To Elliot Lake

---

To Elliot Lake

Tuesday, 21 August 2007

Today I departed once more from the Deer Trail Centre on the Trans Canada Highway, this time for Elliot Lake, which seemed to be an interesting place to visit. It wasn’t the easiest ride, even though I was on Blue. It began with a fairly long climb, something I usually try to avoid till I’ve “warmed up”, physically. Then the town itself was quite hilly, which made it quite difficult to ride around sight-seeing.

It seems Elliot Lake got its start as a uranium mining town. There are commemorative plaques around the area, marking where uranium was first discovered and the site of the earliest uranium mine in Ontario (or Canada, I don’t remember). Nowadays it promotes itself as a tourist town and also as a destination for retirees. There is an indoor shopping mall complete with a hotel, and one sees quite a few of the “chain” stores and restaurants. There is also a very nice site commemorating the miners who worked and lost their lives there.

And lo and behold there is a stretch of the Trans Canada Trail (TCT) that runs through and past Elliot Lake. I’d found it by looking for a trail which runs along the lakefront from a park at the west end of town. And much as I’d have thought more highly of myself for having continued on the bike past Elliot Lake, construction along a good portion of that road helped me decide to “take a hike” instead. So I locked the bike to a picnic table, took the cell phone & camera & the GPS (to measure how far I was going - needed around 5 kilometres on foot) and went on the trail. It’s a very nice trail, through some wooded areas, with signs identifying the types of trees, describing how they are important (or not), and nice boardwalks going over some of the wetter and/or more sensitive areas. There are also signs all over reminding us that dogs are not allowed on the beach or in the water, sigh...

Earlier during the day, when I’d decided I was probably not going to go too far past Elliot Lake, I’d called Bob and asked him to meet me either at the local Tim Horton’s (I couldn’t find the local Dairy Queen), or along the highway heading west out of town. As it was getting close to the time we’d planned to rendezvous, I called him again and told him how to find the park. Only problem was a big truck in front of him blocked his view of the entrance to the park, plus I’d said I’d be close to the road and in fact I was still down near the picnic area, so he drove past, looking at this silly woman waving at him to get his attention. Fortunately for yours truly he did see me and did return to pick me up...

DAY 54: On the bicycle: 28.2 km, in 1:44 hours, ave. speed 16.0 km/hr, max. speed
37.8 km/hr; On foot: 5.2 km

---