Josie Dinsmore's epic 762 km bike trip!

Come on a fun journey with our pal Josie Dinsmore.
She tells us what she's been up to this summer, gives super simple advice on how to capture pictures of the Northern Lights and tells us all about her epic 8 day bike trip through Central and Southern Ontario.
Definitely follow her on Insta & check out her YT channel!

https://adventureswithjosie.wordpress.com/
https://www.facebook.com/AdventureswithJosie/
https://instagram.com/adventures.with.josie
https://tiktok.com/@adventureswithjosie
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNMv5KLspqK1r-mbA9QGPFg
https://x.com/AdventwithJosie
https://www.threads.net/@adventures.with.josie

Transcript

00:00 - 00:01
Hello, and good day, eh?

00:01 - 00:03
Welcome to the Super Good Camping podcast. My name is Pamela.

00:03 - 00:04
I'm Tim.

00:04 - 00:04
And we

00:04 - 00:08
are from SuperGoodCamping.com. We're here because we're on a mission to inspire other people

00:08 - 00:12
to get outside and enjoy camping adventures such as we have as a family.

00:12 - 00:14
Today's guest is back for her 3rd round.

00:15 - 00:21
She's one of our pals, Josie Dismore from Josie Dismore Photography and Adventures with Josie.

00:22 - 00:25
Yay. Hello, everyone. It's good to hear.

00:25 - 00:26
Thanks for coming by.

00:27 - 00:27
Yeah.

00:28 - 00:30
So so what what have you been up to lately?

00:30 - 00:37
Just in a in a ketchup that's that's when when it's pals, I like to just sort of hear what they've been been doing lately.

00:37 - 00:40
Yeah. Kind of, just kinda coming off of summer now.

00:41 - 00:47
I ended up doing quite a few different little things, particularly towards the end of, really

00:47 - 00:49
August and then the beginning of September.

00:49 - 00:53
I got out on a couple different camping trips. We're doing biking.

00:53 - 00:58
We've been doing some hiking. Yeah. Lots of photography.

00:58 - 01:00
All sorts of just little odds and ends this year.

01:01 - 01:06
Cool. Well, and I just the recent by the time this airs, it'll be like a week or so, 2 week

01:06 - 01:11
and a half ago that the, you you got some really cool pictures of the, the northern lights, the aurora borealis.

01:12 - 01:18
Yes. Yeah. So I I I always keep an eye on when they're happening, and, we actually can see them

01:18 - 01:21
out our living room window, basically, where I live.

01:21 - 01:23
We're we're pretty lucky that way.

01:23 - 01:28
But when I heard they were gonna be really, really good, I thought, yeah, we gotta go somewhere even better.

01:28 - 01:30
So we went to a local provincial park.

01:30 - 01:33
We went to Saint Louis de Champlain, Provincial Park.

01:33 - 01:39
Anyone who follows me will know that I go there quite a lot. That's interesting. Yeah.

01:39 - 01:43
So we went down to the beach area, and it was just it was the best northern lights I had ever seen.

01:43 - 01:45
It was it was quite something.

01:45 - 01:48
And I had my GoPro going. I had my phone. I had my camera.

01:49 - 01:52
Everything was just constantly going. Yeah.

01:52 - 01:56
And just it was it was so cool because, like, they were just all over the sky.

01:56 - 02:01
Like, you you couldn't normally, you can you they're strong enough if you look in one direction,

02:01 - 02:03
and you're like, oh, okay. Cool.

02:03 - 02:05
But these ones, it was all over.

02:05 - 02:08
It was just take a direction and shoot, and hopefully, you

02:08 - 02:12
get some kind of good photo. But, yeah. I've seen

02:12 - 02:15
the pictures from that. They were really epic shots that you got. Yeah.

02:15 - 02:19
Do you have any tips for people for shooting that kind of photography?

02:19 - 02:22
Yeah. It's it's actually not as complicated as people think.

02:22 - 02:27
If if you've got, like, a cell phone, the phone will kinda, like, correct that stuff for you

02:27 - 02:29
if it's got more automatic settings.

02:29 - 02:34
If you have, like, if you wanna go into, like, the manual settings or if you have, like, a camera

02:34 - 02:39
or DSLR, you basically just wanna do, a slower shutter speed.

02:39 - 02:44
So you want it to be able to capture a longer have it open longer, the lens.

02:45 - 02:50
And depending how bright the lights are, you might not want it as long.

02:50 - 02:52
So if they they were really bright that night.

02:52 - 02:55
So I think I was usually shooting about 10 seconds.

02:55 - 03:01
And then you wanna your ISO, you wanna brighten that up a little bit to add a little more light depending.

03:01 - 03:08
Also, you probably wanna do a manual focus instead of an auto because the camera's not one gonna

03:08 - 03:11
wanna focus when it doesn't really have something to focus on.

03:12 - 03:17
And just make sure you use a tripod, and that's pretty much it. And just experiment.

03:17 - 03:22
And and if if a picture turns out good, then you're you're going the right direction and keep going from there.

03:22 - 03:26
So, yeah, it's actually not not that difficult.

03:26 - 03:29
So, yeah, but you have to get out somewhere where you can see them, though.

03:29 - 03:31
That's that's the most difficult part usually.

03:31 - 03:35
Yeah. Toronto makes it a little bit difficult to do that. Yeah.

03:35 - 03:38
But apparently, some people did did manage to see some some colors here.

