Rideau Trail Gets Real: Day 03 – McIvor Rd. to 02D

By Rebecca Walks and Hikes April 14, 2024

This was a day predicted to be very rainy, after a couple days of rain. We decided to stick it out and do the next leg of our Rideau Trail journey. We had better maps with us on the way since I figured out how to get the Rideau Trail Association kmz files into My Maps and thus loaded into google maps-ish. Parking at McIvor Road, we first walked southbound under the 401 and back to make sure we covered the area where we finished last time. Then we headed North along the K&P trail, where we missed the part where we were supposed to veer off the K&P into the woods due to, well….Im not sure. Since we had to do a loop, we came back the “right” way and it was fairly clearly marked where we were supposed to go. Will have to pay closer attention to trail markers!

At Unity Road, we realized we were off trail so headed up Unity and joined the trail going Northbound through a very wet farmers field, which turned into a more navigable back farm road before heading through a nice forested section that met back up with the K&P at the 02D marker. We used the K&P trail to get back to Unity Road, and then walked up Unity to connect to the Rideau Trail in a southbound direction. This was fortunate. I think had we done this part nearer the beginning of our walk as planned, I would have tapped out! This part started out suuuuuper wet. Lots of interesting routes/stepping to avoid massive water. Bryan even had to “build” be a bridge from some driftwood at one point which worked great. A bit further up while trying to balance beam I had a misstep and fully submerged my right foot, but score one for the Keens and my reflexes – no water got in my boot. Despite the swampiness at this time of year, this is actually a very nice section of trail – lots of little twists and turns and I had my radar on for trail signs by now having missed the one earlier. I can see how with less attention you could go off trail and need to backtrack!

We got back to the K&P trail, and took this back to McIvor road and our car. Though we had some light showers along the way, the rain mostly held off for us and our rain jackets and footwear made a big difference.

No pains or blisters this week! Those few km less made a big difference.

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Lunch of the day - smoke and Barrel

Last week when we were walking to the mall, we passed a delicious smelling “newly opened” restaurant so figured that was a great place to try for lunch this week. We shared some jalapeno cornbread muffins, a frito pie, 1/4 lb brisket, and a smoked cheddar jalapeno sausage. The Frito Pie was DELICIOUS. This was classified as a loaded mac, and was a cast iron skillet with a layer of fritos topped with baked beans, mac n cheese, pulled pork and jalapenos. It also comes with sour cream but since I’m not a fan we got that on the side. The cornbread mini-muffins were good, and came with a honeyed butter. The meats were tasty but very costly – a single small sausage was $9.50, the 1/4 lb brisket was $15 and was a single slice of meat. Definitely best values here are with handhelds and the loaded mac’s.

Something great about this place is the sauce bar – you can get a selection of different bbq/mopping sauces for your order, and we tried several selections which each fit different meats better. Great to have the choices!