Michigan 26 Day 12 - Jordan to Buffalo

 I'm back in the USA. I rode over the Peace Bridge to Buffalo, and met up with my friend Jim at the Holiday Inn Express downtown. Jim stays at Holiday Inn Express for his job all the time, so he has lots of points for free rooms. It's so fancy.

The downside is I can see myself clearly in the brightly lit bathroom mirror, and I have discovered that I have tan spots on my head where sun shines through my bike helmet to go with the pale stripes where the helmet straps go. 

It was a short day, only 46 miles, with only one climb to get back on top of the Niagara Escarpment. My plan was to take my time getting going and to let my tent dry out, since I won't be using it again. But at 6:00 AM, I wake up to the sounds of gunfire off in the distance. What the hell. And then there is rumbling. Maybe there is a military base nearby and the rumbling is some kind of munitions drill?

But the rumbling continues, and gets louder and more frequent. I open the phone, which doesn't even have LTE coverage, just one bar of HPSA 3G, and wait five minutes for the radar map to load on Weather Underground. It is thunder, there are massive storms all over to the south of me. But none where I am. Yet.

So I quickly pack up and get going. Since I am in a more developed area now, and in Canada, there will always be a perfect place to shelter from any rain storm within 5 miles or less.

Coffee and donuts requirements met, no rain yet. In fact it is starting to clear up.

After another 10 miles and a big climb back onto the Niagara Escarpment, I am on a bike path along the Niagara River, and it's all bike paths and super-low traffic riverfront parkway the rest of the way to the Peace Bridge to Buffalo.

And it goes right by Niagara Falls.

Now my bike and I have visited both sides of Niagara Falls. The view is way, way more impressive from the Canadian side.

The route from Buffalo to Niagara Falls is also way better, flatter, and much less traffic on the Canadian side than riding through Grand Island on the American side.

Here's the bike trip update from our visit to the American side: https://thevcblog.blogspot.com/2018/06/erie-canal-tour-day-1-buffalo-to.html

It's 20 more miles to the border crossing, and I have about $80 of Canada money to get rid of. I decided to eat lunch right before I crossed at this Thai restaurant in Port Erie.

It's much better than it looks on the outside.

At this point, I have $40 Canadian left, so I decide to go for the obvious, logical choice for bike touring, which would be to buy booze at the duty free shop.

Would you believe that the Duty Free Shop WILL NOT SELL ANYTHING TO PEOPLE ON BIKES? Seriously? I couldn't believe it! Apparently, they think I could just turn around and go back where I came from instead of riding over the bridge to the United States.

So I'm leaving the Duty Free shop, full of disappointment, but with my Canada money converted to America money at a really, really bad exchange rate, and the Canadian Border Patrol car pulls me over.

Officer: "Did you just come from the Duty Free Shop?"

me: "Yes. Would you believe they WILL NOT SELL ANYTHING TO PEOPLE ON BIKES?"

Officer: "Seriously?"

me: "Apparently, they think I could just turn around and go back where I came from instead of riding over the bridge to the United States."

The CBP officers thought I had just ridden over from the United States somehow, but I explained how I got there (cutting through a park to get to the Duty Free Shop) and they were super helpful. It turns out you are not allowed to ride a bike on the traffic lanes on the Peace Bridge, and it is extremely not obvious how to get to the very nice bike lane. They put their flashers on and lead me to the bike lane, which leads to a special bike entrance to the US Border Patrol office.

I don't have any pictures of this, because my phone battery was dead at that point. No picture of the border boundary in the middle of the bridge, and no picture of Lake Erie. Getting to Lake Erie means I've ridden my bike next to all five Great Lakes on this trip. The backup phone I'm using is an ancient Pixel 4, that had been sitting in a drawer for 5 or 6 years. And I couldn't charge it overnight at the campground yesterday.

Once I got to the Holiday Inn Express, it was only 2:00. Jim stayed there the night before. He got to Buffalo with his bike by doing a one way car rental, for only $240! So I got my phone charged up and spread my tent, which was soggy with dew out to dry, and reorganized my gear. Since there will be no more camping, I can send the camping gear home along with the two front panniers at the nearby UPS store.

I learned that my camping gear and the two panniers weigh 19 lbs 4 oz. I learned when we rode the train up that all my gear together on the bike weighs 60 lbs when I consolidated it all into a duffel bag to check as baggage. 

Buffalo has some really great murals. 

For dinner, we had a must-do culinary bucket list item to check off. This is the Anchor Bar.

Where Buffalo Wings were invented!

