Day 62 St Thomas, ON-Pt Ryerse, ON

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Jo Day 62 (Oct 1): No rain, just wind this morning at the Comfort Inn in St. Thomas, Ontario. After Kevin, Alan and John took off for their 64 mile ride, we drove off and did some grocery shopping at Walmart...again...yep, more ice! Then we took off down the country roads (lots of corn & squash farms with deluxe farm houses). We saw some kids in a field, we stopped and I asked what they were growing...tobacco! We saw quite a few tobacco farms and a couple wineries. We drove to Port Burwell, and for a few minutes on the beach of Lake Erie we felt like we were in the movie "The Birds" with Tippi Hedren! A gazillion sea gulls on the beach flew up like a tornado as we walked towards them...we looked up over our heads and said, "Oh shit!" and ran back to the van. We escaped without any bird poop on us. LOL! We looked at the Port Burwell lighthouse that was constructed in 1840 and closed in 1962. We parked across the street in the Marine Museum parking lot and Janut put together her crockpot ingredients for dinner (it was yummy good...Italian sausage with white beans and kale raggu over gnocchi). After plugging in the crockpot, we drove by a lot of giant wind turbines sitting on farms. The Lake Erie Wind Farm consists of 66 1.5 MW GE wind turbines that generate enough electricity for 24,000 homes. Each blade is 37 meters (about the length of a Boeing 737) and the turbine tower is 80 meters high. The swept area of the turbine blades is the size of 3 NHL rinks combined. They say wind power has positive environmental and economic benefits, but it sure does interfere with beautiful pictures of Mother Nature. Oh, we drove into the Long Point Causeway Improvement Project area and saw an American mink run across the road. How cool! But we did not get out to walk around because we saw a sign that said something about ticks and Lyme Disease! Yikes! We met the guys at the campground in the Norfolk Conservation Area, Point Ryerse, Ontario. We have a nice spot overlooking Lake Erie (we all looked, but we cannot say "I can see the US from our camp site!"). Alan put a new chain on his bike while Janut and Kevin put the finishing touches on our yummy dinner. It's appropriate that we drove on Spooky Hollow Road today because it's a party here...they are celebrating Halloween tonight, and the kids and adults are dressed in costumes roaming through the campsites trick'o treating...they did not venture into our area (big scary Sprinter van I guess), even though Alan was happily waiting with dried fruit treats and Cliff bars to give away. Kevin took Bob out to "practice" and they fit right in with the Halloween party...he looked like Charlie Brown in his orange and black bike jersey and Bob was Snoopy, of course! LOL! It's 10:10pm and the music is still playing at the pavilion (the campers are having a fun time). Usually "quiet time" is at 10pm, we're pass that. I hope the music stops soon, because we all need our beautyrest.
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Kevin Day 62 St. Thomas to Port Ryerse, Ontario. 64 miles. After breakfast in the Sprinter, we began our ride in the rain and headed back to the shoreline of Lake Erie to get back on the ACA route. It wasn't raining too heavily, so the 10 miles or so back to the route weren't too bad. At about 25 miles in we stopped in Port Burwell for our second breakfast. Port Burwell is primarily a tourist town in summer, so most places were closed for the season. There's a maritime museum in town where's there's a retired Canadian submarine on display. We heard from a local that the submarine didn't become the attraction it was to be. At our breakfast stop, "The Lunchbox", they had a collection of metal lunch boxes. Most seemed to be modern; none from back in the day. My favorite was the soft kitty lunchbox. After breakfast the rain had pretty much stopped so riding conditions were fine for the afternoon-gray skies and temps in the mid to upper 50's. Along the way we passed fields of tobacco, a few potato and tomato farms, and a couple wineries. (No stops). Lunch in Port Rowan, where we chatted with a family that was very interested in cyclotouring. In someone's yard we saw the tree with a bike wheel grown into place. That must have taken some training! Tonight's campsite is at the Norfolk Conservation Area-our campsite is on a bluff above Lake Erie with a view of the water. Tonight's dinner is gnocchi with a ragout with kale and Italian sausage. The cooking of the gnocchi is very exciting! Tomorrow we ride to Fort Erie, our last night in Ontario and the we will cross back into the United States at Niagara Falls. 

