Over the past few summers, Ken and I kept talking about going on an overnight bike trip, but our talk never even got to the serious planning stage. For one reason or another, such as Ken being too busy with harvesting apples, we just hadn't made the trip happen. Until this summer. On a beautiful weekend in August, we biked the Niagara Peninsula Loop, covering 140 kilometers over the course of two days. Our overnight stay was in Niagara Falls at The Old Stone Inn.
The bike trip was a lovely thing to do together. Upon completion of the route, we felt numerous things. Besides exhaustion and very sore muscles, there was quite an exhilarating sense of accomplishment. We planned for this trip, we began it, we endured it, and we completed it. We will always have great memories to accompany our experience of accepting a challenge and succeeding.
Some cyclists go on a long bike ride to raise money for some worthy cause. Friends and acquaintances support them by donating to the charity for which they are riding or by providing drinks, snacks, assistance with mechanical repairs, and encouragement along the bike route. This is a fabulous way to go beyond the personal enjoyment of such a trip and to benefit others.
Ken and I didn't choose to do our ride this "worthy cause" way (maybe next time?) but I don't think our trip lacked pleasure or purpose because of it. Either method can produce great results. When I think back over our experience, I can list numerous things I'd "do all over again". If someone were to ask me how to have a good overnight bike trip, here's what I'd recommend:
1. Get yourself some quality equipment. When we first decided that the summer of 2021 is when we're doing the trip, I pictured me using the old red bike I've always used (at least, ever since I got it for a gift on my 40th birthday) in spite of its difficult gear-shifting and its worn brakes. But Ken said if we're serious about going on a very long ride, I should have a bike that won't leave me so far behind him and puffing even on the calm, level stretches of trail. Well, I wasn't going to sniff at that. The dear bought me a new tan bike for my 56th birthday. Already at first ride, I was greatly impressed. The bike was so lightweight and lithe that forthwith I named her Willow. I don't know how many times on the trip I thanked God and Ken for her!
2. Plan ahead. Yes, I did actually make this list at the beginning of the year, and no, I did not keep up with all of my lofty goals for each month. Surprisingly, though, we managed to work in our trip one month ahead of schedule. I found that having a basic plan like this gave me incentive to get out and exercise weekly, to work myself up to greater strength and stamina over time. I also learned that it is possible to bike often enough to eventually acclimatize one's seat muscles. (Perhaps having a gel bike seat cover helps, too.)
3. Do the research. We weren't stellar at researching, but we definitely did benefit from the map-finding and the blog-reading we managed to do ahead of time. (How else would we have known to do the loop in a counterclockwise direction, so that the longest hill stretches we had in Queenston were down and not up?) The green trail line on the map above gives a pretty good picture of the route we took around the Niagara Peninsula. Here is a description of the Loop, as found on GoBiking.ca: "It runs next to the Niagara River and the Welland Canal, with short segments along the shores of Lake Ontario and Lake Erie. For the most part, this route follows a wide bicycle/multi-use path that has a good paved surface. This loop covers about 140 kilometres; a little longer with a side trip to Port Dalhousie."
We began our trip in St. Catharines at Lock Three of the Welland Canal at 7:30 on Friday morning. Heading south to Thorold, we encountered the cool and lovely air of dawn, a nice paved trail with only a few short uphill sections on the escarpment, and dew-laden greenery flanking the path at various intervals.
Do polar bears eat pines, or does it only look like it?
4. Pace yourself and take plenty of breaks. We knew we had a lot of kms to cover on Day #1 of our trip, but that knowledge didn't keep us from occasionally pulling our bikes to a stop at the side of the trail for a break. Maybe it was to have a snack while sitting on a canalside bench. (Note to self: Buy the trail mix without corn nuts.) Or to take a swig from our water bottles. Or to consult Google Maps on our phones. Or, as Ken could readily tell you, for the photographer among us to take yet one more picture. Once, while stopping in a humid, shady spot beside a wooded lot, we were joined by mosquitos that appeared to be breaking a fast. It was when we were hasting out of there that a deer fly bit my ankle. I reacted somewhat to the sting so that by evening my foot was stiff with the swelling, but by the next morning it was fine.
There were interesting bridges and other structures to observe along the canal.
Huge bowls of flowers and a great iron anchor adorned one of the parks we rode through.
5. Keep hydrated. As the morning sunshine turned the day warmer, our thirst increased. Thankfully we each had a water bottle nestled in a holder on our bike. The water level in the bottles drastically receded the farther we got into the morning. In Port Colborne, we stopped at a Shopper's Drug Mart to buy a few bottles of Gatorade and a "big water", which felt satisfying and provisionary.
It seems each town or city has its own unique brand of Main Street decor. I thought that the anchors were a fitting nautical touch along the streets of Port Colborne, which is on the shore of Lake Erie.
Our bike trail, having hugged the canal on its left from our starting point at Lock Three all the way to Lock Eight near Lake Erie, crossed over the canal and headed straight east in Port Colborne. When crossing over the canal to catch the Friendship Trail, we had to stop and wait for this ship to pass through, under the raised portion of the bridge.
