Sunday August 2, 2015

A short, fast ride today to Dryden. The scenery today was more agricultural than rugged Canadian Shield. I had just said to Ralf how different Ontario was from Manitoba, being more rugged and no farming, when we went through an area that had farms and cows.

We didn’t see any sheep, but saw a place that produces excellent woolen products and sheepskin slippers.

When we crested the small hill and looked into Dryden the Town was dominated by the Domtar pulp mill. It used to be a paper mill, but they sold the machinery to China. Now they are supposed to be manufacturing high-grade pulp, whatever that is. Dryden is a one-horse industry City – the pulp mill. However, there is supposed to be a gold mine opening soon north of the City, which should breathe some new life back into the place.

The Tourist Information Office was closed, probably because it was Sunday.

We had an interesting chat with the owner of the campground. She is very much against Wal-Mart and their policy of allowing campers to stay overnight in their parking lot. She went on quite a rant about Wal-Mart and the City of Dryden for not enforcing their By-law which states no overnight parking allowed in parking lots. For one season she went to Wal Mart and counted every camper and trailer that parked there – over 620 campers for the season. That is a lot of lost revenue for her business.

The campsite was nice, the Wittmers have a nice touch by giving each guest a chocolate heart when you register.

The campsite had a covered picnic area near the tent camping site, lots of picnic tables, and a fire-pit. The showers were good, hot and clean, as were the laundry facilities. As the weather had changed again, and had got quite chilly, the owners allowed us to use the laundry room to cook and eat our dinner, which had a table and chairs.

Saturday August 1, 2015

A lovely sunrise this morning.

We finally decided to take the TransCanada Highway through Dryden to Thunder Bay. Why? Well the TCH has a shoulder and although it may be busier, we will be safer on a wide shoulder than a road with no shoulder.

As we left Kenora we passed the Tim Hortons – the Drive-thru lane extended out on to the main road and into the centre turning lane, very bad planning.

If it was up to Ralf, he would not allow drive-thrus at all. In his opinion, it would be the only exercise some people get, to get out of their cars and into the Timmies for their donuts!.

North-western Ontario is one of the areas that the company I used to work for did a lot of their work. As we are cycling along I am reminded of all the municipalities that we worked for.

I remember one of my co-workers travelling all the way to Machin to hold a public meeting and the clerk had forgotten to give the required notice for the meeting, no one showed for the meeting.

This Trappers Museum also reminded me of the time when a municipality wanted to create a trappers museum, but to have live trap-lines to show European visitors how they trap animals. My boss at the time persuaded them that maybe it wasn’t a good idea considering the uproar over wearing fur.

The stories Bob and Jim could write about working in Northern Ontario would make for a very funny book.

There were sections today when the shoulder went to nothing! Of course that is where they created a passing lane and took away the shoulder! This is not the only country that does this.

A lovely ride today, we are back into some rolling hills and lovely scenery. The tail-wind pushed us along and up the hills, I am glad I am going east-bound.

Northern Ontario is beautiful, very rugged with big granite outcroppings, trees of birch and white pine hang on to the meager soil and lakes dot the landscape. There is a ditty about Ontario and it goes like this: “rocks, and trees and trees and rocks and water”!

I was tired by the time we got to Vermilion Bay.

We had lunch and then looked for a campsite. The weather again looked ominous and the nearest campsite was another 5 kms up the road. Not too far, but of course next to the rail-road. We had checked on the prices at the motel and initially decided it was too expensive. Ralf could see I was needing a motel, so we cycled back and broke the budget. Breakfast is included, I hope she has enough to feed and fuel two cyclists.

One of the things that is driving me crazy as I cycle along, is the distances. In Ontario most of the advertising signs are in time – for example the Best Western roadside sign – Kenora is one hour away from Winnipeg! No it isn’t it is a day and a half! Tim Hortons is 15 minutes away – NO it is half a day away. Even when I spoke to the young woman in the Kenora Tourist Information Office she told me how long it would take for me to get to the campground in time spent. \”It’s about 15 minutes\”! I pointed to my cycle helmet, that was on my head and the clothes that I was wearing – \”15 minutes by bike\”? I asked “Uhm No by car, I don’t know how many kilometres it is”! she responded.

