Rideau Trail Day 02 Downtown Kingston to McIvor Rd.-ish 01A to almost 02A

Today, we figured we could do a bunch of the Kingston portion of the trail and catch a bus back downtown to rejoin our car. We planned to see as far as we got, and then head back – and then sunk cost fallacy took us in the end to keep going and going…..Weather was cloudy with chance for some rain, but we got lucky – temps were warmer than predicted and no rain arrived until after we finished our “walk”. The walk along the waterfront is a really great one, and takes you past some awesome Kingston history and architecture. We were early enough to miss the midge-orgy that plagues this area in mid-April.

Lesson Learned – make good use of the Rideau Trail website and maps, even if they let you down the week before. As a result of our previous bad map, we tried mostly following signage where we made an error and walked up into the Marshlands where the trail has been rerouted. We found out the boardwalk was closed after reaching it, so had to backtrack this section, but it was a nice walk through the forest with some great bird and frog action so no big deal. 

We stopped somewhere between 01C and 01D for a bathroom break, and agreed we felt great to keep going. This next part of the trail goes into the train area, past a small tent encampment and then through (as in go inside, down and under the tracks, and back out the other side) the train station – this is where the 01D trail marker is. The next section through a large cemetery is VERY interesting, lots of history to be seen, including the gravesite of John A. Macdonald.

We kept going almost to 02A, but before heading under the 401 headed up Centennial Ave. to make our way back to the Cataraqui Mall for easy access back downtown. We ended up walking to the mall since no buses passed us along the way – making this walk super long – 23.78km according to my Garmin watch. By the end, I definitely had a bit of soreness in my right hip and the bunion on my right foot, but nothing too bad – I did get a small blister between my big toe and index toe, and Bryan had a small blister on his baby toe – but these really were small and we were pretty impressed we can walk a half-marathon distance without too much trouble.  We took the bus and headed back downtown for lunch.