Canada 2012 Day 5

Here comes the sun, ta ra ra ra . . . We have enjoyed a day of perfect weather, so the horrors of the rainy day are now no more than a bad dream. We have also found our stride, and setting camp, breaking down camp, and riding 50 kilometers between stages seems perfectly normal by now. Let me see, I forgot to mention that we passed the night of Day 4 in Richmond. In the morning I made a delicious tortilla Española with an onion I had bought, and the French fries leftover from yesterday’s lunch (Annie is good to my ego because she is often pleasantly surprised by the tasty things I cook from the oddest combination of ingredients).

We left Richmond about 10 am, and were very favorably surprised by the fact that la Route Vert from here on follows the path of the old train line from Maine to Quebec. The state government simply tore off the tracks and filled the railroad bed with sand, thus developing a delightful path through old growth forest and agricultural fields, with very gentle grades. Annie really got jamming, and from there on I saw a lot of her cute little derriere as she biked unto the horizon.

Another pleasant surprise was the many rest stops that have been built along the road, some with porta-potties. If only they had water we would be squatting in one of them for the night (but of course they know this and do not add water to the services). We stopped in one of them for our elevenses, and I even treated myself to a little siesta.

Our next stop was Danville, where the town has converted the old train station into an ice cream parlor. The banana ice cream was to die for! We were there, enjoying our cones, when an older couple came to do conversation. It turns out their sone emigrated to California, and they visit him once a year, when they come from their month in Paris and before they take off for their month in Rome. There are some Canadians that must have quite a bit of money put aside for retirement, to judge from this one couple, the beautiful houses we keep seeing, and the abundances of posh RVs we see in the campgrounds.

The final push of the day brought us to Kingsey Falls, where we found a very nice campground. We had been attracted by the waterfalls implied by the name, but according to our informant the falls were in private property and could not be visited. They were right in the strict legal sense, but being dumb tourists we simply biked into the main facility of the Cascades Paper Company, and had a nice look at the falls. And then it struck me: The paper company (one of the biggest in the world, is not named after the Cascades in the northwestern United States, but after this very waterfalls (cascades means waterfalls in French).

What shall we have for dinner . . . hmm, I think I will cook a picadillo.