03:38 - 03:43
I don't know that I saw much in the way of, of photos that worked out well.

03:43 - 03:49
Not here in, in the city, but very close, like just, you know, just north of the city and stuff like that.

03:49 - 03:54
But I saw lots of people putting out some pretty cool greens and purples and wild photos.

03:54 - 03:57
That was a pretty amazing event.

03:57 - 04:03
All social media was just colorful like northern lights for days after.

04:04 - 04:07
All the feeds, everybody's feed is just full of them.

04:07 - 04:09
And we're just sitting here in Via Central Ohio.

04:09 - 04:10
Yes we will.

04:11 - 04:12
Uh-uh. Well, sometime.

04:12 - 04:16
Oh well. Such is life, I got to see it because you guys all took pictures of it so it was good.

04:16 - 04:18
Yeah, yeah well that's that's the cool thing you know.

04:18 - 04:24
Sometimes you miss out, The sky is cloudy, but somebody's gonna have a picture of it. So yeah.

04:24 - 04:29
Yep. Cool. So I know I know you got in a a couple of bits of biking.

04:30 - 04:36
I think you oh, what but you ran into I think you ran into a bike issue when you were doing

04:36 - 04:42
the the charity rides, like trying to rack up the the how is the you you do x amount of kilometers

04:42 - 04:47
and and then you raise so much money, but I think you ran into some kind of mechanical issue.

04:47 - 04:52
Yeah. So I, participate Great Cycle Challenge Canada every year.

04:52 - 04:54
It's usually in the month of August.

04:54 - 04:59
And basically, people pick a goal for amount of kilometers they wanna ride in the month, and

04:59 - 05:02
then they pick a goal of how much they want to raise.

05:02 - 05:07
What ended up happening this year was I had my goal, which was pretty reasonable.

05:07 - 05:09
I think it was on like 400 or 500 kilometers.

05:10 - 05:16
But I ended up having an issue with my bike earlier in the month, and then an issue towards the end.

05:16 - 05:19
And I just didn't have the chance to get out.

05:19 - 05:25
And then between that, we had a lot of like rainy weather too when I did have my bike.

05:25 - 05:30
So I didn't get the kilometers or the amount of donations I was hoping to this year, but

05:30 - 05:35
I still got I got well over 350 or something dollars.

05:35 - 05:38
So, you know, every every dollar helps. So

05:38 - 05:41
yeah. Yep. That I'd still call that a win.

05:41 - 05:47
And that that charity is for, the sick kids, for kids cancer research.

05:47 - 05:49
That's specifically what it's for.

05:49 - 05:50
So it's a very good cause.

05:51 - 05:53
Yes. Yeah. I I knew it was kids cancer.

05:53 - 05:58
I wasn't sure it was I wasn't didn't re I don't think I remembered that it was sick kids but yep. Yeah.

05:58 - 06:00
That's a that's a poopy thing for kids.

06:00 - 06:04
And anything negative for kids is a health issue is poopy.

06:04 - 06:07
Is there a particular reason why you chose that, Charity?

06:07 - 06:12
Not really. Like, this was my 5th year, and what happened was when I first heard about it, it

06:12 - 06:15
just kinda randomly popped up on Facebook one day.

06:15 - 06:21
And what I liked about it was, of course, you know, raising funds for kids cancer research is a great thing.

06:22 - 06:28
But I also liked how the event was organized, where you didn't have to go to a particular place.

06:28 - 06:29
You could do it at home.

06:30 - 06:33
And you could also pick what you were capable of doing.

06:33 - 06:38
So some people, their goal is 5,000 kilometers in a month.

06:38 - 06:40
And other people, they do 100.

06:41 - 06:46
And so you kind of adjust it to what you're able to do, and you just go out on your own time

06:46 - 06:48
in the month and do it.

06:48 - 06:53
So it's really easy for anyone, to participate and to help fundraise.

06:53 - 06:58
So that's why I did it, and that's why I keep doing it because I'm out on my bike anyways.

06:58 - 07:04
I might as well make the kilometers in that month count towards something. So Yep. Yeah. Yeah.

07:04 - 07:05
That's great.

07:05 - 07:05
And you do

07:05 - 07:09
a lot of cycling. Yeah. Yeah.

07:09 - 07:15
The last I guess the last several years, my mom and I, we started to get into longer distance

07:15 - 07:18
bike rides, and it's just gone more and more since then.

07:18 - 07:26
We're doing longer day trips, and then we started getting into, some camping trips, some multi day trips. Yeah.

07:26 - 07:31
So it's just kind of, we've we always rode bikes, but not to this, like, extent.

07:32 - 07:35
And now we're just really enjoying, you know, pushing ourselves further and further.

07:35 - 07:38
And, yeah, it's, it's been a lot of fun.

07:38 - 07:40
Well, what a perfect segue.

07:40 - 07:47
Speaking of crazy long bike rides, tell us about you did one this summer that was, like, 8 days

07:47 - 07:48
and 700 and some odd kilometers?

07:49 - 08:00
Yeah. It was our longest, so far, 8 8 days, 762 kilometers across a large section of, Ontario.

08:00 - 08:04
It was quite a ride. It's it was, yeah.

08:04 - 08:07
It's kind of one of those things where, like, even now, it's been months.

08:07 - 08:13
Like, we did that mid June, and months later, every once in a while, you're like, wow. We actually did that.

08:13 - 08:18
Well, that's yeah. I mean I mean, just, you know, rough not even working the math.

