Montreal - Riding Canal Lachine

This is from Tuesday, when we went to the Ile des Souers looking for bicycling trails. It was a frustrating day for us. This is the Pont Champlain. It's a big bridge.


Yesterday, which was Wednesday, was a glorious day. Sunny, light breezes, warm. Just absolutely delightful. We did a scouting trip for a trail ride we want to do, found the trail head and then went on across the river to the Lachine canal. We decided what the heck and rented bicycles to ride the trail that goes along the canal. We got about 25k on upright bikes in sneakers.
The canal was in use until the 1970s. It was replaced by the St. Lawrence Seaway so that bigger ships could traverse the rapids. The river has got some gnarly rapids! Anyway, given the decrease in manufacturing and the move away from the canal, there are many abandoned factories. The area is in the process of being cutified and turned into condos. See the brick stack? That's from an old factory. It and the building are being converted into something new. The building on the left is a new condo. There are many condos in work along the canal.


Looking further up the canal. That's Montreal in the background. How cool would that be to live there (in the summer)?


So, we rented bicycles, and helmets. Is that a look, or what? Bad helmet, bad chin strap.


This is the Atwater market. There must be huge greenhouses somewhere, for these plants to be this large in the Great White North.


We continued riding into the old part of Montreal down to the port. The tug was just finished parking the freighter.


More vieux Montreal.


This is the ride we want to do. That's a man made dirt structure that delineates the St. Lawrence seaway. And they put a bike trail down the middle of it. How cool is that?


See the strip of land between the L'ile des Herons and the Pont du Basson? That's the edge of the seaway. It goes up to the Ile des Soeurs, connects to another island or Montreal. The number of trails around here is just phenomenal.

The weather today has just been horrendous. Cold, rainy, windy. Sort of like Seattle, only it was better there today. We drove down to Plattsburgh to pick up drugs by mail, which has been a struggle. They sent the final batch via UPS to a post office. I kept calling them to ask them how they would fix this, after UPS sent them back (because as we all know UPS can not deliver to a post office) and they kept telling me they'd been delivered; yeah, back to them. Anyway, the drugs finally arrived here, we got them and life is good. Leaving Canada for the US was interesting. The US customs guy wanted to know where we were going and why were we going there. Then he wanted to know how we know each other - we're married. Then he wanted to know if the passports were issued before the marriage since the names were different. Then he wanted to know how we met. Might one wonder what the points of this is? Going back to Canada they just asked if we have any guns or pepper spray. Go figure....