Today marked the official start of the 16th annual Freedom Rally organized by Sudbury's Freedoms Riders. This was going to be our first one together as it usually clashes with the Twins Festival which Heather has attended for the past 13 years.
Since Heather and I both worked on Friday we couldn't make all the way to Sudbury. We selected a campground on Highway 11 between Barrie and Orillia and made a reservation for tonight only. Our initial choice was a KOA campground but during long weekends you can only book a minimum of three nights. With that in mind, I made a reservation at Oro Family Campground.
We both worked until 5 but were on the road already at 6. Our luggage, tent, chairs and other gear was already prepared to go the night before so we only had to tie some loose ends before leaving. We tried to be as quick as possible because I was told that we had to check in before 9 pm and we'd be cutting it close.
Our route would be the usual Waterloo-Fergus-Orangeville, then 10-89-27-400-11, keeping in mind that the cottage traffic which could slow us down. We had enough fuel to get us to Barrie where we filled up around 8 pm in preparation for tomorrow's much longer ride. And the only slow spot we incurred was as we got on to Highway 400.
We arrived at the campground at about 8:45 pm. We checked in and quickly found site #124. It was exactly what we requested: no water, no hydro, no Wi-Fi. In addition, it was no more than a couple of hundred feet from Highway 11, which even late at night was bustling with activity. Just the bare bones site where we could set up our tent and leave in the morning. At $24.15, we wouldn't expect more. We started setting up our tent as dusk was arriving and finished few minutes later as night was almost in full swing.
We explored the campground for a few minutes finding several other bikers also spending the night here. However, the two sites adjacent to our were occupied by families who decided to spend the long weekend camping. Site #122 was occupied by a very friendly family from Clinton who turned in shortly after 10. On the other hand, site #126 was something else. After we called it a night at about 10:30, they started blasting music, then decided to start having arguments which lasted until 4 in the morning. Neither Heather nor I slept very well that night. We thought something should have been done about that family but we heard that the ownership wasn't very serious about enforcing their own rules. I guess you get what you pay for, which in this case wasn't very much.
Getting ready to leave for another adventure.
SEASON STATS
Today's trip: 174 km - 108 miles
2009 to date: 6,019 km - 3,740 miles (70.8%)
2009 goal: 8,500 km - 5,282 miles
To obtain goal: 2,481 km - 1,542 miles
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