08:18 - 08:20
That that's almost a 100 kilometers a day. That's

08:21 - 08:23
Yeah. That's nuts.

08:23 - 08:25
This old guy couldn't do it. That's for sure.

08:25 - 08:27
It like like, we've been building up.

08:27 - 08:34
Like, last year, our longest ride was 5 days, but I think that one that one was under 4 100 kilometers.

08:35 - 08:37
And that's kind of how this trip came about.

08:37 - 08:41
We had, rode the Ottawa Valley Recreational Trail.

08:42 - 08:46
And after doing that, we kind of heard about some other trails.

08:46 - 08:51
And then this past spring, we got thinking, Could we go do that trail again?

08:51 - 08:57
And then at the end of it, pick up on other roads and trails and continue on a longer route.

08:58 - 09:04
And so at the end of the planning process, it ended up, you know, 762 kilometers, and it took

09:04 - 09:09
us I guess the easiest way to explain it is just kinda jump through some of the towns we went through.

09:09 - 09:15
So if you open up your Google Maps and follow along right now, that would be a good thing to do.

09:15 - 09:20
We started in Petawawa, which is a little over an hour drive from where we live in Matawa.

09:20 - 09:25
But we would have liked to start it from home, but it's on like, you'd have to do the Trans

09:25 - 09:27
Canada Highway for the first section.

09:28 - 09:30
And some people do that on a bike.

09:30 - 09:33
We kind of don't really feel comfortable doing that, at least right now.

09:34 - 09:38
So we got driven to Petawawa over in eastern eastern end of Ontario.

09:39 - 09:47
And then we rode down to Renfrew on the trail the 1st day. 2nd day took us down to Smith Falls.

09:48 - 09:54
And then we jumped down on the 3rd day over to Brockville and then down to Ganonokwe, I believe

09:54 - 09:55
it's pronounced, along the St.

09:55 - 10:01
Lawrence River. 4th day, we went from there across to Kingston and then up to Napanee.

10:02 - 10:07
What are we on now? 5th day? 5th day, we went up across through the countryside to Campbellford.

10:09 - 10:18
6th day, we went across through Peterborough to Lindsay. 7th day, we went we had to we couldn't go through Lake Simcoe.

10:18 - 10:24
It was kind of in the road, so we had to go up and up and up to, Orillia down to Barrie.

10:24 - 10:31
And then, on the last day, we went from Barrie across through Collingwood area, and we ended in Meaford, Ontario.

10:32 - 10:39
And, we specifically ended in Meaford, Ontario because that's where my, family was originally from.

10:39 - 10:43
I was born in Meaford, so we have some we have some relatives there still.

10:43 - 10:47
And we had always kinda wanted to bike there, so we thought, well, this is as close as we'll

10:47 - 10:52
get from biking, you know, to there, not exactly from home. But, yeah.

10:52 - 10:54
So that that was the route. So if

10:54 - 10:57
you look that up on Google Maps, it is quite a chunk, actually.

10:58 - 11:01
That's cool. That's a that's a big old loop. Wow.

11:02 - 11:04
Yeah. And then we got picked up at the end.

11:04 - 11:06
We didn't ride home after that. So

11:06 - 11:09
Yeah. Well, I I would avoid as many highways as I could too.

11:10 - 11:10
Being far

11:10 - 11:12
less, no no fun. What did you do?

11:12 - 11:14
Like, did you guys camp along the way?

11:15 - 11:17
How did how did that work out? Accommodations?

11:18 - 11:20
So, well, we do enjoy the camping.

11:20 - 11:24
We actually got out for a bike camping trip, in in August.

11:24 - 11:30
But for this particular trip, we decided to, just do, like, hotels and bed and breakfasts.

11:30 - 11:35
There's a bunch of different reasons, but, one of them one of the main ones is you don't have

11:35 - 11:36
to bring as much stuff.

11:37 - 11:42
You know, you don't have to bring camping gear, you know, all that. Another is time.

11:42 - 11:48
You have to consider how long it takes when you get to your campsite, how long it takes to set

11:48 - 11:50
up all that stuff at the end of the day.

11:50 - 11:54
You might have to do shorter days, and then pack it all up in the morning.

11:54 - 11:56
And then there was other things like safety issues.

11:56 - 12:03
It's nice to go to a nice, secure hotel and ride your bike right into it and lock the door,

12:03 - 12:06
you know, especially because I did the trip with my mom.

12:07 - 12:10
So, you know, it's 2 2 women riding alone.

12:10 - 12:12
You know, you still have to worry about things like that. Yeah.

12:12 - 12:13
And then too, it was nice.

12:13 - 12:17
A lot of the places we stayed at, they were like Comfort Inn's and Best Westerns, you know,

12:17 - 12:21
that those typical hotels, and a lot of them had breakfast included.

12:22 - 12:25
So that was another thing not that we didn't have to worry about, you know?

12:26 - 12:30
And then, you know, you grab your extra muffins and your apples or your oranges and take them

12:30 - 12:32
for snacks for the day.

12:32 - 12:37
So it worked out quite nice though with the hotels because we had somewhere, you know, safe

12:37 - 12:39
and comfortable at the end of the night.

12:39 - 12:40
The only downside is the price.

12:40 - 12:43
It's a little bit more money, you know, than a campsite.

12:43 - 12:47
And then 2 with campgrounds, down in some of those areas, there's not as many campgrounds.

12:48 - 12:53
So we might have had to really change our route or gone off the route to find 1.

