Our First Trip in the New Motorhome

YEAH! After two months stuck at the RV dealership in Michigan getting the bugs worked out of our new RV, we finally hit the road. We visited friends on the way home. It’s very nice not to be concerned about electricity. Between the solar panels, large lithium batteries and running the generator for an hour or two to cool things down, we’re comfortable even in the heat.

We spent a couple of weeks at home, reworking the RV living room. It doesn’t look quite as shiny-new now, but it suits us better. Out went the big pull-out sofa, in came a small table and chairs that give us more space when the slides are in. The theatre seating also went. With my bad back, I’d already “borrowed” a chair from my sister’s place that I can actually sit in. It now travels back and forth between our apartment and the motorhome.

Thanks to waiting on the motorhome for two months we did get to drive back home and spend Canada Day with our nieces in Port Credit for the first time.

By August 22 we were on the road heading to Mike’s family reunion. After a few nights in his cousin’s driveway, we moved on to the casino at Scugog Island, conveniently central for several friends who dropped by. We cycled the island and revisited Port Perry, a lovely lakeside town where we used to watch musical theatre shows. Fun fact: the skies above Scugog Lake are where student pilots practiced when Mike and I were earning our pilot’s wings almost 50 years ago.

Casinos often hand out money in free slot play for new registrations. Mike and I don’t gamble, but we don’t throw away free money either. With the money we won “investing” our free $50 in the slot machines we concluded that we were paid to stay there. The casino’s restaurant was good, and we learned that all the shows there are free. That could be good news for the future.

From Scugog Island we headed north to Casino Rama in Orillia for Labour Day weekend. Orillia is a great little town, perched on a strait between two lakes. We biked around and discovered that their Pirate Festival was in process. That was fun.

The Group of Seven are a famous group of Canadian artists who did most of their paintings in the 1920s. I thought this statue was in a very strange placement as it was in front of a plaque honoring Franklin Carmichael a member of the Group of Seven. Anything less like the Group of Seven’s work I have yet to see.

We’d originally planned to tour the East Coast, but losing two months in Michigan made that somewhat unrealistic. We like to travel slowly, exploring bike trails and local towns on the journey not just racing to a destination.

Being on the water, I was really missing boating. Mike and I were hoping to leave Orillia and head to one of two places. Friends of ours lived on a lake southeast of Orillia and my niece was staying at a cottage less than an hour north. Both have nice power boats. It turned out that our friends were tied up on such short notice, and my niece never actually got back to us about a visit. Different from a month earlier, after Labour Day, campgrounds now had availability so we could have spent some time in “cottage country” visiting my niece but it wasn’t to be.

Since we weren’t seeing friends and family, we joined the subscription club “Harvest Hosts and Boondockers Welcome”. It’s a bit like a pilots’ network that we belonged to in the 80s. Here locals host you for a night or two, either at businesses (where you’re expected to buy something) or just in their driveway or field. With our solar, big batteries, and generator, we don’t need hookups often, just a place to park and friendly people.

We investigated a Harvest Host near North Bay but it didn’t work out, so we overnighted in North Bay’s shopping centre’s parking lot along with a few other RVers. We cycled around town and along Lake Nipissing. One of the RVers told us about a lovely campground in a city park right on the Ottawa River in Pembroke. It had 30amp electrical service and water for all the RVs and sounded interesting so we detoured east.

I really wish that I had a photo of Mike and I talking to a man in his 40s next to our motorhome. This man was wearing a short-sleeved t-shirt. Mike had on long sleeves and I had a light sweatshirt and jacket on. The caption might have been “You guess the temperature!”.

Pembroke turned out to be a gem. It was clean, lively, and with a great riverside park. We chatted with locals at the beach and playground and biked across an island into Québec. We met one family who told us about a cycling route in this area on the Quebec side of the River called PPJ. It goes roughly along the Ottawa River and was off-road on an abandoned railway right of way which sounded nice. They also mentioned a smaller city park in the town of Shawville along the PPJ trail.

The PPJ links into Québec’s Route Verte 1, stretching all the way to Gatineau and beyond. Since our intent by then was to cycle to see Ottawa and camp in the casino across the bridge in Gatineau, this sounded perfect, so after eight nights in Pembroke we headed for Shawville, our first Québec town.

Shawville’s park was not as great as Pembroke’s but nice and less than half the price. Electricity was only 15 amps, this meant – no heated floors, how terrible! In fact, after we had parked and set-up, I found one spot that, for some unknown reason, had 30amp service. We quickly moved our RV there and have been enjoying our warm floors in the evenings and nights.

On our first day in Shawville, we arrived having missed lunch. We parked and then headed right into town in the car. As we entered the bar and grill we were welcomed in English. We talked to all four of the waitresses in the restaurant. We were told that Shawville was an English-speaking island in the area. What really surprised me was that NONE of the waitresses were properly bilingual. One spoke a very little bit of French, one could read a bit, another said that she understood some French but couldn’t answer. All the signs in the pub were in French, as mandated by the provincial government. Mike and I were really surprised.

Cycling the PPJ took us into Campbell’s Bay, where we had a harder time finding food. The brewery was closed that day, the inn was now just a bar, and it was permanently shutting down in two weeks. The only food option was the Snack Shack by the highway. The locals said the town started into decline when the bank left. Strangely, the town looked fine, a tidy park, a school that looked busy, buildings well-kept. It was sad. Surprisingly, the people we met were again speaking English to one another. Mike and I had no idea that rural Quebec would have these English pockets. Last night Mike and I cycled into Shawville for an ice cream cone. We were surprised to hear a young girl speaking English to her mother. When I asked, we were told that the default schools in this area are in English but all offer French immersion as well.

While in Shawville, we heard about another cycling trail “Le P’tit Train du Nord”, a 200+ km off-road rail trail from Mont-Laurier to Saint-Jérôme, continuing into Montréal. It passes through Mont Tremblant and is well set up for cycling tourists, with towns, food stops, and luggage transfer services. It sounds exactly like our kind of cycling.

As you might guess, we’ve now decided to skip Ottawa and head north to Mont-Laurier once we’re done here. How great it will be if our cycling coincides with the fall colours.

For now, Mike wants one more leg of the PPJ before we leave Shawville. After that we’re off to ride the little train in the north.