Day 76

The Day 69 blog post we finished in Winnipeg was apparently lost. We can't say we're surprised that it's been lost, we suspected for some time that it was too good of a blog post to be true. Things happened between Regina and Winnipeg, but not much. Unfortunately we can't hook Harrison's camera up to the computer, so we wont be able to add many photos, but here are a few videos that we took between Regina and Winnipeg:
Camping in Wolseley, Saskatchewan: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1aMRZeexO8&feature=plcp
Being stealth in Portage la Prairie, Manitoba: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Wz7LoAgCvk&feature=plcp

We biked about 5 km outside of Winnipeg, instead of spending a second night there, because it was easier to find a place to camp. When we got to biking the next morning the road was still very flat, but we were fast approaching Ontario which we knew would have a ton of hills. We managed to bike close to 150 km on our last full day in Manitoba. We set up our tent in Caddy Lake in the Whiteshell Provincial Park. The road into the Caddy Lake campground had the first legitimate hills we've seen in a long time. Additionally, we were now surrounded by forest instead of the prairies. Here is a video of where we camped and some of the other campers there http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxTpE_eCqqw&feature=plcp.

We also rode through the town of Rennie, a remarkably unremarkable town.

And they know it.

When we left the next morning we made a quick stop in West Hawk Lake, a small cottage town about 5 km from the Ontario border. When we finally crossed into our home province we were both excited to be on the home stretch, even though we had 2000 km to go. The change of scenery that came with entering Ontario was nice. There were now trees and lakes everywhere. We stopped for some lunch in Kenora, and stocked up on supplies knowing that our next stretch may be the most barren part of the trip. We managed to bike another 60 km to Sioux Narrows where we stayed the night at a local park. The dense forests and lakes, combined with very few towns results in seeing a lot more wildlife. In the last 4 km of the day we saw 5 deer.

We biked the 20km into Fort Frances where we had some breakfast and took advantage of some free WiFi at the McDonald's. When we finally left the town of Fort Frances the road became very barren. We biked another 115 kilometers that day and the only sign of civilization we saw was a gas station 10 km from Fort Frances and another gas station that went out of business. The major issue that this brought was running out of water, which would happen multiple times on this stretch. There were no taps of fresh drinking water, and the temperature was well above 30 Celsius. We each finished our 5 bottles before we wanted to stop biking for the day. Luckily a nice lady, who was escorting another biker going across Canada, filled up a bottle each for us. This got us to where we decided to camp for the night. We set up our tent beside a lake where we were able to get water, and Pristine it. When we were setting up our tent, there was a flash thunderstorm with very heavy rain for about 15 minutes. These flash thunderstorms have become a common occurrence over the past week. There was also a tiny frog that lived near where we were camping, but it must have been the laziest frog in the world because we were absolutely swarmed by mosquitoes and the frog just sat there and watched.

This is where we camped, minutes before thunder and mosquitoes decided they would be spending the night  there too.

The next morning we found a town, Atikokan, which was about 5 km off of the highway we were taking. It was worth the detour, as we were able to stock up again on groceries and fresh water. The road again proved to be very barren and the weather to be very draining. We saw a gas station and restaurant where we stopped for some lunch. A few flash thunderstorms later and we made it to the ghost town of Kashabowie.  Needless to say, we were excited to get to Thunder Bay the following day.

The ride into Thunder Bay may have been the hottest and sweatiest ride of the whole trip, but we dug deep and persevered. In Thunder Bay, we decided to stay at the Lakehead University residence for the night, but Will got lost somewhere on campus and needed to ask someone for directions. Lakehead was pretty deserted because it was a Saturday and it was the summer, but Will managed to find someone to ask for directions, but as he pulled up to the guy they realized they knew each other. It was Uko, a friend from Will's bowl-cut elementary school days. After catching up for a bit and marveling at the crazy improbability of having run into each other, Uko mentioned that he was hosting a radio show at the campus radio station that evening, and we decided to make it the best radio show ever by talking about our trip.

"...and then we kept pedaling..."

Thunder Bay is a nice city, but the most interesting thing about Thunder Bay is how it got its name. In 1969 the towns of Fort William and Port Arthur decided to become one, and a referendum was held to determine the name.There were three options that made it on to the ballet: Thunder Bay, Lakehead, and The Lakehead. "The Lakehead" took in just over 8,000 votes, "Lakehead" got 15,302 votes, and "Thunder Bay" got 15,870 votes. More than half of the people wanted some variation of the name Lakehead, yet because they couldn't agree on whether to throw in an article, the vote was split and Thunder Bay took the cake. Wow. The lesson? Just wow.