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.

Thursday July 30, 2015

We said our farewells to Chen and Alison, who cycled with us to the turn to Hwy 115 and then they carried on to a farm market.

Unless it is raining they seem to do everything by bike. I hope we do that when we get home, use our bikes for everything – we might not even get a car. We really enjoyed staying with them and had some great discussions. Alison and Ralf agreed on so many things, both of them are discouraged by the policies of the various governments in the Provinces and Canada.

An early start to the day as we had a long ride ahead of us. We crossed the Red River.  Winnipeg has built a floodway around the City to prevent the Red River flooding.

Fortunately for us the wind was behind us and made the ride easier. You can see by the lean on this small barn which way the prevailing winds are! Those two pieces of wood are really helping to keep it up.

We had our first dog chase us today in months. It was a bit of a half-hearted chase, I took off like Mark Cavendish and Ralf dealt with the dog.

We also were “attacked’ by deer flies. What a pain, sorry about the pun, but they kept buzzing around us, drove me crazy.

The scenery changed today from rural agricultural to Precambrian shield. It looks as though we are in Ontario already, but we have a few kilometres to go yet. The road had soft shoulders, I think it is preparing us for the roads in Ontario.  We will be in Ontario tomorrow – Kenora.

We stopped in Elma for lunch. They didn’t have any pre-made sandwiches so I bought some buns, meat and cheese and made sandwiches on a bench outside of the grocery store.

We carried on to Rennie, where there was supposed to be a campsite. Rennie doesn’t take itself too seriously.

We met a young German touring cyclist as were making the turn to the campground. Oliver had only managed to cycle 50 kms today, into the headwind that we had as a great tailwind.

There is a campground in Rennie but it is for seasonal trailers. We cycled down to the campground and met the owner (Bev). Bev had seen us on the road twice today, once when she was going to Winnipeg and then again on her way home. Ralf at one point today said he was “so over” wanting to live in the middle of nowhere. I agreed with him when Bev told us she drove 132 ks to get her shopping (one-way).

Bev welcomed us to the campground and took us to a spot near the showers and next to the entertainment room. She said we could take our bikes into the entertainment room and if we wanted to we could sleep inside. Bev showed us the showers and then completely blew us away and told us it was free. Her and her husband think cross-country cyclists deserve a free night with a shower. Thank-you Bev.

Tuesday July 28, 2015 – 24.31 kms

and Wednesday  July 29, 2015

Two wonderful rest days in Winnipeg. We were able to stay with Chen and Allison who welcomed us into their home, even though they are in the midst of selling the house. Two really nice people and I am so glad we had the opportunity to meet them, before they sell their house and move to Israel. May be we will meet again.

On Tuesday, we cycled to downtown Winnipeg to the MEC to get some supplies, we did the washing and repacked our bags. We checked the route and we will have some long days ahead of us. Unless there are campsites, that are not shown on google, the first day will be 129 kms to Rennie and then 90 kms to Kenora. Fortunately the forecast is for tail-winds.

Winnipeg has some great cycle lanes and routes. I was surprised to learn that a lot of people cycle throughout the winter in Winnipeg. They must be crazy, the temperatures regularly drop to minus 25.

Today, (Wednesday) we relaxed at the house, we were going to go with Chen and Allison to do yoga in the park, but it was cancelled.

We had another storm blow through Winnipeg last night and the weather was very windy and chilly today.

It was so nice to relax and do nothing, I updated the blog and “Thoughts on the US”. Now I am ready to go again.

Monday July 27, 2015

The wind changed direction again, but we made good time to Winnipeg.

There was 22 kms of road-works on the TransCanada, which reduced the road to one-lane. The speed limit was reduced to 60kph and fortunately everyone seemed to be sticking to the speed limit. We had no shoulder on this section and we were cycling in the lane. All the cars and trucks gave us plenty of room.

At one point we pulled off the road to have a snack, and I went into the gravel. Due to the rain last night the gravel was soft and I got stuck in the soft mucky stuff. The gravel, sand and clay got stuck under my fenders and it took us about ten minutes to clean the tires and my shoes so that we could get going again.