12:54 - 12:58
So, yeah, for this particular trip, it it worked out, best, I think, for us.

12:58 - 13:02
Cool. What what kind of like, time wise, what what what's an average day?

13:02 - 13:04
How does a a normal day play out?

13:04 - 13:10
You find you you get up, go grab all your your muffins and apples and and whatnot, shovel a

13:10 - 13:14
bunch of stuff in your face, jump on the bikes, water bottles and away you go.

13:14 - 13:17
Like, what how many hours you kinda put in?

13:17 - 13:22
Obviously, different terrain is gonna change things, but what's a what's a normal day sort of

13:22 - 13:23
play out on a trip like that?

13:23 - 13:29
So for this particular trip, we usually like, there's always something that happens during the

13:29 - 13:30
day that's gonna slow you down.

13:30 - 13:32
That's what happened in this trip.

13:32 - 13:38
And then 2, also if you stop, you know, to to look at, you know, tourist attractions and whatnot.

13:38 - 13:41
But, we usually started not super early.

13:41 - 13:44
I'm thinking around 8 or 9, something like that.

13:44 - 13:47
It all depended how how quick you get going in the morning.

13:47 - 13:52
And then I think our earliest well, the first day was a very short day, so we were, like, we

13:52 - 13:55
were at the bed and breakfast by, like, 6, I think.

13:56 - 14:01
But most days ended up being, like, between 9 and, like, 10:30.

14:01 - 14:06
We had some very long days where we kind of rolled into the place, like, almost at 11 o'clock,

14:07 - 14:09
because of some issues we ran into.

14:09 - 14:16
But, I mean, like, that's that's the whole day of riding, stopping to eat, stopping at little

14:16 - 14:22
attractions, you know, things you wanna look at, and then also dealing with any problems that

14:22 - 14:23
that came up through the day.

14:23 - 14:26
And we don't ride super fast either.

14:26 - 14:31
We kinda go, you know, at a a fast pace that we're comfortable with, but also, you know, you

14:31 - 14:35
can we like to look around and kind of enjoy it.

14:35 - 14:39
Like, we don't go, you know, like, super fast like some people do and just fly through.

14:39 - 14:44
Like, it's really nice to be able to slow down, be able to look around, you know, hear all the

14:44 - 14:46
sounds like the birds and stuff.

14:46 - 14:53
So, yeah, usually we were out, I wanna say, as early as, like, 8 in the morning.

14:53 - 14:57
And then the latest day, I think it was almost 11 o'clock when we got to the hotel.

14:57 - 14:58
That's okay.

14:59 - 15:05
Yeah. But we had we had a bit of a thing happen, which is kinda connected to the long days.

15:05 - 15:09
When we planned this trip, you know, I thought of all the different possibilities, and this

15:09 - 15:12
was mid June that we were doing this.

15:12 - 15:15
And so you kind of at that time, you're thinking, it could be cold.

15:15 - 15:20
You know, it's in Ontario, it's still cold in June sometimes.

15:20 - 15:24
And, you know, there was all these things we were thinking about, storms, rain.

15:25 - 15:31
But one of the things we never thought about that ended up happening was a heat wave.

15:31 - 15:35
So I don't know if you guys remember that big heat wave in June that hit Ontario.

15:35 - 15:37
That happened right it was like 4 or 5 days long.

15:37 - 15:39
It happened right in the middle of our bike trip.

15:40 - 15:46
And we had to ride through it was, like, most days were, like, 35 degrees.

15:46 - 15:53
Felt like 40 something, and no rain, just sun all day. And, yeah, that happened.

15:54 - 16:02
I think the heat wave started our 3rd or 4th day and went till probably the second, last day.

16:02 - 16:05
So we kinda and we didn't change anything.

16:05 - 16:09
We had actually went ahead on this trip, which I don't know if it was a good idea or not.

16:09 - 16:14
Well, we went ahead and booked everything ahead of time, because we thought we'd feel a lot

16:14 - 16:18
better for this length of trip to have all the hotels booked.

16:18 - 16:23
And then you don't roll into a town at, like, 10 at night, like, oh, no. Where do we stay? Yeah.

16:23 - 16:25
So we didn't wanna cancel anything.

16:25 - 16:29
We wanted to keep up with our schedule, so we just kept pushing through each day.

16:29 - 16:35
Like, some people might have, in those temperatures, said, hey, let's do a shorter day or something. We're like, no.

16:35 - 16:36
But just we'll keep going.

16:37 - 16:42
But we we kind of adjusted things a bit where we would stop a little bit more often.

16:42 - 16:48
We'd make sure we stopped in shadier spots, you know, out of the sun, drink lots.

16:48 - 16:52
And if anyone started to feel, like, a bit hot, we'd stop for a bit.

16:53 - 16:58
So that ended up that was one of the things that did slower like, make our days a bit longer.

16:59 - 17:01
Just try like, we never had any issues.

17:01 - 17:06
I think there was only one real time where the heat kinda hit me, and we had just went up one

17:06 - 17:09
of the biggest hills of the trip, I think.

17:10 - 17:13
And, you know, there's no wind on a bike up a hill.

17:13 - 17:16
So I had I'm like, okay. No. No.

17:16 - 17:18
I gotta I have to stop on this one.

17:18 - 17:20
I gotta I gotta cool down. But, yeah.

17:20 - 17:24
So we kind of adjusted things to deal with that heat.