Day 62 - St. Thomas to Port Ryerse

Explorer Link: http://cyclemeter.com/a0571f7a21831ccb/Cycle-20161001-0823
Ride Time: 4:37:29
Stopped Time: 2:36:17
Distance: 64.23 miles
Average: 13.89 mph
Fastest Speed: 33.06 mph
Ascent: 520
Descent: 618
Calories: 3861

http://www.cyclemeter.com

Day 61 Clearville, ON-St Thomas, ON

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Jo Day 61 (Sept 30):  Clearville Park, Ontario was not so clear this morning... it was still wet and windy...cyclist(s) rain gear was still hanging up to dry in the van!  Janut was helping John dry his footprint...she looked like a matador fighting the wind! Haha! Kevin, Alan and John rode 42 miles today...42 wet and windy miles.  Janut, Bob and I stayed fairly close to the guys, trying to figure out where we should sleep tonight.  We drove ahead to look at possible campgrounds and motels, then waited for the guys to see how much further they wanted to ride in the rain and wind. One motel owner gave Janut the key to the room without paying (we drove around with the key for over an hour).  The room was ok (as expected for the low room rate) but there were two letters from the health department posted on the bathroom wall warning that the well water was unsafe and had high sodium.  We gave the room key back and told John and Alan to find another motel.  Better safe than sorry!  We stopped at Picard's, a peanut and candy snack shop...we bought beer nuts, honey nuts, mint meltaways, caramel pecan clusters, and chocolate bars. Mmmm tasty!  We were tracking the guys with the find friends app, and they missed a turn (they turned left instead of right).  We were very concerned and tried to call and text them (missed your turn, stop, go back), but no luck, they could not use their cell phones because their fingers and screens were too wet from the rain...well, that's what they told us...but if you look at the find friends app, it looks like they were making a direct b-line to the Railway City Brewing Company in St.Thomas!  St.Thomas is the railway capital of Canada.  Before we met up with the guys at the brewery, Janut, Bob and I stopped at the life size sculpture of Jumbo the elephant, perched on a hill as you enter St.Thomas.  On Sept 15, 1885, Jumbo (PT Barnum & Bailey's prized African elephant) met an untimely death when struck by a grand trunk locomotive in St.Thomas.  On the 100th anniversary of this tragic event the citizens erected this monument (a tourist photo op)...there are also murals with Jumbo throughout the downtown area.  Canada has some fun road signs, so I thought I'd share some with you.  The Railway City Brewing Company began in 2008 and has some tasty craft beers.  We had a fun time there.  Stephanie (their promo girl) took our picture in front of their beer brewing tanks, and it is posted on their Facebook page!  Alan and John checked into the Comfort Inn (no health dept warning letters, yay!) in St.Thomas, Ontario.  The van is nestled behind the motel with a nice view of a green lawn and tall bushes. We hung out at a coin laundry place to dry bike gear and soaking wet socks and chatted with the guy who worked there (he said for me to call him Prince Phillip - he shook my hand then kissed the back of my hand, oh my), he liked curling and sudoku, and did crossword puzzles everyday to "stay sharp". He also said he was a "zoomer"...what Canadians call a baby boomer with a little zip!  A lot of the local football teams drop off their uniforms to be washed...he said diluted baby shampoo removes the grass stains! I'll have to try that sometime. Enjoyed pizza from Al's Pizzeria for dinner.  The rain and wind has calmed down for now...it's a nice, quiet night.

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Kevin Day 61 Clearville ON to St Thomas, ON. 42 miles. Today we took a detour off the regular ACA route to find a motel in order to dry gear and clothing. The forecast was predicting more rain and stronger wind than yesterday, and the weather guys got it 100% correct this time. We left the campground and were immediately greeted with a more than fresh breeze right in our faces. Pouring rain added injury to the early morning insult of wind! We slogged about 18 miles to Wallacetown, where we had breakfast and then left the ACA route to our destination of St Thomas. At breakfast, we saw several items on the menu that included "Peameal bacon", so I asked what it was and our server laughed and explained that it is what Americans call Canadian bacon. Learned sumthin' new! Back on the road, wind and rain were once again our companions and we chugged our way towards St Thomas. I don't know the exact wind speed, but Weather Underground was forecasting winds of 22mph with gusts of 30+. Trees along the road offered some relief, but we would curse at cornfields and soybeans when we saw them, as they had no shielding effect against the wind. By the early afternoon we had reached St Thomas and discovered the Railway City Brewing Company in an industrial park, and we went in to try to dry off a bit, and have a beer. Turns out we had a great time there! They gave us some towels to dry off with, and had great beers! We got the full story about their beers, including their flagship beer, Dead Elephant IPA.  Dead Elephant was named to commemorate Jumbo, an elephant in the Barnum and Bailey Circus that was hit and killed by a train in 1885 in St Thomas. The people at the brewery were very friendly, and had some tasty beers. After we left there, we quickly found the Comfort Inn, where Alan and John have a room, and the Sprinter is parked out back. Tomorrow the forecast still calls for some rain, and decreased wind, but we will rejoin our regularly scheduled programming and be back on route on the shoreline of Lake Erie.