Eventually the road widened again, and we had a nice big shoulder all the way into Winnipeg.

As mentioned in previous posts, trains and canola seem to be the mainstay of the economy.

We took a quieter road coming into Winnipeg and spotted this skinny deer at the side of the road.

We have no idea what Minions are, but we are seeing them all over the place. They are taking over the world.

We stopped at a Liquor Store for some wine for our host tonight, as we are hoping they will let us stay a couple of nights – bribing them with wine may help.

While I was in the store, Ralf was chatting to a fella outside (Art), he has a farm outside of Winnipeg and has invited us to stay for a couple of nights. It may be a little out of our way, but we will see how we feel. He has bee hives and is very knowledgeable about bees.

When we arrived at our hosts house, they were not home. We knew we were at the right house.

We couldn’t call them as the phone had no access to the network. Fifteen minutes later they arrived home. Chen is from Israel and Allison met him in Israel when she was a volunteer on the kibbutz. They are the same age as us and we have a lot in common, apart from loving cycling. Chen has cycled Paris Brest Paris in 80+ hours. They took 6 months in 2013/2014 to cycle from Denmark to Italy, through the countries we want to visit in Europe – Albania, Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia etc.

It was a great chat and we have a couple of extra nights here to relax and to get ourselves organized for the leg across Northern Ontario.

I am a little concerned about this leg through Northern Ontario, the roads are supposed to be busy and narrow, the distances between communities are further and the chance encounters with bears are higher.

Ralf really wants to stay in Canada as opposed to dropping down through the States and I can see where he is coming from – it is supposed to be the final leg across Canada. When I was working for Lehman & Associates and Meridian Planning Consultants, we did a lot of work in these Northern communities and I would like to see them first hand.

The other issue is the Canadian dollar is dropping very quickly and it would be much more expensive cycling through the U.S. and we would need additional travel insurance.

Sunday July 26, 2015

Another long day on the bike with a tail-wind, of course. We are flying through the prairies, partly because of the wind and finally I have to admit it, because there is nothing much to see. We have stopped at a few of the small towns, Grenfell, Indian Head etc. but small town Saskatchewan and Manitoba are dying. Most of the grocery stores and bakeries have closed and the only thing the small town might have is a convenience store.

The area survives on agriculture.

We were looking for somewhere to have lunch today and there was nowhere. Finally there was a gas station with a Subway that was doing a roaring business.

By the time we had finished lunch the temperature had soared to 37 degrees. It was a very hot ride into Portage La Prairie. Fortunately we had replenished our water bottles with ice and cold water at the Subway, (thank-you Subway for not charging us for the ice and water) we definitely know how to keep hydrated.

As we left the Subway we spotted another touring cyclist going west. He had his head down and his legs were pumping hard, but he wasn’t going anywhere fast. I felt so sorry for him, he looked thoroughly miserable.

When we got in Portage, we looked for the campsite. It was at the Fairgrounds, which meant no shade. We opted for a motel with air-conditioning. I am glad we did, because a severe storm went through and we would have been sitting in the tent, wondering if it was going to hold up, the wind was really strong. The motel room has a microwave and a fridge, we were able to cook dinner in the room.

Portage La Prairie\’s claim to fame is the giant coca cola can!

Obviously curling is the religion in this Town.

We will be in Winnipeg tomorrow and hope to have a rest day on Tuesday, at  the warmshowers host.

Saturday July 25, 2015

An interesting start to the day. I woke up at 5:30 and went back to sleep for an hour. We got up at 6:30 and had a leisurely breakfast, packed the tent and headed out. Then we looked at the Garmin it was 9:50 am. It never takes us three and a half hours to pack up. No, it didn’t take us that long, we had another time change coming into Manitoba! Another hour lost.

The weather was getting hot and we had 80+ kms to cycle, we should have got up earlier.

We had a bit of a headwind today, nothing much we were still averaging 20kph but it seemed like hard work for both of us. Neither of us really enjoyed the ride much. At one point during the ride I kept saying I’m bored, I’m bored, I’m bored – like a kid that has just started their summer holidays. The ride wasn’t that boring, we had some undulations and the road was bendy, but the scenery was the same as it has been since we came into the prairies – miles and miles of fields and not much else. I asked Ralf how come Texas wasn’t so boring, but he said that there were mountains in the back-ground, the scenery was different every day.