17:24 - 17:28
So, yeah, it was it was kind of funny that that happened because that was, like, the last thing

17:28 - 17:30
we even thought about, like, a heat wave.

17:30 - 17:37
But, we actually brought warm clothes and never even touched them. So but, no.

17:37 - 17:42
We we we pushed through it and, it worked out in the end.

17:42 - 17:44
I'd be all sweaty and chafing.

17:44 - 17:45
Oh, yeah.

17:46 - 17:51
Do you take a bike trailer for your clothes or how do you transport things you bring with you?

17:51 - 17:57
So, we both have, like a back rack over the back tire of our bikes and we have, like, the panniers.

17:57 - 18:00
They're like the large bags that hang off of the racks.

18:00 - 18:04
And then I also had a trunk bag, which is on top of the rack.

18:04 - 18:10
And then I had, like, water bottles I I had on different, cages on the frame.

18:10 - 18:16
And then on the front of my bike, I had a handlebar bag, with a couple little feed bags, they're called.

18:17 - 18:23
And so, kind of just, fit everything in all those and try and balance out the weight.

18:23 - 18:27
But, because we weren't camping though, we were you know, we didn't have as much stuff.

18:27 - 18:32
But I still brought lots because, you know, 8 days you want to be prepared for everything.

18:33 - 18:36
So I definitely had different options of clothing.

18:37 - 18:44
And then, of course, I had my GoPro and phone charger and power banks and all that kind of thing.

18:44 - 18:48
So and we always did. We we, ate out.

18:48 - 18:49
Like, we never cooked anything.

18:49 - 18:55
We didn't bring a stove, but we always did have some sort of food on us because, you know, you

18:55 - 18:58
never know where you're going to end up if you'll be able to find something.

18:58 - 19:02
So we always had some snacks and whatnot. And did you

19:02 - 19:03
run into rain at all?

19:04 - 19:11
Oh, yeah. Actually, that was probably the scariest part of the trip for me.

19:11 - 19:14
Day I think that was day 7.

19:14 - 19:24
We were riding from Lindsay, Ontario, and we were, we were gonna go through Kirkfield, and then over to Orillia.

19:24 - 19:29
And everything was fine, beautiful day, and then all of a sudden we kind of look off to the,

19:29 - 19:33
I think it was to the west, and there's these huge dark clouds.

19:33 - 19:37
And it's the kind of dark clouds that you know, oh, no, that's, you know, it's not just going to be a

19:37 - 19:40
spit of rain. It's like that's a storm. That's, like, that's a

19:40 - 19:42
good one. And so I

19:42 - 19:44
started freaking out because, you know,

19:44 - 19:50
the anything like that, like, if final lightning is coming, I'm done. I'm done.

19:51 - 19:59
And so at that point, we were trying to make it to Kirkfield to stop at the lift lock along the transsevern, waterway.

20:00 - 20:02
That was our plan for lunch.

20:02 - 20:07
And we thought, okay, if we make it there, we'll definitely be able to take shelter, like, in the bathroom or something.

20:08 - 20:13
But as we got closer, we knew we probably weren't gonna quite make it.

20:13 - 20:18
So we actually we had come up from Lindsay, and we had turned to head west.

20:18 - 20:22
And we're just going straight towards these big clouds, like, just black clouds.

20:23 - 20:24
And I'm like, I don't okay.

20:24 - 20:27
I was getting I was getting to the point. I'm like, no. No. No.

20:27 - 20:32
I don't care if if that's if I see some lightning and some serious stuff, I'm just gonna ride

20:32 - 20:37
into someone's yard and go on their front porch and be like, I'm I'm just gonna borrow your

20:37 - 20:40
porch here until this is over. Yeah.

20:41 - 20:47
So, we kept going, and then and then I seen lightning. I'm like, okay. No. No. No. No.

20:47 - 20:51
And I've seen a bit more, and I we were trying to get to Kirkfield at the point, the town.

20:51 - 20:55
We thought maybe we can find a store to go into.

20:55 - 20:56
But it was still a few kilometers away.

20:56 - 21:00
And so we're riding along, starting to rain now at this point.

21:01 - 21:05
And then I seen a garage, like, you know, a a garage that fixes cars or whatever.

21:05 - 21:09
And it was on somebody's property, and the door was open. I'm like, hey.

21:09 - 21:14
Maybe we can ride in there and ask them if if they would mind if we just pushed our bikes into

21:14 - 21:17
the garage, while the storm passes.

21:17 - 21:20
So my mom's like, okay. Go ask them then.

21:20 - 21:22
She would've kept going through the storm, probably.

21:24 - 21:27
But, so we went in there and asked them, and the guy's like, yeah. Sure.

21:27 - 21:32
And so we just rolled the bikes in, and guy's fixing the car, and we're just chatting with him

21:32 - 21:33
and his son and their dog.

21:34 - 21:39
And it's just pouring out and thunder and lightning like crazy outside.

21:39 - 21:41
We must have been there, like, an hour, though.

21:41 - 21:43
Like, it was a good long storm.

21:44 - 21:45
But luckily, like, really nice people.

21:46 - 21:50
You know, it was really nice of them to allow us to hang out there for a bit.

21:50 - 21:51
And then after that, we carried on.

21:51 - 21:56
And and that was our only, like, big rain and storm of the trip.

21:56 - 22:01
Besides, the last day, there was a little bit of rain for maybe half an hour. Yeah.

22:01 - 22:03
So I I didn't like that one, though.