Are they as good as Daniel's? It's very, very close. They taste the same. If you go to Daniels when they are not busy and the wings are fresh out for the fryer, Daniel's is actually better executed. But not when Daniels is really busy, and they are serving wings they cooked earlier. These were a little soggy, like the grease was not hot enough. But they were really, really good.

Obviously, you can't say Daniel's wings are more authentic than the Anchor Bar, but I discovered that the Anchor Bar sells their own wing sauce!

I suspect this is just repackaged Louisiana Hot Sauce, but I am a little suspicious.

On the way home, we had some more beer at the Big Ditch Brewing Company, which is the biggest craft brewer in Buffalo. Very tasty.

Big Ditch is a reference to the Erie Canal, which terminates here.

Here's the Strava track: https://www.strava.com/activities/19658735819

Michigan 26 Day 11 - Guelph to Jordan

 This was a long day, 68 miles, with three hours of light rain in the morning. No biggie. It was also a great day, because I had no worries whatsoever about any device or credit card issues. Everything is in order and as it should be. So I enjoyed myself riding through the beautiful, flat countryside, and 15 miles or so of bike trail along the Lake Ontario shoreline.

Guelph is the end of Greater Letterkenny. Once you get through the urbanized area around Guelph, it's still agricultural, but not as intense. It no longer smells like manure. The houses are bigger and nicer. There are also many nature reserves, since this is the edge of the Niagara Escarpment. The Escarpment is a huge area of high, flat land south of Lake Ontario. 

On the eastern outskirts of Guelph, I came upon this bike and coffee shop. I took a break and stopped in to visit.

I'm looking for a new Schwalbe Marathon spare tire. They didn't have one, but it was nice to visit. The coffee shop is great, although I was well caffeinated before I left the Super 8 in Guelph, so I didn't get coffee.

Here's a view of the big city of Hamilton, from the edge of the Niagara Escarpment. Hamilton has a population of 570000. It sits at the western end of Lake Ontario. You drop about 300' of elevation when you go down the edge of the escarpment.

There is a big bridge that crosses the Robinson Ship Canal in the middle of Hamilton

But you don't have to ride your bike over the big bridge, which carries the limited access QEW. Queen's Expressway? Instead you get to ride over this older lift bridge, which has a bike lane.

OMG, I have to shove my bike up these steps to get to the bridge, and the bike track on the side is too close to the railing for the panniers to fit!

I managed, by leaning the bike over. The bike with gear weighs about 100 lbs.

Here's a view of Lake Ontario from the middle of the bridge.

There is a nice wide multi-use path along the lake the whole way through Hamilton. Maybe 15 miles. It was really great. No city traffic at all. There are also some restaurants along the path. I stopped at Hutch's on the Beach, which is an extremely popular fish and chips shops.

The fish and chips were yummy. I got a bottle of Top Pop Root beer and one of Creme Soda (which is bright red as it should be) to go with.

After Hamilton, my route was mostly the frontage road along the QEW, with a lot of time on parallel neighborhood streets serving homes along the lakefront. As you go from Hamilton towards Niagara Falls, the land use shifts from industry and warehouses to agriculture, which is now vineyards and orchards. There are many wineries and fine dining restaurants. There are lots of farm stands, but these are not Letterkenny farm stands, these are big fancy farm stands with gourmet products.

My end point was the town of Jordan, where there is a campground. This campground is a couple miles from any restaurants, so I stopped at the Grand Oak Culinary Market (big words for a fancy deli) and got a sandwich to bring with me for dinner later.

Look at the yummy fresh peaches. There are peach orchards all around.

This is a very affluent area now. There are hotels, but they are very fancy and expensive. I was lucky that there is a campground, although it was not a great campground. It's privately run, with wifi, showers, laundry, and lots of tent sites, however the tent sites are very far from the amenities. The tent sites are on a flood plain, which is very, very buggy, and thick clouds of mosquitoes. It's like camping on Asseteague.

So I doused myself with bug spay, set up as quick as I could, and spent the evening sitting at a picnic table in the RV area, where there were no bugs, but there were outlets and wifi.

When it got dark, I scrambled into the tent and hid from the bugs all night.

This is my last night in Canada, and my last night of camping. Tomorrow I meet up with my friend Jim in Buffalo, and we are riding home to Baltimore from there and staying in motels.

Here's the Strava track: https://www.strava.com/activities/19645742274

Michigan 26 Day 10 - Dundalk to Guelph

 Cue sheets get the job done!

And all device issues are resolved. All important apps are installed on the backup phone, and my Garmin Watch and Edge device are paired and working properly!