We finally arrived in Brandon, very hot and tired. Why is it that drivers on single-lane roads think it is safe to pass cyclists but run the other guy into the ditch. A couple of times today as we were coming into Brandon the cars would give us lots of room passing us, but almost cause head-on crashes with the cars coming in the opposite direction. Do they not know they have another pedal on the floor called the brake and they could wait until it is clear to pass, instead of hitting the accelerator and scaring the Bejesus out of the other car driver.

We arrived at the Turtle Crossing camp-site and the owner was very friendly. She said she always gives touring cyclists a deal $10.00 for the site. The showers are free, albeit timed, and there are laundry facilities. The whole of the campsite was under water two years ago. When they bought the campsite they had over 200 pitches, now they only have 35 sites and a few that they can use for tenters. We had one of those sites and it was very gravelly (the river ran through this area) and very buggy. We cooked near the shower block which had a picnic table and lots of room.

It was really hot when we eventually settled in the tent – 25 degrees at 9:30pm and very buggy, with mossies and other bugs.  This bug was on the inside of the fly, but outside of the tent!

Friday July 24, 2015

Another good tail-wind day as you can see by the mileage we covered today.

We are in Manitoba already. We passed Elkhorn, where Sheldon Kennedy was from (NHL hockey player).

This is the first time we have seen bilingual signs since arriving in Canada.

Manitoba has more bends on the highway than Saskatchewan, no hills yet and still prairie farming. How much canola can one Province grow. I was expecting fields of waving wheat, but it seems to be all canola.

As the scenery was once again predictable I let my mind wander and it decided to create a beautiful Japanese Garden. It was lovely, a small Japanese maple sat to the right side of the garden with a red rhododendron in front of the maple. There was a small waterfall trickling into a stream, on the left side, complete with moon lantern and stone pagoda. I created a dry river bed – so that Ralf would have something to do raking the sand every morning. I was going to create a Tea Room but decided that was going a bit over board.

We arrived in Virden and settled in to the campsite. A nice older campsite run by the Lions Club. The showers are hot and lots of room to hang your clothes and move around. There is a small covered area which we used because rain showers kept coming through and the campsite only cost $20.00. What did surprise us was the excellent wi-fi here. I was able to update the blog.

Thursday July 23, 2015

There was a tremendous series of thunder storms that went through the area last night. The tent held up and didn’t leak, but was wet this morning. We packed the wet tent and headed into Town for breakfast.

What a difference a day makes, the wind was behind us today, but what an incredible boring ride.

I got Ralf to take photos every time we stopped for our hourly break. This is what our day was like. Long, straight road with one bend in it!

We went through a couple of Towns which were quite nice.

Grenfell had a really nice Tourist Information Office, we were hoping to get some lunch there but decided to push on to Broadview. I chatted to the lady at the Tourist Information Office who told me that people would commute to Regina from here (about 150 kms) for work. There used to be three grocery stores, two gas service stations, car dealerships and tractor service places. Most of the young people do not want to work on the farms, so they move to Regina. She said that her and her husband were fortunate as their sons wanted to keep the farm and are living and working on the farm.

Broadview was supposed to have a campsite, which it did, but no showers. There was another campsite 2 kms down the road, again no showers. How can you call yourself a campsite when there are no showers.

We stopped long enough in Broadview to look at their museum and to have lunch. It was nice museum, with a very enthusiastic curator.

Another expensive roadside lunch at a C0-op Station.

Both of us were feeling good so we carried on to the next Town – Whitewood. As I cycled along I was thinking I could create an award for highway stops that were ridiculously expensive and call it the Highway Robbery Award. The winners would get a black mask, like the Highway Men of old.

The weather was changing again and I persuaded Ralf to check out the hotels. I negotiated a deal with the owner of the Quest Motel and got a bigger room (2 beds) for the same price as a single room (one Queen bed). Not that we need two beds, but the bigger room accommodates the bikes.

Ralf also decided to dry the tent in the room as it was raining again.