July 23, 2016
Day 53 Sombra to Leamington
We had a long ride planned for today - 74 miles - and the forecast was for very hot weather - mid 90's. Our ride started with a ferry across the St. Clair River at Sombra. It was a very short ride, but fun to do.
We then rode about 8 miles along the Michigan side of the river and took the Walpole Island ferry back across into Canada. On that trip we met two recent college graduates cycling from Wisconsin to Massachusetts.
The ferry rides were entertaining, but time consuming, By 11:00 AM, we still had 60 miles to go. We had to make another short unpaved road detour and rode through more farm land. We've now seen wheat growing in the field, wheat being harvested, straw being raked, straw being baled, bales being loaded and hauled away and today we saw wheat fields being plowed under to await next spring's planting.
This area has very few places to stop. In the little community of Grande Pointe, we passed a local park with a large group of people gathered. We thought we might be able to get some water, so we rode up. It turned out to be a softball tournament underway and they had cold drinks and grilled hot dogs for sale. We had a really good time visiting with the people there and, of course, talking about our trip. The hot dogs were very good and they had Diet Coke! We were so glad we stopped.
After leaving there, we came to another unpaved road and detoured a few miles to stay on pavement. We started seeing more vegetable fields - tomnatoes, green peppers, carrots, cabbage, squash and lots of sugar beets.
By the time we reached another place to stop, we had ridden 28 miles without a break. We were very hot and very tired, but copious amounts of cold drinks, some sandwiches and some cookies and we were good to go again.
We pulled over in a shady spot about 7 miles from our hotel just to cool off and rest a minute. Soon a truck stopped and the driver asked if we needed anything. We told him we were fine, just taking a little break. We ended up in a long conversation with him about the local area, farming, wind turbines and, of course, our trip. We must have stood there talking for 20 minutes. He offered to take us all over to his house for a beer, but we decided we should get on to the hotel since it was about 5:30 by this time.
For dinner, we decided to go to the restaurant adjacent to the hotel just because it was right here. That was another great choice we made today. It is Peters Kitchen II, run by a Greek family Peter, Katrina and their son and daughters. The food was outstanding and meeting the family was so much fun. It was the perfect finish to our long hot day filled with wonderful people.
Today's ride: 81 miles (130 km)
Total: 2,670 miles (4,297 km)
| Rate this entry's writing | Heart | 0 |
| Comment on this entry | Comment | 0 |