Road Trips and Hike Reports

I have been to Montreal about 4 times I think.  Strangely, in the over 10 years Brian and I have been together, we'd never been to Montreal together despite it being a place Brian has been to several times also.  This was my first overnight trip there in over 10 years.  My memories from those trips from long ago were of the almost European atmosphere and the wonderful food and the charming Metro.  2 of my previous trips to Montreal were via train which changed a lot about how I saw and experienced Montreal. We stayed in Laval which is just across a river from Montreal proper.  We drove from our home near Rochester NY.  We also only made 2 trips into Montreal proper, one on Metro, 1 by car.  Montreal has a very strong reputation amongst urbanists who envy their public transit and the ubiquity of bike infrastructure in the city.  I can see why those aspects of the city are revered.   Unfortunately, like most places it seems like the balance between two things has been lost.  You want

After our lackluster urban hike the day before, I wanted to make sure our 2nd hike was a banger.  This hike started about 60 miles after the A-15 peters out some 55 miles NW of where we were staying in Laval.  It was interesting seeing a more northern (relatively) of Quebec.  The Autoroute ends very smoothly and dumps you onto QC-117 which parallels the A-15 almost all the way back to Montreal.  Basically, it looks like A-15 was the 'freeway' version of QC-117 which is surely a much older road. I'm guessing that the tourist season starts later this far north than it does in the US.  We were driving and hiking on a very nice warm Sunday at the end of May and yet there was basically no sign of tourism activity. We did see some work crews painting the picnic tables and deck at an overlook etc but only maybe 3 small groups of other hikers. This trail was an interesting sort of double balloon.  It started off intimidatingly hardcore with a rope assisted super steep ascent almost

We booked this trip a long time ago and later changed from a Hilton hotel in Montreal to a Hotwire booked mystery hotel in Laval.  It seemed like Memorial Day weekend would never get here but it finally did.  My employer has a once annual company holiday that is named after the company and over the few years it's been around the day has varied considerably.  This year they made it the Friday before Memorial day, effectively giving us all a 4 day weekend which was great for this trip. We drove up Friday and had a long and not too expensive casino visit on the way.  It meant we got into Montreal pretty late but surprisingly, the drive on NY 104, I-81 and Ontario-401 and on into Montreal on the A-20 etc was all very very good.  There really wasn't any objectionable traffic anywhere.    We also had a dinner that exceeded our expectations at Kelsey's Roadhouse in Brockville Ontanio, not far after crossing into Canada. Oddly I chose it by just using Google maps and looking throu

We've been getting in a fair number of hikes all throughout the winter and early Spring but we are headed into summer and want to kick our activities up a notch.  So, today, we got up early and headed out with just a general idea of what we were doing. Usually we carefully read about every trail we might do and try to pick out something that is precisely a certain length and a certain, usually modest, amount of elevation gain. I've been to Spruce pond 3 times I think, once with Brian, once with our friend Fred and then today.  The other times I've gone there we've done a 4.5 mile loop that goes up the side of a hill across the road from Spruce Pond, along a ridge then crosses the road the pond is on and comes in through a particularly charming stretch of deeply forested land with many little streams that converge and meander around before ending up on the far side of Spruce Pond and back to the car. One thing I've wanted to do but until today, hadn't, was to hik

It rained very hard last night and everything was pretty wet today.  I wanted someplace we could hike that wouldn’t be a long drive and someplace that might be BETTER because of all the rain instead of someplace that would just be wet and messy.  I wasn’t sure if we’d ever gone to Fillmore Glen but it’s just over an hour from home and given the so-so weather I imagined it wouldn’t be very crowded. It turned out to be a good choice.  The park doesn’t feel huge but it’s absolutely packed with scenery.  We went steeply uphill a long ways, looking far down at the more popular creek trails below.  The stairs and steep uphill helped pack in a good amount of fitness into this short hike. Once we cut over to the creek side trail there were a lot more people but the views and water features were non-stop.  Though planned as a 3.6 mile trail we got off plan somehow while we were on the rim trail high on the hill above the creek.  It was steep and we didn’t have the willpower to walk back to get