!

From Harrow we looked up a “close to me” Hipcampsite for the night. We found one about 10 kms south east of our location. So after getting a rest, food and water, Dax and I started out again but this time no trails. Pavement only for us!! We had to take the long way around, but it was very pleasant after what we had already experienced today.

Once at our camp, we were able to get all our water jugs refilled, filled up our portable shower bag, had supper, did laundry, had a wonderful shower, climbed into clean night clothes and had a really great sleep. We slept in the next morning because we really needed the extra rest. And because we weren’t stealth camping, we didn’t need to get up and be gone before daybreak. We also used that time to recharge the power bank and cell phone using the solar panel.

On this day, we started out towards the lakeshore. Our first goal was to ride to Kingsville. We had been encouraged to take the paved roads down to the lake and ride the lakeshore. It would be easier than trail riding with the trailer and we would be able to enjoy the lovely waterfront scenery.

We were not disappointed.. tune in next Sunday when I’ll post the next section of our Great Cycle Challenge as Dax and I create new routes in real time and navigate our way towards Kingsville and on to Leamington, Ontario

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