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

Michigan 26 Day 6 - Spanish to Little Current

 It's been a long time since I've stealth camped. I used to stealth camp all the time, but my tolerance for spending money on motel rooms grows year by year, and I like to charge devices, access the Internet, and have a shower.

But here I am stealth camping. Because I have no choice.

This is the back of the maintenance shed at the Mountain View Cemetery about four miles outside Little Current, on Manatoulin Island. 

Manatoulin is the huge, sparsely populated island in the north part of Lake Huron. There is one bridge onto the island, from the north. It's a single lane swing bridge that opens every hour for ships to go through. 

You can also take a ferry from the south side of the island to the mainland. The ferry ride takes two hours. That's how I'll be leaving.|

Manatoulin is really beautiful, and full of lake cottages, and campgrounds, and B&Bs and a few small hotels. And since this is the long weekend for Canada's "August Civic Holiday", and since there is a huge festival in Little Current (with a Little League Baseball tournament and fireworks), and since there is also a giant First Nations Pow Wow, every single room and campsite on the island has been booked. For weeks. I was completely shut out. I rode and asked all the motels in Little Current. 

So I rode to the police station and explained my situation. When you do this, the answer is usually "Oh just go set up in the town park/school yard/other public land next to the bathrooms, and you can only stay one night". But not on Manitoulin. 

On Manitoulin, the answer is "All the land on the island is privately owned, and if we get a complaint we have to come and make you pack up and move along." This is absolutely not something I want to do after a long, tough bike ride.

So stealth camping it was, with an emphasis on stealth.

So I started looking at nature reserves and parks, where there might be some with some good out of the way woods. No luck. Manatoulin is full of farm fields and marsh lands.

And then I spotted the cemetery on Google maps. Four miles out of town in the direction I want to go. The cemetery goes far back from the road, it's buffered by the neighboring farms by forest, and there is a maintenance shed in the very back with some clear space behind it. 

I had some dinner, which was not-so-great broiled Whitefish at Hawthorn\s Family Restaurant before setting out for the cemetery. I asked the restaurant owner what he would do in my spot. "Just go down to the parking lot of the marina down by the park (where the festival and fireworks are) and set up there. Nobody's going to care. I used to sleep in my car down there all the time." OK, but that's not exactly stealthy.

I headed out to the cemetery two hours before sunset, and put my bike behind the maintenance shed. I wanted to hang out in my spot for a while to make sure nobody will be able to see me, and no people will be coming around, and then if it all looks good, pitch the tent right before dark. I brushed my teeth and took my vitamins just like I would before bed anywhere, Then I changed out of my bright yellow bike clothes into drab sweats. Then I unrolled my Thermarest pad where the tent would go, and settled down to read a book until sunset. It's perfect. Nobody comes to the cemetery, nobody can see me.

When the sun went down, I set up the tent (which is dark green) and put all my stuff in the tent or under the rain fly, with the bike leaning on the back side of the shed.

I hunkered down in the tent reading my book as it got totally dark. I was almost giddy that I had the perfect spot, and it was perfect. Nobody came into the cemetery all night, it was totally dark and quiet (except for some turkeys and a Great Horned Owl). I packed up and left at dawn without seeing another person. I left no trace.

I was so happy, because it was a pretty tough day. I like to plan the days to be less than 60 miles and/or 2000 feet of climb. This day was 67 miles, 2400 feet of climb, and the first 30 miles were into a headwind. I was totally feeling it. But I slept great hiding in the back of the cemetery.

The day started with even more riding on the Trans-Canada Highway. I finally left it for good after 15 miles in Massey.

Now this is more like it. Fifteen miles of serene, peaceful back road to Espanola. Still into a headwind though.

In Espanola I had a very tasty burrito in a nice little taco shop.

Espanola was halfway. After Espanola, the route turned from heading east to heading south and west, so the headwind became tailwinds, but the hills started. I was pretty wiped out by the time I rode over the bridge onto Manitoulin in to Little Current.

Here's the Strava Track: https://www.strava.com/activities/19576045740

Michigan 26 Day 5 - Thessalon to Spanish

 I am at the 57 Marina and Campground in Spanish Ontario. This is the bike tourist's dream. 

It is decidedly not fancy, but the host lady is super friendly. There are dogs running around. I called yesterday to see if they have a tent spot available, and she said "Sure! I'll pencil you in!"

