August 12 2024 Scarborough to Caledonia Ontario


   We got an early start today at about 7:00 a.m. as we had a bit over 70 miles to go. We had to go that distance today to get to our friends as tonight was what worked for them. We continued to follow the Great Lakes Waterfront trail for the most part, which was challenging with a lot of twists and turns and road construction through the metropolitan areas. We went right through downtown Toronto on bike lanes which were busy with commuting cyclists. We had beautiful views of the city as we went through it as well as looking back at it along the lakeshore.
Waiting at a red light with commuting cyclists
 
                       CN Tower

                Looking back at Toronto

   At Burlington we crossed the causeway over to Hamilton. Due to construction, we got a little bit confused as how to get on the non-expressway bridge to cross over the waterway into Hamilton’s harbor, but finally figured it out. At the end of the causeway we left Lake Ontario and headed inland. Here we had a very challenging time on the Red Hill Valley Trail which was extremely challenging with lots of ups and downs on an unpaved rocky surface that often had large loose gravel that you had to be extremely careful navigating and sometimes you just had to walk your bike. At one point there was a very steep hill in very poor shape and rocky, so it took both of us pushing one bike up and then the other to make it to the top. We were very thankful to get to the end of this trail and get on a rail-trail—that means railroad grades, so no big hills! What we didn’t think about at the time was that this was the Escarpment that we had ascended. After this our journey was thankfully much more level. 
  We had a great time visiting with our friends. We knew them from being involved in Marriage Encounter many years ago. He has enjoyed photography for years, so we got to see some very beautiful sunset pictures as well as some flowers and some other photos that he's taken. What's amazing is he has over 261,000 photographs that he has stored—that's a lot of pictures!

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