The Toronto Beaches International Jazz Festival Streetfest is on. I'm heading to Palmer's Rapids to ww kayak, but if you're in town, this is always a good time...
Friday, July 28, 2006
Thursday, July 27, 2006
New, yet questionable route at Bon Echo
Hmm. Not sure of the rating, but the first step sounds like a doozy.
PS - the picture is of Mazinaw, but has nothing to do with the climb in question. . .
PS - the picture is of Mazinaw, but has nothing to do with the climb in question. . .
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
Monday, July 24, 2006
Friday, July 21, 2006
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
Friday, July 14, 2006
Monday, July 10, 2006
Bikes, BnB's and booze
http://www.regional.niagara.on.ca/exploring/cycle/bikemap.
Seriously late in departing Toronto on Saturday, not realizing that the QEW to St. Catherines was just as bad as Hwy 400 to cottage country - who knew? Anyway, this caused a slight adjustment to the plan.
I would have to say that the Welland canal trail is very good for road riding - although mostly flat, it's consistently beside the water ( i.e. a view), good asphalt, quite wide, relatively untrafficked. We went from Port Weller to Port Robinson, took a tiny predestrian-only ferry (a pontoon boat) across the canal, down to Niagara Falls. This was the stretch that didn't work so well - the first part was fine (down Chippewa Creek), but Oakwood to Mcleod and to the falls was a mistake. The roads are in poor shape, and the cars either distracted or erratic. Lyons Creek to Chippewa and then across on the Niagara Parkway would have been a better option, though further. If you are in shape (unlike us), then going straight across to Fort Erie seems like a good option - making the full Circle is 140 km.
Once past the Falls themselves, the Parkway is a solidly good ride - separated bike trail with great scenery. One major exception - near the Brock Monument at Queenston you descend the escarpment. The bike trail doesn't do this in a straight line - it cuts through some park access roads, winds a bit, etc. If you want to just fly, use the road. Otherwise, there's an moderate risk of an accident on the bike trail once >40km/h with pedestrians (read - kids).
The trail from Queenston to Niagara on the Lake is mostly good - a little confusing in parts (it seemed to vanish at the Butterfly Conservatory), but still scenic, with the Niagara River and multi-million dollar mansions right besides you. We cut up towards Hillebrand on 3rd Line because we were running exceedingly late for the jazz festival instead of proceeding into NotL. LP bonked somewhere here - mostly because we hadn't really eaten anything since we started - my bad. The original plan had called for us to start earlier and have a picnic by this point in the afternoon. There a quite a few fruit stalls (not to mention dozens of vinyards) to use from a picnicing pov. i.e. Kurtz Orchards near NotL. From the jazzfest, we went to port weller to find the car. In biking terms, 75 km or so in 3.5 hours. We added time by stopping at the falls for some pictures, at one of the locks to watch how it worked, etc.
Thoughts:
http://www.regional.niagara.on.ca/exploring/wcpt/looklike.aspx
Seriously late in departing Toronto on Saturday, not realizing that the QEW to St. Catherines was just as bad as Hwy 400 to cottage country - who knew? Anyway, this caused a slight adjustment to the plan.
I would have to say that the Welland canal trail is very good for road riding - although mostly flat, it's consistently beside the water ( i.e. a view), good asphalt, quite wide, relatively untrafficked. We went from Port Weller to Port Robinson, took a tiny predestrian-only ferry (a pontoon boat) across the canal, down to Niagara Falls. This was the stretch that didn't work so well - the first part was fine (down Chippewa Creek), but Oakwood to Mcleod and to the falls was a mistake. The roads are in poor shape, and the cars either distracted or erratic. Lyons Creek to Chippewa and then across on the Niagara Parkway would have been a better option, though further. If you are in shape (unlike us), then going straight across to Fort Erie seems like a good option - making the full Circle is 140 km.