So I roll in today, and checkin goes something like this:

Host lady: "Are you Drew? Where are you biking from?"

I tell her about my trip.
Host lady: "That's amazing! Want a beer?"
me: "OMG, I would love a shower beer."
Host lady: "I'll give ya a beer to set up your tent too!"
me: "Should I pay you for the site and register or something?"
Host lady: "How about $25"
me <fiddles with my phone to pay>
Host lady: "Do you have cash?"
me: "I don't have any Canadian money."
Host lady: "Just give me $20 American."
me: <gives her a twenty>

She hands me two Busch Lights from her fridge, and shows me around. There is a women's shower, labeled "inboard", and a men's shower, labeled "outboard", and a shared unisex bathroom. There is laundry!

Host lady: "Laundry is $5 a load." 
me: <hands her $5> "I am completely out of clean clothes. You are the best." <quaffs beer>

This place is the best. 

Today was a pretty tough ride. It was 66 miles, and 65 of those miles were on the Trans-Canada Highway. There were moderate headwinds and 1800 feet of climb. The weather was nice, it threatened rain, but no rain happened.

A lot of the way there is a nice shoulder, but there are a lot of miles with n



o shoulder at all. There is little traffic, this is a very remote area. I went through maybe 5 very small towns today. There are a lot of First Nations trading posts and dispensaries.

I scored for lunch at the 17 Restaurant at the halfway point in Blind River. 

This does not look promising on the outside, and the big crack on the front door is not inviting.

But it has top ratings on Google, and the ratings aren't wrong. They have pierogi's!

This place is very popular.

I stopped to have a Gatorade and some wings at this pizza place in Spanish, which is the only restaurant in Spanish. I ate before I went to the campground, since it's a mile from the campground and it might rain this evening.

The wings are OK. They come with dipping sauce.

Since I didn't have a lot of appetite that early in the afternoon, while riding in the heat, I brought half the wings home with me and ate them here.

There are storms coming on the radar, but the tent is all set up, and I can hunker down in there and read a book.

This place is great.

Here's the Strava page, which I entered manually because somehow it didn't upload properly from my watch: https://www.strava.com/activities/19562140979

Michigan 26 Day 3 - Newberry to Sault Ste. Marie

 I started the day at a nice campground (once a KOA) where unfortunately the camp store doesn't open until 9. I'm not going to wait around all morning for coffee, so the night before, I went to the camp store before it closed and filled one of my water bottles with the cold leftover coffee from that morning.

So I'm happily reading the news on my laptop and drinking cold coffee on a not so level picnic table, and the water bottle of coffee fell over and dumped a ton of coffee all over my fancy, expensive MacBook Neo.

I quickly wiped it off with a dirty bike jersey, and it seemed to be fine, so I packed it up and went about the day.

But when I got to Sault Ste. Marie and started working on my trip update, after about 20 minutes it died. The screen went black. Which is why I'm writing this a day late on a new cheap Chromebook.

It was a very hot, brutal ride today. It got up to 88 degrees and it was pretty humid. I was pretty roasted when I got in.

And this campground, which caters to RVs, has no shade whatsoever, and no lounge area or lodge or any place like that with air conditioning. 

The way to deal with this is to go take a shower in your bike clothes and let them dry while you wear them. And keep doing this until it cools down at night. 

The day started great, very pleasant riding, along 40 more miles of M-28, which mostly had a huge shoulder.

Eventually, I had to get off M-28, my companion for 100 miles or so, to go get some food. The best option for that being the tiny waterfront town of Brimley. Strava found a rail trail that is a straight diagonal shot to Brimley.

Unfortunately, it's a trail for snowmobiles and ORVs (which are very popular up here). The surface is loose gravel and sand, and it's not bikeable on a touring bike. 

So I had to do zig-zaggy back roads to get to my pizza in Brimley.

And while I was eating way more of this huge, delicious pizza than I should have, in air-conditioned comfort, it was getting hotter and hotter outside. 

Which made riding the last 15 miles to the campground pretty unpleasant. I was so overheated and overstuffed, I never got hungry for dinner.

This was a pretty nice RV park. It's super dog friendly. The bathrooms and showers are clean and nice. It's on the waterfront, which is the St. Mary's river that connects Lake Superior and Lake Huron.