I am so happy. This is quite a relief.

I woke up at 4 AM with an epiphany on how to solve the device configuration problem. Ask Perplexity.ai!

I fired up my Chromebook, and connected to the Internet using the broken phone via Bluetooth. And I'm making very sure the broken phone stays charged.

Perplexity explained what to do, in very clear instructions. Basically, you install the Google authenticator app on the backup phone, and authenticate it to the Chromebook, where I am logged in, authenticated, and trusted. Then the 2FA text messages go to the backup phone.

The detailed steps:

1. Create a throwaway Google account on the backup phone to get access to the app store.
2. Download the Google Authenticator app. 
3. Follow the directions on the Authenticator app to authenticate with the Chromebook (this requires you to scan a QR code on the Chromebook, and tell the Chromebook the 6 digit number on the Authenticator app.
4. Then log in to your regular Gmail Account on the backup phone, it will send the 2FA to the backup phone, and at login, it will ask you if you want to make this phone use your regular Google Fi number. Say yes, and I'M BACK IN THE SADDLE AGAIN.

The only thing I need is wifi, of which none is publicly available in Dundalk until the library or the family restaurant opens at 11:00. I'm anxious to have this sorted, so I want to get going at the crack of dawn and use my room at the Super 8 in Guelph, which is my end point. This gives me time to go to the phone repair shop across the street, or to the Best Buy if necessary. Guelph is a small city.

And at 5:30 AM, I hear drops of rain on the tent. Crap. I hurry out to take the broken phone off the charger so it doesn't completely die. The rain gets stronger, and continued until 9:00 AM. I hunkered down in the tent and read a book. I booked that room in Guelph because it was supposed to rain *tomorrow* morning, not today!

It was almost 10:00 before I got on the road. 

Around 1:00 I stopped for lunch at the Grand River Chop House in Grand Valley, Ontario. They have wifi, so I ordered some wings and some poutine, and nibbled away at them while I got the backup phone working. The instructions from Perplexity worked perfectly, and I left lunch with a working phone. I spent the evening in the motel installing apps, pairing devices, and sorting out my credit card issues. Citibank is a train wreck, but at least I could transfer a bunch of money into my checking account at the credit union. So I can use my debit/ATM card.

The bike ride itself today was really nice and not hard. Only 53 miles, not much climbing, not much headwinds, and much more downhill than uphill, because Dundalk is the high point. I basically followed the Grand River downstream all day. 

What I discovered is this part of Canada is basically Greater Letterkenny in real life.

Very agricultural, very rural, many small towns. Country folk. But what you have in real-life Letterkenny-land that you can't experience with the TV show is the omnipresent, pervasive smell of manure. They raise a lot of cows here.

Nice thing about the sort-of spruced up Super 8 is it's across the street from a steak house.

I'M BACK IN THE SADDLE AGAIN!

Here's the Strava track: https://www.strava.com/activities/19638736421

Michigan 26 Day 9 - Wiarton to Dundalk (Ontario)

 Could there be a better start to the day?

I was up at the crack, because it was going to be a long and hard day. Same headwinds as yesterday, and also 65 miles and also 2500 feet of climb.

Turns out, according to the RV people I was chatting with the night before, my end town of Dundalk is on the highest land around. It's 1000 feet higher than the lakefront here. 

They also had a low opinion of Dundalk. "Why would you want to go there?" Me: "It's about 60 miles away in the right direction, with a campground and nearby restaurants." I don't need much to be happy. The laundromat is a bonus.

But that's a lot of miles and a lot of climb, so I'm not messing around to start the day.

So good.

I dad lunch about halfway at Susan's Delicatessen in Markdale, which is about 20 miles from the end.

There were a couple other bike tourists there, going the other direction. They had spent the previous night at the same campground in Dundalk where I was headed, and they said it was great. Nice clean showers, and all the tent sites have electric. And it's next to the public pool, which is included in the camping fee!

And here I am a couple hours later, on the top of the world, entering Dundalk. Little did I know, disaster is about to strike.

It was just after 3, which would give me plenty of time to do laundry, set up camp, get cleaned up, and go into town for dinner. 

First thing, I went to the campground to register, which I eventually figured out you do at the pool. They are cash only, and Canada money only, so I rode into town (3 blocks away) to the Credit Union ATM to get some Canada money, which I correctly figured I would need at the laundromat too.

Then I went to the laundromat, and while I was fiddling with the change machine, I dropped my cell phone on the floor, and it died! It already had big cracks on the screen, and I brought an old phone with me as a backup. The dead phone was only partly dead, too. The screen was dark and broken as an input device, but the phone was still on, still connected to the data, and still connected to my laptop via Bluetooth, so I can get to the Internet on the laptop.

