Day 29 – Canadian Hospitality (Caliper Lake ON – Taylor Cove ON)

After feeding the mosquitoes before leaving camp, we headed out on the road around 8:15 AM. Today’s ride was much like yesterday’s a series of rolling hills (flatter than yesterday, and nicer pavement. We headed south and then once we got just north of the Canadian US Border, headed east.

At Fort Frances, I took a side trip into the US to International Falls MN – apparently the coldest place in the US in the winter. It was well worth the visit as I got a chance to have a really good iced coffee (it was in the mid 80°s today) at a nice coffee roasters (Coffee Landing on Main Street for future TdC riders). At the store, a number of folks, seeing me in my “TdC” jersey asked me about the ride, and were quite excited about the whole adventure.

After returning to Canada (my first time crossing into Canada on a bicycle) I headed east from Fort Frances.

About 15 miles into the ride, along a causeway through Rainy Lake, I saw a float plane loading at an outpost and road in and onto the dock to see if they were going sightseeing. To my dismay they weren’t – the pilot was flying somewhere to repair something. I started talking with the two people left on the dock, and explained to them what I was doing in the area, and got asked “Are you in a hurry?”

Given I am in “touring” mode, and my view of getting to the campsite early was so that I could try and kill off all the mosquitoes before other riders arrived, I responded “No, I have got plenty of time.” To which the response was “If you have the time, I can show you something really interesting out on the lake.”

My host, Dick Armstrong (or was it Anderson?) ended up giving me a great tour out on Rainy Lake. It is Canada’s 45th largest lake stretching 55 miles East/West and 25 miles North/South in an “L” shape. The boat ride took me under the trestle bridges for both the causeway and the railway, and I still can’t figure out how we made it through, at speed, without hitting anything. It involved a tight “S” turn with about 3” clearance in each side of the boat. I have the whole thing on video so it should make for great watching.

Dick took me out in the lake to see an Indian (First Nations?) pictograph on a cliff. Apparently it is one of two pictographs on Rainy Lake.

In the lower right there is an overturned canoe, above that a Thunderbird and above that an upturned body. To the left is a depiction of a bolt of lightning. Apparently legend has it that it depicts the drowning of someone (important enough to have a pictograph made) during a heavy rainstorm on the lake. Apparently the tradition, when creating these pictographs, was to scrape the rock face clean before drawing. This provides a means by which they can be “dated” through determining the amount of lichen overgrowth at the edges. It was really neat to see something off the beaten track that I would not have seen otherwise.

Dick also took me to see the cabin he is building on one of the islands – it has a “million dollar view” of both Rainy Lake, and the Minnesota coastline on the far shore. One of the highlights of the trip so far! Let’s hear it for great Canadian hospitality.

Camp was great as well: flat ground, easy to put the tent pegs in; sunny to dry everything out; no mosquitoes, other than those that came along in the truck; and a warm lake in which to swim.  I think if we had a choice, we would choose to have a rest day here.

Today marked the last day of the Tour de France, so I thought I'd show how much ground I have covered (highlighted in yellow of course!) while the race was on in France.