22:03 - 22:06
Not not the not when you get into the lightning and stuff.

22:06 - 22:09
That's not on a bike.

22:10 - 22:13
Yeah. You're riding a metal object in lightning.

22:13 - 22:15
But I was at the weather, it was pretty good.

22:15 - 22:18
It was just it was just heat, basically. Yeah.

22:18 - 22:21
But the weather, yeah, it was really nice.

22:22 - 22:25
So just that one crazy storm there.

22:25 - 22:27
Cool. Well, not not cool.

22:27 - 22:30
And cool cool that you've got the opportunity to sleep.

22:30 - 22:32
I actually got it on my GoPro too.

22:32 - 22:36
I actually got the footage of that storm coming at us on the GoPro. Yeah.

22:36 - 22:41
So, the plan is to make some YouTube videos of this trip, so that's definitely gonna be in there.

22:41 - 22:45
But I'm gonna cut the sound out of that part because you just hear me freaking out. So

22:48 - 22:50
Put some nice calming background music

22:50 - 22:51
in. Yeah.

22:53 - 22:58
On the trip, so you you said that you you did sort of the the touristy thing and and checked

22:58 - 23:02
things out and that's part of why you you weren't as speedy as you might have been.

23:02 - 23:05
What what kind of cool things did you did you see along the way?

23:06 - 23:12
Oh, gosh. Like, We went to places that we had never even been to before in a vehicle or places

23:12 - 23:14
we had kind of just driven through quickly before.

23:14 - 23:17
So we were seeing a whole bunch of new stuff.

23:18 - 23:21
I think probably the top of the list for me was in Brockville.

23:21 - 23:24
We went to the Brock ville railway tunnel.

23:24 - 23:26
I'm not sure if you guys have heard of that.

23:26 - 23:29
It's a 500 meter long train tunnel.

23:29 - 23:32
Actually, it was the oldest train tunnel in, Canada.

23:33 - 23:38
And, they have lights in it now and music, and so we were able to push our bikes right through this tunnel.

23:39 - 23:43
And, they had, like, different colored lights flashing to the music.

23:44 - 23:48
And, you know, there's the water dripping on you because, you know, you're down underneath the

23:49 - 23:52
it goes right through the middle of town, but, like, underneath.

23:52 - 23:59
And it comes out right underneath the town hall, and then it takes you right out to the waterfront at the St. Laurence.

23:59 - 24:01
So that was probably my favourite.

24:02 - 24:07
And I'd highly recommend anyone check that out. And it's free, too. Very cool place.

24:07 - 24:09
It was neat to see the St.

24:09 - 24:16
Laurence River, actually, in Lake Ontario because, like I said, we don't normally go down that far in Ontario.

24:16 - 24:18
So that was nice to see that.

24:18 - 24:20
And, what else did we see?

24:20 - 24:23
We actually rode our bikes through Ferris Provincial Park.

24:23 - 24:27
So we got to hit a provincial park on the route, which I was thrilled about that.

24:28 - 24:33
And, Ferris has the huge suspension bridge. So if you

24:33 - 24:34
look at it Oh, yeah. Yep.

24:34 - 24:41
Yeah. We saw lots of locks along the way because we multiple times through the trip, we crossed

24:41 - 24:43
over either the Rideau Canal or the Trent Severn.

24:44 - 24:49
So there was lots of little locks, lots of train history along this route that we did because

24:49 - 24:53
probably almost half of the route we actually were on old rail trails.

24:53 - 24:56
So we're kind of half road, half rail trail.

24:56 - 25:04
So, you know, there's all sorts of old train stuff, you know, stations and, like, whole engine sitting places.

25:05 - 25:06
And what else did we see?

25:06 - 25:14
A lot of cool train bridges that are now part of the the rail trails, particularly one there's one near Peterborough.

25:15 - 25:21
I forget what it's called, but it's a huge, huge old train bridge, and it's, like, so high up.

25:21 - 25:23
And even you can just see miles all around.

25:24 - 25:27
Oh, we went to the lift lock in, Peterborough.

25:27 - 25:29
So we had to check that out.

25:29 - 25:35
It was after they had already like, closed for the day, but so we rode our bikes right up underneath it. That thing is huge.

25:36 - 25:38
I think didn't you guys go there this summer?

25:38 - 25:42
Yeah. Thomas and I did the lock and paddle, I think it's called Yeah.

25:42 - 25:42
I did.

25:42 - 25:43
And and went up in the canoe.

25:43 - 25:47
That was that was slightly mind blowing. But

25:47 - 25:49
I yeah. I bet. I'd I'd like to try it in a canoe.

25:49 - 25:51
Like, it's crazy just walking up to that thing.

25:51 - 25:57
Like, I took pictures at our tiny little bikes, like, down at the bottom of it.

25:57 - 25:59
Like so, yeah, that was cool.

25:59 - 26:04
We actually we didn't go to the, canoe museum, but we we biked by behind it.

26:04 - 26:08
I think that was only a couple weeks after they had opened, like, the new museum.

26:08 - 26:11
In Barrie, actually, we got to Barrie.

26:11 - 26:16
It was it had already been dark for, like, over an hour or something by the time we arrived there.

26:17 - 26:22
But I had wanted to see there's a statue down near the waterfront called the Spirit Catcher.

26:22 - 26:29
And I think a lot of people, if you look up bury, the statue would probably, pop up.

