Bicycling New England, the
Erie Canal, & around Lake Ontario 2005
Picton to Kingston Ontario

July 29, 2005
Distance 50.6 Miles

The very first thing that we encountered on the bicycle today was a long 5% grade hill. Jim thought that his legs would fall off before we reached the top of that hill. His upper legs hurt very badly from the two previous hard days of riding. For the next several miles he worked at spinning to remove the lactic acid from his leg muscles. After an hour and ten fairly level miles his legs felt much better.

We traveled on Ontario highway 33 from Picton to Kingston. The only unusual thing is that about 5 miles from Picton, the road ends at Picton Bay. A ferry hauls cars and people including bicycle riders across the bay to the continuation of the highway. We had a great view of Picton Bay from the ferry, and enjoyed talking to people while we waited.

The ride continued and we passed an old church built to memorialize the loyalists who fought with the British during the Revolutionary War. It was built of stone and was the only church that we stopped to admire today.

Near Bath we saw a coal fired electric generating plant and a plant producing cement.

We reached Kingston early afternoon and had trouble deciding where we should stay. The first motels were way out of town in a not too good of a neighborhood, the 2nd one we stopped at wanted about $200.00 per night. Just too much for our tastes. We did find a motel, that was more like a B&B without breakfast, but it was over a ½ a mile from any food. The longer we thought about the problem the more out of sorts some of us became. We finally rode our bicycles to a Subway and ate a sandwich around 2:30. After that we rode out of town to a nice motel that was under $100.00 a night. We then dropped our bags and rode the bicycles back down the hill to Fort Henry. By the time we arrived it was only 1 hour until closing, so we decided to look at the outside of the fort and then rode back towards the motel stopping at a Pizza place for supper. We were all very tired as we waited for the Pizza to be served. We then rode back to the motel to shower, laundry etc. Tomorrow will be a new day.

The scenery today was absolutely fantastic and we would recommend this area to anyone.