Underground Railroad Cycling

We left Hamilton Ontario and and decided to drive out a ways to see where a safe place to start biking would be. It was through the city and some places had biking lanes and some places didn't. We ran into quite a bit of construction and and it looked dangerous to bike through those areas. Outside of the city it got very hilly and curvy and had no biking shoulder. The consensus was to just drive to owenson Ontario Canada. We found a nice hotel right on the Georgia Bay and decided to spend 2 nights.

Brian got a tea time at cobble beach to play 18 holes. That was the highlight golf course of his trip trump so he felt like he was ending on a high note. We decided to drive back to Collingwood and bike the last 42 miles of the route into Owen Sound.

We found the trail beside the Walmart parking lot has started our journey on a flat trail for the 1st 9 miles. We rode past the Ski slopes and Lake Huron was on our right. Once we got off the trail and onto the road the journey began. We were about to find out what we were made of! We saw signs for the blue mountains and Hilly it was. We climbed one hill that is probably the hardest thing I've ever done on a bicycle. It had to be over a mile of climbing and part of it was almost a 12% grade. We climbed from sea level to 1900' and it was rated extremely steep. Jan was going strong until she got blown off the road by a big truck. I went back to take a picture of the hills when low and behold there she was riding up the hill! She had to get back on at the steepest part of the incline to get the rest of the way up the hill which is a phenomenal feet! We might have pulled out every curse word we know but we all made it!!!

We continued on and it was still pretty rough riding. The next 10 miles We're on a rough road with no shoulder and quite a bit of truck traffic. Finally we were rewarded with some amazing downhills. Coming back into Owen sound there was still a little bit of climbing but nothing like going out of Collingwood. The last couple of miles as we rolled into Owen's San Ontario Canada rewarded us with some nice downhill riding in 2 to a park where we were greeted by our amazing sag driver. It was a pretty emotional and knowing that we had made it to the end of our journey.

I am sure that we will all walk away with some lessons learned and some new insights. We have found the Canadians to be a lovely group of people. It is their pleasure to help you and just be kind. As the bellhop at our hotel in Niagara Falls stated: "We don't look up and we don't look down!"

I think that's a good place to end.Read more