26:30 - 26:34
And, it's one of those things where I remember seeing years ago when we lived in Southern Ontario,

26:34 - 26:39
if you watch the news, they always showed the statue at the beginning of the news, you know, segment.

26:39 - 26:42
So I was afraid when we got there that it was gonna be dark.

26:42 - 26:43
We wouldn't be able to see it.

26:43 - 26:45
But they actually light it up at night.

26:45 - 26:50
So we came along along the waterfront, and we're like, oh, cool. Look, there's a statue.

26:50 - 26:53
And it's this huge, like, it's, yeah.

26:53 - 26:56
Anyway, look it up, Spirit Catcher Berry.

26:56 - 26:59
And I got some really cool pictures, standing underneath it. Yeah.

26:59 - 27:03
Just lots, lots of different little things to see, lots of history.

27:03 - 27:08
And then too, it's, it's always neat just riding through different towns and cities and just

27:08 - 27:14
seeing, you know, what everything looks like and what people people do there.

27:15 - 27:20
Kingston, actually, they had little trolley things, right, like driving around the streets,

27:20 - 27:23
like the little red kinda trolleys.

27:23 - 27:28
Oh, and then there was an old there's an old ship in Kingston that we stopped at called the Kuwaiton.

27:28 - 27:30
I'm not sure if you guys have heard of that one.

27:30 - 27:31
It was an old steam ship.

27:31 - 27:33
It's actually older than the Titanic.

27:34 - 27:34
Oh, my.

27:34 - 27:39
And it's that kind of, like, it looks like the Titanic, but it's green. It's not black.

27:39 - 27:44
So that's sitting down at the waterfront in Kingston, and we got to ride right up to the front

27:44 - 27:45
of it and take pictures.

27:45 - 27:50
So, yeah, all sorts of things, like and then because we have the lack of time, like, you don't

27:50 - 27:55
get to spend a huge amount of time at each place, but you get to see lots of different little

27:55 - 27:58
things for a short period of time anyway.

27:58 - 28:02
So, yeah, it was it was pretty neat. It was pretty neat. Awesome.

28:02 - 28:05
That would be a a pretty cool explore. Yeah.

28:05 - 28:10
Because, I mean, when when we're doing it, a, we're on the highway, so we're generally far away

28:10 - 28:11
from all the cool things.

28:11 - 28:11
Mhmm. We're

28:11 - 28:16
doing Mach 7. So it's like even if you do see it, it's like, okay. That was that.

28:16 - 28:22
Yeah. And that's that's the thing too that we always find is when you do a bike trip, like,

28:22 - 28:27
you're kind of going in the same some of the same spots as as you would with a car, but you

28:27 - 28:33
see things so much better, and you're going at a slower speed, and it's also easier to stop.

28:33 - 28:38
Like, if you're driving somewhere in a car, you can't exactly just stop anywhere sometimes,

28:38 - 28:41
but a bike, you can just stop, take a look, keep going.

28:41 - 28:49
But, you really get you really get more into the environment or into the the city or the town you're traveling through.

28:49 - 28:55
And, like, similar to if you walked through, but, you know, a a bit of a quicker quicker pace, of course.

28:55 - 28:58
But, yeah, it's a it's a neat way to travel.

28:58 - 29:02
Like, you just you feel, like, more into it than and then a vehicle.

29:02 - 29:06
So and more people talk to you too, we find as well.

29:07 - 29:10
It's it's hard to talk when you're doing a 120 kilometers an hour.

29:10 - 29:15
Yeah. Yeah. Or if you're just stopping somewhere quick in the car and leaving. Yeah.

29:15 - 29:19
Yeah. Exactly. It's, hey, how are you? K. Bye. Yeah.

29:19 - 29:26
You mentioned that you were using old old railway lines or paths as part of your your traveling network.

29:26 - 29:33
How do you what what do you just Google Maps to find that sort of stuff, or do you have a different resource? Or I don't know.

29:33 - 29:33
How do you how do you

29:33 - 29:34
map out?

29:34 - 29:35
The route. Yeah.

29:35 - 29:42
So I I map out, pretty much most of it just using Google Maps, but I'll do a lot of research as well.

29:42 - 29:49
Like, if some like, I I did look up different areas what rail trails are avail like, basically,

29:49 - 29:53
they're old train tracks that have been changed into multi use trails.

29:53 - 29:56
Some of them are multi use for non motorized only.

29:56 - 30:00
Some allow motorized as well. So I yeah.

30:00 - 30:05
Sometimes I'll just look along Google Maps and I'll see kind of the area we want to go, and

30:05 - 30:07
I'll see which roads are better.

30:07 - 30:10
Because obviously, on a bike, you want to avoid the busier roads if possible.

30:11 - 30:18
You want to look for roads that are, you know, as direct as you can, so you're not going way out of the way.

30:18 - 30:22
And then if you come across trails, sometimes names will pop up of trails and I'll click on

30:22 - 30:24
those and I'll go to websites.

30:24 - 30:28
Originally, the route was gonna have a lot more rail trail, but as

30:28 - 30:36
I did research, I found out that some of the ones I originally thought we might do were a little more rougher. Like, they haven't been

30:36 - 30:40
some of these rail trails in different areas, they're slowly working on them.

30:40 - 30:44
You know, a lot of it's fundraising or fun, you know, funds.

30:44 - 30:46
They can get grants from the government.

30:46 - 30:49
So they're not all all of them are complete yet.

30:49 - 30:55
And so, some of the trails I found, they looked a little bit rougher than what we wanted to do.

