We started the day with a lovely breakfast overlooking the lake, and watching traffic heading up the steep hill on the other side that would take us out of town.

Donna and Keith were incredibly gracious hosts and excellent cooks, with a fresh blueberry scone cake waiting for us followed by a made to order breakfast. We discovered that the other couple staying there was from Nashville TN and had lots of shared musical interests and had a lovely conversation.

After loading up we headed out on Perth Road, which was much nicer in the stretch out of Westport than it was the previous day coming from Kingston, which caused me to revoke my glowing reviews of kind drivers and wide shoulders…the conditions were terrible, and there was a lot of praying and some swearing at honking drivers and hyperventilating and weepy resolve to just get the trip done. But a great meal and a good night’s sleep made everything seem possible again.

Today’s route took us into and around Perth, where we stopped at a general store for water and there were signs to “save our college” and young guys jumping off the railroad bridge into the river, and on to cottage country around Mississippi Lake and the woods and then off on several long crushed limestone trails, including the Trans Canada trail.

Our plan was to get in touch with our friend Lucien when we got closer to Ottawa to figure out where we could meet up, and called from our lunch stop at Broke Gurlz Lunchbox. We got onto the Trans Canada trail for a long flat lovely ride through the woods

We got into Ottawa and were delighted to discover this fellow on his Trek e-bike on the trail near the Ottawa River. Lucien and his wife Nicole are dear friends that we met in Saint Martin, who we contacted when we were planning this trip and they invited us to stay with them at their home.

We were happy to see Luc and the city of Ottawa, and then had a few more miles to go to get to their home which we were assured was on the trail “just a little further” which ended up getting us to 88 miles for the day.

Luc and Nicole are wonderful people and terrific hosts, and we are taking a rest day to spend with them and to explore the area before heading to Montreal.