We're Going to Graceland: Day 52 - Owen Sound to Stayner - And Then We Pedalled...... Cross Canada 2015

July 24, 2015

We're Going to Graceland: Day 52 - Owen Sound to Stayner

Today was a full bushel basket of sweet corn (sorry if I'm overplaying this one but Mr Murray's line still cracks me up).

We had a rough plan for the day ..... make it to Barrie or somewhere near it, and then make the final assault on Gravenhurst on Saturday. This is going to take some inspired route finding as there is really only one road leading to gravenhurst, and that's hwy 11. If we thought 17 was bad, we recoil in horror at the thought of 4.5 million Scarberians and other residents of the GTA piling north to enjoy their weekend in the wilderness of Muskoka. Anyway, that's tomorrow's issue. Today was all about enjoying the last bit of the Bruce Peninsula.

Our rough plan had us going about 40 km to Meaford and then checking out the Georgian trail bike path (not paved but hard pack cinder rail trail) to Collingwood. At Collingwood we were going to make a call on whether we would go to Barrie since we were trying to line up a Warm Showers stay there. If the Warm Showers host didn't come through then we were going to look for a campsite or hotel around Barrie.

We got a pretty decent start, leaving the really nice Harrison Park campground at about 8:30. The park looks like the early morning run, bike, general work out spot for folks in Owen Sound. As we were packing up we had a couple of folks stop during their run or walk and chat to us about our trip. Nice way to start the morning!

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Harrison Park in Owen Sound. Really good municipal campground

Our route to Meaford was designed to avoid hwy 26. It probably would have been ok, but it's Friday and the traffic volumes were probably going to be high. It's clear that we are getting ever closer to the urban sprawl of southern Ontario! We chose to take the Tom Thomson route, essentially hwy 18 south of Owen sound and then hwy 12 with a couple of connecting county roads, into Meaford. Turned out to be a great route. Virtually no traffic and some beautiful pastoral farmland. There were also hills! The legs haven't seen these for a while.

Nice farms south of Owen Sound. Beautiful morning for biking

Highway 18 south of Owen Sound .... Gotta like this!

Really nice rolling hills on the way to Meaford

Final run down into Meaford - time for a coffee and snack

Meaford was a pretty nice little town tucked in the shores of Georgian Bay. There seems to be a lot of retired folks and weekenders here (sounds like Canmore!). There was no live bait being hawked by the vendors, instead there were cafe's selling 12 different versions of coffee. Yep, we're getting back to the urban jungle! Not such a bad thing as we stopped in at one place and had a good cup of coffee and a bowl of soup. We weren't really cold, in fact is was starting to get hot outside, but that's what we wanted.

We also decided to try out the Goergian trail. It's a 34 km bike and cross country trail running from Meaford to Collingwood along an abandoned rail line. Nromally we avoid these as they tend to be loose gravel and basically set in a ditch so you don't see anything. However if it worked it would be far better than hwy 26. And work it did. It was actually smoother than many of the older paved roads we've ridden on, there we good scenic spots along the way, and it was getting hot so the shaded parts through the forest were very welcome. All in, a great 34 km ride to Collingwood.

Apple orchards near Meaford. Even I can figure out what those trees are!

Cool shed near Thornbury, about half way along the Georgian trail

Plaque commemorating the folks who built the trail... Todd Brooker ... One of the last Crazy Canuck downhill skiers was one of them.He grew up in Collingwood and learned to ski at nearby Blue Mountain. It's not Lake Louise but it's produced some excellent ski racers over the years

The trail crosses this river in Thornbury just as it's going into Georgian bay

The trail ran alongside hwy 26 for a while. This made us appreciate the bike trail. Traffic in this picture is lighter than it was for most of the time

When we got to Collingwood I checked my email and found out that the Warm Showers host in Barrie wasn't available ( that's four for four for us .... How's that alliteration! Other folks seem to have a lot more luck with WS than we do). This meant we needed to make a new plan. First things first though, we needed to get some lunch ... Off to the big Loblaws downtown.

Collingwood is the largest place we've been to for a while and the store had a great selection of deli stuff to make a good lunch. Victuals procured we left the store and noticed what looked like a street festival on the Main Street bedside the store. We wandered over to check it out.

Well slap me silly with a peanut butter, banana and bacon sandwhich. We thought we'd died and gone to Graceland!

The 21st annual Collingwood Elvis festival was underway!

This is the worlds biggest Elvis festival. Even if it was the worlds only Elvis Festival, it's still big. Four full days of The King, and this was just day two, things were just revving up.

Turns out we were approaching the main stage from the back. We (or at least me) thought about trying to get in front of the stage ... Not a chance! This festival can draw up to 30,000 fans, and the front of the stage was pretty packed. Turned out to be enough action backstage anyway. In this circus we actually didn't stand out in our Lycra shorts and semi trailer like bikes! We were just another part of the show!

Contestant number ? Burning a Whole Lotta Love

No need for a backstage pass to see 'The Stars' close up!

John and Jan from Missisauga. They thought our trip was almost as cool as Elvis. Thanks!

Welcome to The People's Republic of Ontario .... Here's your cage you can drink beer in

We finally pulled ourselves away from the festival and found a very nice Japanese garden to have our lunch and make a plan (Collingwood is twinned with Katano Japan, hence the nice garden).

Well with no Warm Showers host, and a whack of people in the area for Elvis, and the normal weekend crush from Toronto, there didn't appear to be an available campsite or hotel room for miles. This looked like it was going to be fun!

We found a campsite about 30 km away that we figured we'd take a shot at ( most places usually let cyclists pitch their tent if you look distraught enough). So we went back to be grocery store, bought some stuff for supper (which turned out to be really good) and set off on another rail trail for this dot on a map campsite. Our route took us through Stayner where we were going to buy some cold beer, in the hope that it would still be cold when we got to the camp. As we were coming into the town, we saw that they had a very large Bible camp that looked like it had a few empty spots. We pulled in, asked if we could camp there and got the answer 'no problem'.

So here we are, camped in Stayner, with a good and quick dinner in us, a cold beer to slake our thirst, and a short but wonderful day of biking. We've even got a route planned for tomorrow, with some help from our new Eastern Route office manned by our friend Clair in Bellville, that should only have us on hwy 11 for less than 10 km's.

All good.

Song of the day:

What else could it be .... Burning Love ..... Live version by the white sequinned Elvis wannabe ... looks like he bought the suit elvis was wearing in this one:

Historical monument of the day:

Marker for the Georgian Trail ... Although it's not that old yet, the railroad it replaced was and its also a much needed piece of cycling and skiing infrastructure for the community's that will hopefully serve many generations of folks to come

Great dinner in the Stayner bible camp. Salmon, couscous and green beens. Nice mixed green salad to start, and the container made good plates. Good cold bevies to accompany the meal! You can put together a good meal with one pot, one fry pan and a very small butane stove!

Today's ride: 90 km (56 miles)
Total: 5,086 km (3,158 miles)

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