July 7, 2018
Day 50 Blind River
Blind River, Ontario
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Set out from the hotel at 6:45 after breakfast and various conversations with other guests. They’re always intrigued when we roll our bikes down the hallway into the lobby. Our legs were feeling good right out from the gate, despite yesterday’s mileage. Guess we just had to remind them of this biking thing. We rolled along a few side streets, then got on I-75 just before the International Bridge (the same I-75 that goes to Dayton..only 528 miles!) Traffic is as incredibly light, only 6 cars passed us. We made Canada with only one causality; Jon’s water bottle bounced out and the lid got sliced. We took to the waterfront trail along the St. Mary’s River that connects Lake Superior and Lake Huron. Really really pretty. Old lux liners. Docks. Lots of history. Once out of Saulte Ste Marie, we hit the Trans Canada Highway - it varied from pine forests to boggy ponds to boring nothing. Then we spied more touring bikers, a sweet couple, James and Susie, from Ireland. They’re doing the Trans Canada route from Vancouver to St. John’s Bay and started in May 7th. Super fun folks. They bought us lunch at a weekend farmers market since we’d forgotten to stop at an ATM to get Canadian $. We road along with them in some beautiful back roads, but were eventually forced back onto the highway due to gravel roads. We stopped at a wee grocery and met a stellar teen guy working summer who flung us ice cream with great prowess. Sugared up, we were back to the highway. It wasn’t too bad of a road. Varying shoulder widths, but the majority of vehicles were passing us well. Maybe because the speed limit is lower than in the US and they’re also used to bikes along this road. We were cruising along pretty nicely with a tailwind until we hit construction. Miles and miles of ground up road “scarified pavement”. Soooo awful. Felt like you were jackhammering your whole body. Rattled my brain! We met one other TC biker, Art, just outside of our destination, Blind River. He also had had enough. He’d met James and Susie and had been texting them about road conditions. All three are supposed to camp about 10 miles back. We needed to go a little bit farther and opted for the “Lakeview” hotel (you can kinda see Lake Huron through the trees). Off to Subway and the beer store!
Today's ride: 97 miles (156 km)
Total: 1,069 miles (1,720 km)
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