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