Day 72 Wakefield to Watersmeet, Michigan: Not Laurier Street

July 11, 2011

The Lake in the early morning was peaceful, but the mosquitoes encouraged us to shove off promptly.

Our campground is serene in the early morning (but the mosquitoes are not).

We made our way onto Highway 2, giving 28 a cruel brush off.
Hwy 2 started off with a wide shoulder protected by rumble strip, and kept up the performance all the way we travelled today. Traffic was very light, and we counted fewer than 20 trucks all day. So so far we are OK with our choice.

Highway 2 opens its game with a wide shoulder, rumble strip, and little or no traffic

Again we took every step we could to do the trip in the sun without heat stroking out. We had lots of water, started early, and rested in shade when we could find it. Still, by the time we had done 60 KM and reached Watersmeet, we were done. Dodie was just getting the shakes. Inside the cool cafe and with a giant ice water though, all was eventually well.

The rider of this Kawasaki was doing the circle tour of the Lake. Note the mounted SLR camera.

In winter of 2004, Watersmeet suddenly attained national prominence. The Watersmeet Nimrods had appeared on an ESPN national sports channel list of most unusual high school team nicknames, right after the Cairo, Georgia Syrupmakers and the Brush, Colorado Beetdiggers. Three versions of an ESPN promo featured Watersmeet's basketball team. Orders for Nimrod logowear flooded the high school. And the entire team was flown to Hollywood to appear on the Jay Leno show.

Now at 2:30 (one hour later) we could, in principle, carry on.

With the day 1/2 done, the shoulder is holding up but a little cracked.

The next stoppig spot (in fact, the next anything) is 50 km away. With the sun now at max, we will give further travel a miss.

We have yet to explore Watersmeet, but the man at the next table says this is it. The cafe is therefore it also. What a difference from Montreal, where my brother Harold reports he went to Chez Levesque (google it) on Laurier Ave last night for his birthday. Today he will check out Buenanotte on Blvd. St.-Laurent for their gnocchi specialty. Well, we'll be there soon enough!

Today's special at our gourmet cafe. This sure ain't Laurier Street!

Right now, we have our own choice. There is a campground on a nearby lake, and there is a Casino with campground down the road. Hell, we already saw a lake! We're going for the Casino (as long as they have free pop!)

We see that 1/2 the population of this area (about 1400) is white and 1/2 is Ojibway. There are 15 Asians and zero Blacks. Wow, talk about skewed.

Stay tuned to find out if we parlay our $1 into any larger sum than last time!

...Well, there is no report on the gambling success yet. We set up our tent beside the casino and had a nice swim and hot tub soak in the hotel pool room. We are now busy clearing out the all you can eat buffet. Neither the quality nor price is probably competitive with Las Vegas, but people who have been cycling all day are not so discriminating!

WINNER! ...well sort of. We chose something that looked like a slot machine, but it turned out the handle had no apparent function. Still, it took my dollar and there was a "spin" button to push. We pushed and stuff happened, but we are not sure what. We pressed "bet" and "spin" and more stuff happened. We seemed to have credits that went up and down. It was pretty boring, so finally I pressed a button marked "pay" and four quarters came out. Wow, what a complicated way to make change for a dollar! How about that? Four, yes four quarters back for my dollar. These Chippewas are almost in competition with Santa Claus!

Today's ride: 68 km (42 miles)
Total: 4,241 km (2,634 miles)

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