While the laundry is running, I am looking up instructions on how to transfer my cell service to my old backup phone. And I get an email from Citibank.

"We blocked this transaction because we think it's fraudulent. Did you do this?" It's at a restaurant in DC two days ago. I click "No".

Citibank cheerfully replies "We've cancelled your card since it's been compromised. Please click this link to our web site to get a new card and dispute any other fraudulent transactions."

And when I click the link, I get a request for 2 Factor Authentication via text message to my dead phone.

And I'm feeling considerable stress that I'm going to be stuck in the very small town of Dundalk, with no phone, and no access to money. It's easy to feel irrational stress when you've ridden your bike all day and you haven't had dinner. I was fighting a meltdown. I do have an ATM/Debit card for the checking account at my credit union, which has about $300 in it. But I can't move more money there without 2FA.

And every attempt I made to transfer my service to my old backup phone fails because of 2FA. Which I can't do.

I finished my laundry, set up my tent, took a shower, and went into town for dinner. Dundalk is actually a a really nice little town. They have a couple pizza places, a restaurant, and a nice library. The park, with a pool, campground, and ball fields is lovely.

I was going to eat, and then go to the library for the wifi to keep working on the phone, but the Junction Family Restaurant had wifi, so I could keep trying to figure out how to transfer the phone service.

By the time I finished eating, I decided to give up until the next night, where I had booked a motel room since there was supposed to be rain. Instead, I shifted my focus on how I am going to find my way to the next town with no Strava, no Garmin Connect, and no way to load a route onto my GPS device.

Then I remembered that I am old. I've done lots of bike tours before there were smart phones. Brevets too. I even rode coast to coast without a smart phone. This is not actually a problem.

I sat down at the picnic table. I connected my laptop to the Internet via Bluetooth to my broken but not totally dead phone, and I finalized my route on Strava.

And then I manually wrote myself a cue sheet. And slept fitfully with paranoid dreams.

Here's the Strava track: https://www.strava.com/activities/19619094900

Michigan 26 Day 8 - Tobemory to Wiarton

It was supposed to be a short, easy ride today. Only 46 miles up down the spine of the Bruce Peninsula. I planned it this way, in case I somehow missed the ferry the day before, and had to take the first one in the morning, that doesn't leave until 11:00 and arrives at 1:00.

So I was thinking short easy day, and what I got was open farm fields and headwinds, headwinds, headwinds. It was a total slog. But I know from many rides across the Eastern Shore of Maryland, don't fight a headwind. Just slow down, gear down, keep you level of effort comfortable, and be patient. You'll get there eventually.

There is not much on the Bruce Peninsula. It's basically one long, straight road that leads directly to the ferry in Tobemory. 

This was the only lunch option, The TruFood Cafe, which is by the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. It's actually quite nice, and they have lots of healthy snacks for the snack bag.

The end point was the really nice waterfront town of Wiarton. They have a big public park on the waterfront with camping. Here I am at the beautiful historic park office checking in to the campground.

I got a basic tent site, with no amenities, but I charged everything up just fine at an unoccupied full-service site. It's right on the water! It's so much nicer than stealth camping in the back of a cemetery.

It's so beautiful here.

There is a nice downtown, with multiple restaurant choices. The Silo here is the only one open on Tuesdays. So they were really backed up.

I got these sort of Buffalo-ish wings where nobody ever explained to them that Buffalo Wings are shaken in the hot sauce, which is not a dipping sauce served separately.

All the bars sell wings by the pound here. Which turns out to be about 7 or 8 wings. This is not a lot of food, so I had to have a bacon cheeseburger too. 

Back at the campsite, I wound up having fun talking to four couples staying in their RVs and trailers. They are all retired, and they get together 3 or 4 times in the summer to camp at campgrounds like this for a few days. They live about two hours away. I told them about my visit to our cottages from over 40 years ago on Manatoulin Island, and share my very sincere appreciation of Canada's cultural contributions to Western Civilization (specifically, Letterkenney and the Trailer Park Boys). They said "Don't forget about Larry the Cable Guy!" They also said the guys who created Letterkenney live in their area, and one of them is a friend of a friend. 

There's definitely been a cultural shift today. Back in the UP and the north side of Lake Huron, everyone has a super-heavy upper Midwestern accent, and everyone is super friendly and talkative. You might think he videos Charlie Berens makes (like the Pickleball one here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QB80DdRCLic) are satire. Nope. Everyone actually like that. Especially the campground host lady in Spanish who offered me a shower beer the moment I showed up.

