Tuesday August 18, 2015

A rather uncomfortable bed in our motel room and it was warm as there was no air conditioning, not a good nights sleep for me. At least we were dry, the forecasted rain did happen and we woke up to grey, drizzly skies again. Once again by the time we left the motel the rain had stopped but the roads were wet.

We cycled through the small Town of Thessalon and it looked like quite a nice Town. The downtown core had some closed stores, but not as many as other Towns we have cycled through. There were some nice houses and it is located on the lake and a river.

We joined Hwy 17 again and once again the shoulders were unpaved and narrow. We turned our back lights on as it had begun to drizzle and we like to be visible.

We followed the North Shore River for a while and could see how low it was, there were a lot of sandbars.

I was feeling a little stiff, due to the uncomfortable bed, the weather was grey and so was my mood. We had two options today; cycle 55 kms to Blind River and stay in a motel or cycle 85 kms to Spragge and camp. I knew I was going to have to lead all day because of the awful shoulders. Ralf likes to be behind me on these narrow roads and warns me about the traffic. This means that if it is windy, which it was today, I don’t get a break from the wind. I didn’t think it was going to be a fun ride and I was prepared to stop at Blind River.

However, we got to Blind River at noon, too early to stop and I was feeling good. We had a good lunch at Subway. The sun had come out and the road had a reasonably sized shoulder coming into Blind River and all the way to Spragge. The traffic was behaving, giving us lots of room when they passed and I didn’t feel as if I was taking my life into my hands by continuing cycling to Spragge. For the first time in Ontario we spotted the Warning bicycle sign.

Ralf had found a motel in Spragge on google. However, when we got there it looked dismal. It had a For Sale sign on it, we did cycle up to the office and a fella came out. The motel was open, I asked if I could see one of the rooms. We have stayed in worse rooms, but it had a really bad smell in the room, cigarette smoke and the smell of your Great Grandmother just before she dies. For the pleasure of staying in this wonderful room the cost would be $85.00.

I opted for the campsite two more kilometres down the road. I knew it had cabins and if we were lucky we might be able to sleep under a roof again for less than $85.00.

We were lucky, we had a lovely rustic cabin, very basic but nice. The forecast is for rain again tonight, but at the moment it is very hot and humid. The internet is bad, really intermittent, I was able to contact our warmshowers host for Thursday night and hopefully we can stay with him tomorrow night instead as we should make it to Whitefish Falls tomorrow.