Friday July 31, 2015

Another long day in the saddle, but there wasn’t much in between Rennie and Kenora.

We stopped at the Alf Hole Conservation Park. This is an area where a man named Alfred Hole hand-reared four goslings, that were a subspecies of the Canada Goose. This subspecies is the “Giant Canada Goose”. These geese are much bigger than the average Canada Goose that most people know and hate.

Highway 44 from Rennie went through the Whiteshell Provincial Park. The scenery was very pretty and we stopped a couple of times to take photos.

The road was a winding two lane road (one in each direction) with a few rolling hills just big enough to remind our legs of what hills are like.

The route was very nice. We stopped at the intersection of Highway 44 and Highway 17 where there was a store, a campsite and a motel, a very busy little enterprise. Ralf had a coffee and we bought some bananas, which were not too expensive.

After the little break, we were back on the TCH. The TCH was busy and noisy, but had a wide shoulder. We stopped for lunch at another café, store, motel/cabin. The pile of fries we got with our sandwich was way too much, but we both managed to finish them all. Another touring cyclist came in and we chatted to him, while we were waiting for our lunch. He lives in Winnipeg and his son lives in Kenora, he was cycling to see his son. All of his cycle touring has been in Manitoba and north-western Ontario. We told him about warmshowers and that we had nowhere to stay in Kenora. We were hoping that he would invite us to stay, but he told us about the campsite in Kenora!

We are now over half-way across Canada. Six weeks and still only half-way across.

We cycled into Ontario and was hoping to stop in at the Tourist Information Office – it was closed.

The nearest Info Office is in Kenora 47 kms farther into Ontario. We stopped there and they were very helpful. We got a map of Ontario which shows the Provincial Parks.

The young woman at the Tourist Info Office told us that this week-end in Kenora is the busiest of the summer week-ends and everything was booked. She called the campground who had space for touring cyclists. Kenora was celebrating “Harbour-Fest”, a week-end of music, arts shows, and events all centred around the downtown and the lake.

As we came down the road into the Town, the traffic was backed up about 5 kms. We were on a bike lane, and were able to get past all the traffic – yeah bike lanes.

I was hoping to stay in a motel as the weather once again looked very ominous – more rain. However, there were no hotels to be had.

We waited under the Shell garage awning until it stopped raining and then headed out to the campsite, we were put in the over-flow section. We were charged $33.50 for another expensive piece of grass. This piece of grass has a lovely view of the lake.

We also saw a deer with two fawns in the campground, munching on the grass.

This was worth the $33.50!

The sun came out and we were able to cook dinner on the picnic table before crashing in the tent for an early night.

We have asked a few people which route is the best route to take to Thunder Bay. Most of them say that the TCH has a wide shoulder and therefore that would be the best route to take. The other route is quieter (although not this week-end as it is a holiday week-end) but it doesn’t have a shoulder!

A guy at the campsite asked if we had our passports with us and suggested we go into the States at Fort Frances! What a judgement of Ontario roads and drivers – the best cycle route is in the States.