Today’s ride was another long one (107 miles with yesterday’s being about 103 miles) in hot, humid weather – we actually saw temperatures in the mid-90°s.
The route, like yesterday’s had very few services along the way so we had to plan carefully once again. Since we were the galley crew last night, and for this morning’s breakfast, we were also responsible for sweep. With this in mind, Marc and I opted for an unstressed start and were on the road at 8:15 – the primary motivator was to close off the “all you can eat” buffet for the mosquitoes.
The ride was a little more complicated than yesterday’s, and a little hillier and hotter in my opinion. We did have some nice attractions along the way, including entering into the Atlantic watershed, and the Eastern Time Zone.
We also got one of the mysteries of the last few days answered:
“What is a Pulp Load Check station?”
In this part of the country there are lots of trucks carrying logs of varying lengths – apparently there have been problems with load shifts resulting in a stray log or two hanging off the side of the trucks (quite the danger to cars and cyclists). To address this, pulp trucks must drive through these “stations” in which the two drums on either side of the trailer push everything back into place. While we were checking out the station above, some truckers refilled our water bottles with very cold, greatly appreciated water – another example of the great hospitality we have experienced along the road.
Towards the end of the ride we visited Kakabeka Falls for one of our breaks - pretty impressive, but even more so when they had massive flooding just 6 weeks ago.With the time change, riding sweep, and all, we pulled into Thunder Bay at the western end of Lake Superior a little before 6 PM – a long day (just shy of 10 hours) on the road.
Rest day tomorrow will be greatly appreciated – the first time we sleep in real beds since Vancouver on June 26th!!!
Tomorrow, I am off to find a scale to see how much weight I have lost so far!
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