30:55 - 30:59
They were maybe more suitable to to, mountain bike or ATV.

31:00 - 31:06
So in those areas, you know, we picked more of a a road route where it'd be easier to ride.

31:06 - 31:07
But, yeah, that's kind of what I do.

31:07 - 31:13
Like, some of it I I'm I've heard of these places before, so I'll look it up and I'll see if it's possible.

31:13 - 31:16
And then, yeah, it took it took quite a while.

31:16 - 31:22
Basically, it was just me on Google Maps just saying, okay, we're gonna go to here and here,

31:22 - 31:27
and then actually just dropping the little Google Maps guy down on the road in the street view

31:28 - 31:30
and seeing, okay, what does this road look like?

31:32 - 31:33
And, yeah, just a ton of research.

31:34 - 31:36
And it worked out pretty well.

31:36 - 31:38
We we didn't change the route too much.

31:38 - 31:43
There were a few things that we ended up changing when we got to certain places, but we did

31:43 - 31:46
stick pretty closely to the to the route.

31:47 - 31:53
But and then, too, just going online and just googling different places like bike routes or

31:54 - 31:58
multi use trails, you know, things are gonna pop up.

31:58 - 32:00
So that's pretty much what I did.

32:00 - 32:03
I basically planned the whole route on my own.

32:04 - 32:08
And then, like, I talked to my mom a bit and I'm like, well, where do you want to go over after this?

32:08 - 32:11
And I'm like, okay, I'm going to go down on Google Maps and I'm going to check out every little

32:11 - 32:15
road that goes up And then, you know, just seeing what's best.

32:15 - 32:18
So, yeah, it was quite a bit of work, but it's also fun.

32:18 - 32:22
I I really enjoy going on maps and checking out everything.

32:22 - 32:24
So it's kinda it was fun for me, though. So

32:25 - 32:26
And what kind of bike do you ride?

32:26 - 32:29
Is it a mountain bike or a road bike or a hybrid bike?

32:30 - 32:37
So I have a gravel bike, and, it's kind of, it's kind of the best option for me because I ride

32:37 - 32:40
particularly, really, where we live, we ride all sorts of things.

32:40 - 32:43
We're on, you know, pavement. We're on trails.

32:43 - 32:46
We're on rough gravel roads.

32:46 - 32:51
So the gravel bikes are kind of designed to handle, a little bit of everything.

32:52 - 32:56
If if you had a road bike, you might not be able to handle some of the rougher stuff, or you

32:56 - 32:59
might not even be able to handle some of the rail trails.

32:59 - 33:06
And then, of course, the mountain bike, they can be a bit slow on pavement and stuff, and it's a lot more effort.

33:07 - 33:10
Because that's actually what I had before I bought the gravel bike.

33:10 - 33:11
It was a mountain bike.

33:11 - 33:16
But we started to go further distances, and it was just I was just dragging myself along with it.

33:16 - 33:21
So I find with the gravel bike, it's it's good good for, you know, everything.

33:21 - 33:28
And then my mom, she has it's kind of an older model, but it's similar to, like, a touring, gravel bike as well. Yeah.

33:28 - 33:35
We had no issues anywhere we rode during during the trip, whether it was, you know, the really

33:35 - 33:37
rough stuff or right in the middle of city.

33:37 - 33:43
So I think it's I think the gravel or touring type bikes are a good choice if if you're gonna

33:43 - 33:52
do a trip and you could hit a variety of terrain, or if you wanna jump off roads and go on to trails or something.

33:52 - 33:54
So, yeah, it's a good option.

33:54 - 33:59
And then they're also, a lot of the gravel bikes are designed with lots of options to attach

34:00 - 34:02
racks and bags and things like that.

34:02 - 34:07
So, you know, if you wanna load up your bike with a bunch of stuff, there'll be all the little

34:07 - 34:11
holes and and attachment things all all set up already.

34:11 - 34:17
Yeah. Cool. Because I I wanna load up a bunch of stuff so that I can make my bike twice as heavy and lug that out.

34:17 - 34:20
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That's

34:20 - 34:21
it for us for today.

34:21 - 34:24
Thank you so much for tuning in to Adventures with Josie.

34:25 - 34:31
So if you check her out, her trip that she's described is going to show up on her YouTube channel. So, Adventures with Josie.

34:31 - 34:34
And Josie does more photography, you can check her out.

34:34 - 34:38
And her Instagram is really amazing as far as beautiful photos.

34:38 - 34:41
-Yeah, go check out some of those Aurora pictures. -Yeah. -They're just wonderful.

34:41 - 34:48
-Aurora pictures, tomogamy pictures, pictures, rest tools, Samuel de Champlain, the fall colors,

34:48 - 34:50
Algonquin pictures, it's all gorgeous.

34:51 - 34:56
And, we'll talk to you again soon. I'm Pamela.

34:56 - 34:57
I'm still Tim.

34:57 - 34:59
And we are still from SuperGoodCamping.com.

34:59 - 35:02
You can reach out to us on all of the social media as well.

35:02 - 35:07
We're on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and we have our YouTube channel, and we'd love it if

35:07 - 35:08
you subscribe to us there.

35:08 - 35:12
If you wanna email us, our email address is hi at super SuperGoodCamping.com.

35:12 - 35:17
That's SuperGoodCamping.com, and we'll talk to you again soon. Bye.

35:17 - 35:18
Bye. Bye.