Once past the Falls themselves, the Parkway is a solidly good ride - separated bike trail with great scenery. One major exception - near the Brock Monument at Queenston you descend the escarpment. The bike trail doesn't do this in a straight line - it cuts through some park access roads, winds a bit, etc. If you want to just fly, use the road. Otherwise, there's an moderate risk of an accident on the bike trail once >40km/h with pedestrians (read - kids).
The trail from Queenston to Niagara on the Lake is mostly good - a little confusing in parts (it seemed to vanish at the Butterfly Conservatory), but still scenic, with the Niagara River and multi-million dollar mansions right besides you. We cut up towards Hillebrand on 3rd Line because we were running exceedingly late for the jazz festival instead of proceeding into NotL. LP bonked somewhere here - mostly because we hadn't really eaten anything since we started - my bad. The original plan had called for us to start earlier and have a picnic by this point in the afternoon. There a quite a few fruit stalls (not to mention dozens of vinyards) to use from a picnicing pov. i.e. Kurtz Orchards near NotL. From the jazzfest, we went to port weller to find the car. In biking terms, 75 km or so in 3.5 hours. We added time by stopping at the falls for some pictures, at one of the locks to watch how it worked, etc.
Thoughts:
- I'd definitely do it again.
- Going Friday night is a better idea in many ways.
- You can plan for stops, views, wines, food, plus culture at night
- Peller Estates has a great restaurant, beautiful patio, great service
- Cabernet Franc may grow well on niagara peninsula, but I don't actually like it much, except in its icewine form which is not nearly as clowing as typical icewines as a result of the added tannins from the grape skins
- it's interesting to mix up the big commercial wineries (Hillebrand, Peller, Vineland estates) with the boutiques (Strewn, Malivoire) and micro's (Lailey). They all grow a tonne more varietals than the lcbo carries.
- People seriously plan for the hillebrand jazz fest - picnic tables, food, umbrellas, etc. it's like the shakespeare in the park crowd
http://www.regional.niagara.on.ca/exploring/wcpt/looklike.aspx
Friday, July 07, 2006
Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition
Looking for something to do this weekend?
Not as good as other year's, but still worth wondering through, if only for the people watching :)
Not as good as other year's, but still worth wondering through, if only for the people watching :)
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
Tuesday, July 04, 2006
Massasauga Way home
Took the 240m portage to Georgian Bay and then aimed for Cow Island, in order to head back to the longer portage which went back to Spider Lake heading for Three Legged Lake, Bay Boy ice cream in Parry Sound, gas and home. Good times all round.
Site 34 on Clear Lake
While Blair Caron's invaluable Massasauga website grades this out at as a *** site, I would have had it as a four star. Lots of nice tent pads, good options for swimming depending on the wind's angle, fairly private from other sites or even lines of travel.
That said, we were somewhat disappointed to have the next campers paddle up to us from site #31 and more or less kick us off at 11 am. Given the proximity of their previous site (031), the fact that we were in the midst of packing up our tent and gear, and the smoke from the yet-to-be extinguished campfire was obviously visible from the lake, it seemed somewhat rude of them. They landed their canoe some 20 feet from our tent and proceeded to kill time by fishing. We were likely 20 minutes from being ready to head out, and wouldn't have been much of an imposition for them to wait before landing - just seemed rude is all. I doubt that I would have landed and then walked near other people's gear - perhaps that's just me.
Our campsite (Ahem)
As it turns out, two guys from Ste. Catherines had issues finding their campsite (#7), and decided to use our's instead in hopes that no one was going to show. Alas, we did. So, they moved their tent backwards, and it was fine. Just unexpected. My tent = yellow. Their's = blue.
Three Legged Lake
After arriving a little late at Oastler PP to pick up the permits, we turned around and headed to the public dock at Three Legged Lake. It's a good thing it was almost the summer equinox, as we didn't put in until 10:15 pm. It also happened to be a new moon. The lake, while very calm, was also quite dark. We paddled for 20 minutes or so to the first portage, which, thankfully was flat, wide and short (300m?).
Paddled around a few points in the dark on Spider Lake in order to find our campsite #14.
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