Day 67 - Lac St. Augustin (Rest Day)

July 19 (Sunday)

Start Time: N/A

Stop Time: N/A

KM Travelled: 0 on the Bike

Elevation: 0 on the Bike

Special Stuff: Chilling

Once in a while I get a question about whether Brian and I get a chance to see to sights in the big cities that we come through. I like this question because it makes me think more deeply about this journey.

Sightseeing takes a lot of energy. Deciding what to see, navigating to the sites, finding parking, dealing with crowds of people, line ups and the weather.

At the end of a day's ride, I'm usually pretty spent. I'm motivated to eat, prepare for the next day's ride, and re-charge my energy bank. Rest days are more of the same.

I've learned from the experiences of other bikers that getting out and sightseeing eventually runs them down and they start to resent the ride. I have never gotten to a place that I resent the ride, and I think it's because I've been careful to shelter my rest time.

Brian is amazingly understanding of my need for rest - besides, unless it's a weekend, he's usually working until 7:00 pm - while I've got earplugs in doing my own thing. When he's not working, Brian has a natural motivation to explore - he's our campsite scout. At each campsite, he gets out and reports back on the size of the campground, the quality of the shower room and laundry facilities, and if there are any other amenities such as a canteen or store.

I feel like in many ways, this trip across Canada is a unique kind of sightseeing journey. My ride takes me to incredible places - at a snails pace. I see and experience things that I would normally would not see or notice. These things are not the typical big city tourist attractions, but more of glimpses into the everyday lives other Canadians. I usually don't even get a chance to stop and take a picture. Here are a few highlights:

• Creative scarecrows (sooo many different scarecrows)

• Laundry drying on clothes lines

• A big dead tree that someone put a face on (very cute!)

• Hay bales wrapped in purple plastic wrap

• Wheat dancing in the wind

• A barn with no entry point to the hayloft (how do they get the hay up there?)

• Grain being downloaded from a silo onto a transport truck (now I know how that's done and what is being transported in those trucks)

• Barns and houses right beside the road (the road must have been built around them)

I am never bored.

There will come a time when Brian and I will visit the big cities of Canada to explore them. We might even do a bit of this on our return trip home - if we have enough time.

For now, we are perfectly happy with just chilling around our 'mobile home'.

Tonight, we had booked a reservation for a dinner at a local restaurant, but in the end, we cancelled it and opted instead stay 'home' and order take away from the campground canteen. We feast on a poutine (Quebec food) that was so big, we just couldn't finish it all!