Day 61 - Clearville to St. Thomas

Explorer Link: http://cyclemeter.com/a0571f7a21831ccb/Cycle-20160930-0859
Ride Time: 3:31:45
Stopped Time: 7:35:47
Distance: 43.05 miles
Average: 12.20 mph
Fastest Speed: 23.62 mph
Ascent: 252
Descent: 75
Calories: 2479

http://www.cyclemeter.com

Day 60 Kimball, MI-Clearview, ON

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Jo Day 60:  Rainy morning at the Port Huron KOA in Kimball, MI.  Boo - the rain continued throughout the day. Not much to do today except our morning chores, wash the dishes, cross the border into Canada, and shop for groceries. Kevin, Alan and John rode 89.5 miles today in rain and wind.  They got into camp late, too late to include pictures of their wet gear hanging in the van. The boys crossed the border at Marine City to Sombra (via the blue water ferry).  Janut, Bob and I crossed the border into Ontario Canada at Sarnia.  There was a long line to cross the bridge and to go through customs. The border patrol lady basically asked us three questions:  1) can I have your ID's,  2) do you have any pepper spray or mace, and 3) how long are you going to be in Canada.  When Janut replied about 4 days and crossing back over at Niagara, the border patrol lady said, "but that's only 3.5 hours away". Janut had to remind her that we have to wait for the 3 bike riders...they're only riding about 60 miles a day.  The patrol lady laughed.  Janut shopped for groceries at a Walmart in Sarnia, ON ... a small bag of ice was $2.48 Canadian dollars (highway robbery).  Tonight we are camping at the Clearville Park just outside of Ridgetown, Ontario (Canada).  It took us 1.5 hours to drive 54 miles!  I can't count how many turns we made (no direct routes), plus some roads were less than 60 km per hour (farm country, many of the farm houses are made of bricks, very pristine looking)...we had sketchy cell service all day.  At camp, if you're lucky, you can get one 3G bar if you sit in the front seat of the van, but there's no guarantee as to how long it will last.   Tonight it's raining off and on, and it's very windy. There are some nice size waves on Lake Erie.  Did I mention that it's windy?  Goodbye Michigan!  Hello Canada! It's the first day Bob's paws have touched Canadian soil!

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Kevin Day 60 Wadhams, Michigan to Clearville Ontario.  89 miles.  A rugged day on the road today. All day headwinds 20+mph, temps in the 50's and rain most all the time. We were well soaked when we made it to camp on Lake Erie right as it getting dark.  Highlights of the day-riding the ferry to cross the St Claire River to cross into Canada, where the customs officer asked the usual"citizenship? Anything to declare? Any weapons or firearms?"   Lunch in Wallaceburg, and running around to find a Service Ontario office to sign a contract for a campsite(?) and negotiating a closed bridge across the river in Kentbridge, with the only detour that would add miles to our route. We just went around the fences and walked across!  More rain and wind is forecast for the next few days, as a cutoff low is stuck in Ohio just throwing junk our way. Oh well.

Day 60 - Wadhams Michigan to Clearville Ontario

Explorer Link: http://cyclemeter.com/a0571f7a21831ccb/Cycle-20160929-0845
Ride Time: 6:47:17
Stopped Time: 4:11:28
Distance: 89.57 miles
Average: 13.20 mph
Fastest Speed: 22.37 mph
Ascent: 228
Descent: 296
Calories: 5329

http://www.cyclemeter.com

Day 29 Litchville, ND-Kindred, ND

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