SWOdyssey – Day 7 – Forest to Sarnia via Kettle Point

This morning we asked the front desk clerk to come out and take our picture with our bikes, before we set off, rather than doing the usual morning usie.

We began by travelling the same route as yesterday on Highway 21 toward Grand Bend, but turned off when we reached the road that led to Kettle Point. Today I took a detailed picture of what the shoulder of Highway 21 looks like coming out of Forest.

Here is Dayle travelling along Highway 21. I did look at the Waterfront Trail page for this area tonight and the worst sections of Highway 21 are identified as gaps unacceptable for marking as the trail. However the picture above and below are marked sections of the Waterfront Trail.

The ride became much more pleasant once we left Highway 21. We have seen quite a few roads like this with a shoulder on only one side. Fortunately we have been travelling on the side with the shoulder, however, I find this configuration quite odd.

The road soon became even narrower and less travelled. It was shaded by lovey old trees. It was a pleasure to ride.

This was our first glimpse of Lake Huron today.

It was so relaxing riding along these quiet, trees, residential roads. The weather was perfect. Warm, but not hot, a cool breeze off the water, and no humidity to speak of.

We were expecting to see these concretions in the water. They are called kettles due to their resemblance to the bottom of a cooking kettle. We didn’t see any in the water, only a few in a park. We aren’t sure why – David and Dayle recall seeing them here years ago – but speculate that perhaps the water level is currently too high.

We saw several of these little bays along the shoreline that had beautiful reflections in them.

Much of the land in this area belongs to the Chippewas of Kettle and Stony Point First Nation.

There were nice shoulders here and the road was lightly travelled. This is Lakeshore Road.

Oh no, a hill! How bad will the climb be on the other side? The hotel manager warned me about the rolling route. Compared to riding in Caledon, the hills have been barely noticeable, even when signed as below. As you can see from my Strava summary below we only had 158 m of climbing over the entire day.

Well, that didn’t seem to take very long, even on the longer route, to get back to Sarnia.

at regular intervals we saw these little platforms with benches, stairs down to the beach and little breakwaters where people swim.

Here is another combination pedestrian and cycling lane which seem to be bi-directional. Further along cars were only allowed to travel in one direction but bikes in both.

Once in Sarnia we cycled along a quiet street until we found another Skeeter Barlow’s, the same restaurant where we ate dinner the last two nights in Forest. They had a lovely patio overlooking Lake Huron and well used bike racks out front. Many more people arrived at this restaurant by bike than by car during our stay.

From the restaurant we continued to follow the waterfront trail over to the Bluewater Bridge, which connects Sarnia and Port Huron, Michigan.

We arrived back at the hotel where we left our cars and brought everything up to the rooms. Dinner was at Waggs steak and seafood restaurant a few blocks away. It was not one of the better dinners I had this week.

Walking back to the hotel after dinner we saw oil refineries on the St Clair River and the sun setting behind a large complex of silos which dwarfed our hotel on the far right.

I’m sad that the week has ended. I had a lot of shoulder tension and migraines at the beginning of the week, but have been feeling much better toward the end. Tonight my back feels very relaxed and I feel like I could go on riding for many more days. We have already started talking about where we will go next.

Tomorrow there will be no riding – we will be driving back home.

I cycled 458km in seven days making this my second highest one week cycling distance after my Ottawa to Brampton trip of 580km. I also passed the 5000km mark for 2019 which means I will shortly pass my previous record of 5250km for the full year of 2017.