Now it's starting to feel more like farm country and less like untamed wilderness. People's accents are more subdued. It's still fun though.

Here's the Strava track for today: https://www.strava.com/activities/19602945435

Michigan 26 Day 7 - Little Current to Tobemory

 Riding through Manitoulin Island in the early morning, after packing up from my stealth campsite, was glorious.

The route is the hilliest yet, but it's not bad, and the weather is perfect.

The first town with food was M'Chigeeng, which had a little cafe in a First Nations' shopping center and "gas bar". This is 15 miles in. I suspect "Michigan" is the anglicized version of the name of this town. 

There are lots of First Nations lands here, and all the road signs are trilingual.

I had to wait a half hour for the restaurant to open, so I got to admire the art in the shopping area.

The wait was worth it for breakfast and coffee.

When I was in high school, 45 years ago, our family and several other families used to spend a week here in rented cottages at the Mountain View Resort on Lake Manitou, which is the largest lake in an island in the world! The other families were my dad's friends from the Fraternal Order of the Eagles. It's a 10 hour drive up from Dayton, OH.

When I decided to ride my bike home from Lake Michigamme, one reason for choosing the very sparsely populated route through Manitoulin island was to visit the cottages we used to stay at and see if they are still there. They were definitely not fancy and new in 1980.

The Mountain View Resort is still there, same as ever, and the cabins are all nicely maintained. 

I think this one was ours. It used to be brown. All the cabins have newish vinyl siding now. There is a little pier and boat ramp down by the water. We all came up with boats for fishing.

There is also a floating dock nearby in a cove, where we would hang out, sunbathe, and water ski in the afternoons.

I was chatting up the current guests, one of whom was about my age and said he'd been coming here every year since he was 5. He confirmed that the floating dock is the very same floating dock from when we came here. He said the fishing is not very good like it was up until the 90s. They bring their boats to other lakes nearby to fish. 

There is a little gravelly beach near the floating dock. This is where us high school kids went to drink our own beer supply in the evenings while our parents drank their beer supply in the cabins. The logistics of how we high school kids got beer was two old guys I think were named Rex and Melvin who drove up in a van. Us teenage boys would all go in the back of the van with Rex and Melvin. All families would stop at the beer store once we crossed into Canada, and Rex and Melvin would buy us our own cases of Molson Golden while they bought their bottles of Windsor Canadian.

It's all cleaned up and nice now, with a huge fire pit and Adirondack chairs! In my day, this was all overgrown, and we built our own campfires on the beach.

I am so glad I visited here. This really brings back memories.

It was 20 more easy miles to the town of South Bay mouth, which is the ferry terminal to Tobemory on the mainland. The ferry runs 3 times a day, at 11:00, 3:30, and 7:30. It's a two hour trip. I had a reservation for the 7:30 ferry, but due to my very early start, I was there at 2:00. The awesome lady at the checkin station cheerfully offered to move me to the earlier 3:30 crossing.

Which left me plenty of time to eat and replenish my electrolytes at the restaurant and gift across the street.

I had a couple margaritas (first time this trip!) and the fish and chips, which is whitefish.

They love their Lake Whitefish up here. This is not a fish I remember catching or eating during my childhood fishing trips to Manitou Lake and Lake Erie. We caught lots of perch, walleye, and bass.|

I do not understand the love of whitefish. Perch and walleye are much better, IMO. 

I also had time to try a local Manatoulin Island craft brew. Nobody has told them up here that you are only allowed to make IPAs.

Here's the ferry coming in, right on time. There are two car decks. The bottom deck can accommodate semi trucks.

I have an expensive motel room a couple miles down the road from the ferry terminal in Tobemory. As soon as I learned about the "August Civic Holiday" I realized lodging was going to be very hard to come by, and I booked it. This was the last place available in Tobemory. 

This is a decent, recently renovated older motel. $250 Canadian. Ouch. RDOQ. It has a tasty takeout Indian restaurant attached. I had some Chicken Tikka Masala in my room for dinner.

After today, I should be out of expensive vacation summer cottages land, and into regular municipal campground and small town motel land for the rest of my time in Canada.

Today was a nice easy day, 52 miles and 1700 feet of climb total. The only issue is I had my first flat tire. No biggie.

Here's the Strava track for the ride across Manitoulin Island: https://www.strava.com/activities/19585870721

And here's the Strava track for the quick ride to the motel: https://www.strava.com/activities/19588743974