6. Choose a route with variety in scenery. A good bit of the scenery we viewed from the trail on our trip involved water - the Welland Canal, Lake Erie, and the Niagara River. I loved the beauty and diversity along those waterways. The Friendship Trail section between Port Colborne and Crystal Beach was straight and hot and almost boring at times. It did have its own charm though, with the farmland, wildflowers, and butterflies.
7. Be flexible and embrace the unexpected. We expected to stop in Crystal Beach for lunch. Since we'd vacationed in that lovely town last summer, we expected we'd have to leave the bike trail to reach a Tim Horton's coffee shop along the main drag. What we did not expect or remember was how far into town it was. Exhausted and very ready for a lunch break, we entered the air-conditioned Timmie's restaurant. We were not expecting their no indoor dining policy, nor the absence of any patio tables or seating arrangements outdoors. We ended up taking our chicken wraps lunch across the street and sitting on the grass in the shade near the Fire Department. It was relaxing and refreshing to eat there, if a bit unhandy. And we did have the brilliant, memorable bikes-on-street-poles decor of Crystal Beach in our view as we ate.
In the background of this shot is the Peace Bridge spanning the distance between Canada (Fort Erie, Ontario) and the United States (Buffalo, New York). We biked along this area of Lake Erie in dazzling sunshine and gorgeous vistas. We were still in good spirits and had considerable energy yet at this point. A stop at an outdoor patio in Fort Erie was very welcome, nonetheless. We weren't hungry, though; just positively thirsty. I think we puzzled our waitress with our order of no food, only things to drink!
For a long stretch in the late afternoon of Day #1 of the trip, we pedalled with the wide and lovely Niagara River on our right and the wide and lovely Niagara mansions on our left.
8. Optional, I'm sure, but I wouldn't have wanted to do without: Have along a partner who is willing to take more than his share of the load. We began the trip with our luggage distributed between both of our bikes. The rack on my bike is less sturdy than Ken's, so I took the lighter duffel bag, and Ken took the bulging twin saddle bags. We hadn't gone many kilometers into the trip before my bag shifted and ended up falling partway off the rack. We didn't want that sort of thing happening, so Ken put ALL of the luggage on his bike rack. I was so grateful for his taking this on, as well as consulting his phone to give me distance reports, and for encouraging and affirming me when the going got long and weary.
9. Visit Niagara Falls in the summertime. The Falls is one grand, thunderous, majestic place to enjoy, no matter how many times you've seen it. When we reached this spot on our trip, I was struck by the realization that it had been a very long time since I'd seen Niagara Falls in summer. It seemed to me that this time of year, the colors were sharper, the light more brilliant, the grandeur deeper. I suppose our thrall would have been even more intense, had we not been so exhausted and been more willing to leisurely hang out there. As it was, we'd put in nearly 100 kilometers on our bikes, and our bodies were screaming, "No more!"
10. Book a nice hotel for the overnight part of your trip. Ken had reserved a room for us in Old Stone Inn in Niagara for Friday night, bless his dear heart. This hotel is located up the hill from the Falls, near the Skylon Tower. We pushed our bikes slooowly up that last long hill and wobbled (was it wobbling? I don't know - it was whatever one does on a bike after biking a whole day) into the hotel parking lot. The Inn proprietors showed us where we could stow our bikes for the night: in their back office under lock and key, and then Ken and I went to our room and crashed on the blessed bed in the blessed air-conditioning.
The next morning, we had a rather leisurely start since we didn't need to bike nearly as far as we had the previous day to complete our trip. This included an ample and tasty breakfast at the Inn Restaurant.
11. Make new discoveries along the way. One of these discoveries was Ken learning that he could make his biking "steps" count by attaching his FitBit-type exercise tracking device to his shoe. On Saturday morning, we were a good twenty kilometers into our biking when Ken realized he'd forgotten to put the band on his foot. In the pic above, he is tying it to his shoelace.
Closeup of the Floral Clock, a tourist attraction near Queenston.
I loved the glimpses we had of the Niagara River as we neared Niagara-on-the-Lake.
12. Gain new perspectives on your surroundings. As part of our Saturday route, we biked from Niagara-on-the-Lake to St. Catharines along Hwy 55, which took us past numerous vineyards. From the care and maintenance of young grapevines, to the gnarly-trunked vines laid out in symmetrical rows, to the clusters of luscious individual grapes, I found the scene fascinating.
13. Give thanks. The last ten kilometers of the forty we did on Saturday were very tiring since we were biking into a strong and warm headwind. I'm very grateful that we didn't have those conditions any more than we did. By the end, I was really starting to flag. (I had begun encouraging myself by saying "Dani, you can pedal to that road sign up there" or "When we get to that little patch of shade, we'll stop for a water break".)
We returned to our starting point in the mid-afternoon on Day #2 of the trip, so ready to be done and so happy to have accomplished what we had set out to do. Some of the many points on our gratitude list regarding this Overnight Bike Trip are:
- health and ability to pedal that far
- that we could do this together as a couple
- all the beautiful aspects of God's Creation we could enjoy with our five senses
- that my duffel bag didn't break any spokes when it fell onto my bike wheel
- that the rain on Saturday held off until we were in the van and driving home
- getting to share our pics and experience with you, my blog readers
What's been a big goal that you've accomplished recently?