It's a major shipping channel. There is a constant parade of giant ships going by, and they all blast their horns when they pass.

The people who stay at this RV park see the ships as a feature. They like to sit and watch them and take pictures.

For some reason, Strava cropped my route, although Garmin did not. This is very weird. So here is the Strava track, which only goes until my pizza.

https://www.strava.com/activities/19533945191

Michigan 26 Day 4 - Sault Ste. Marie to Thessalion

 First things first, I have replaced the dead Macbook Neo. It is in the mail home in case it is fixable.

The new lappie is an Acer something or other. It's slow and clunky, but it fits in the hard case I got for the Neo, which means it fits in a pannier. It cost $400 of Canadian Monopoly money.

That issue is resolved. But if it's not one thing it's another.

Today I learned in Canada, they just decide they will let everyone have a three day weekend each month. For no reason, other than it's nice to have a three day weekend. And this weekend is one of them. Monday is the "August Civic Holiday". I am not making this up.

Which means everyone in Canada is driving off to go camping or stay in a lakefront hotel this weekend. Which means there are no campsites or motel rooms or any form of lodging whatsoever on Sunday night on Manitoulin Island. Looks like I'll be stealth camping in the woods somewhere.

Monday night is looking real bad too, so I've booked my ferry ride off the island and a room at a grossly expensive dive motel a couple miles from the ferry terminal. This should be interesting.

I do have a camp site for tomorrow night, thank goodness.

Tonight I am in this cheap motel in Thessalian, Ontario.

I am here because:

1. I need to get this laptop set up and working.

2. It's pouring down rain all night, with severe thunderstorms, which have already begun.

3. There aren't actually any camp sites anywhere nearby because August Civic Holiday.

4. I was off to a late start due to a visit to the post office to mail my bricked Neo home, and a detour to Best Buy for the new laptop. I had to wait for both these places to open.

4. The motel includes an awesome Indian restaurant next door. RDOQ FTW BABY

I am full of butter chicken and very happy.

This motel is quite a find. It's right on the waterfront!

Check out the knotty pine paneling!

The restaurant has an amazing view too!

Today was a really nice day of bike riding though. First, I got to see this weird site in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan.

This is the "Tower of History". WTF. It's huge. It's weird. I can't imagine who thought this would be a good idea.

This was followed by three miles of terror riding over this bridge to Canada. In the fog, with drizzle all over my glasses.

Bikes get to ride in traffic, there is no shoulder, there are only two lanes, and there is barely a center stripe. Luckily, there was very little traffic, and there is no passing on the bridge. So that giant semi truck right behind me got to follow me over the bridge at 7 mph on the climb part. I'm fine with that, because I know he sees me, and if vehicles could pass me, I have to worry about whether each new vehicle sees me.

My other terror was that the border guard in Canada would decide I can't come in, and I'd have to ride back across that bridge. But he was super friendly and I zipped right through. 

Border Guard: "Where your from?"

me: "Elkridge, Maryland outside of Baltimore."
Border Guard: "Where are you headed?"

me: "Home to Elkridge!"

Border Guard <jaw dropping on floor>: "No way! Have a great ride!"

The Best Buy detour only added a couple miles to the ride, and I was out of there with my new laptop by 10:30 with 50 miles to go. I got in at 4:00, which is pretty much when I always aim to get in. 

Weather was great, there was a high of 80, a bit humid, and some headwinds, with thunderstorms off it the distance for the last couple hours.

There's a nice bike trail heading out of Sault Ste. Marie, ON, Then some highway with nice shoulders through First Nations land, then about 20 miles of this fabulous desert back road through farms and forests.

I rejoined the highway in the tiny town of Johnson, which is definitely in the middle of nowhere, but unbelievably, has an African/Caribbean restaurant, Ije's Place Cafe and Bakery!  

I had some tasty jerk chicken!

The bad news was the remaining 20 miles were all on the Trans-Canada Highway, which is the biggest highway there is around here. This means sometimes it's two lanes, sometimes 4, but more often than not no shoulder whatsoever. So you get to ride in the traffic lane and get passed by lots of semi trucks. 

The next town is Bruce Mines, where they still have mines. This is the biggest gravel pit I've ever seen. It's like a mile long.

Everything is fine. I'm sure the lack of lodging in two days will all work out. 

Here's the Strava Track for today: https://www.strava.com/activities/19546950977