Wow.
That about sums up the scenery.
According to the 9th edition of the Lonely Planet's Canada book, "The Lake Superior shore is one of those drives you must do before you die." Much of the writing in various sources touches on the fact that the Group of Seven was inspired and spent much time in the shield around the lake. I can certainly believe that.
The roads are generally fairly good, on Hwy 17, the traffic isn't atrocious, but it doesn't matter because you're just looking around so much that you don't care much about these things, black flies aside. The combination of rock, water and trees reminds me of my favourite parts of BC mountain country. Ancient rock with plants and trees clinging to it, digging the roots in. I've tried to take some pictures to show what I mean, but really, it doesn't do it justice. Nothing does.
Suffice it to say, we are talking seriously about making a point of going for a cross country ski trip up here somewhere within a year or two, simply to enjoy the scenery without the spectre of the madness caused by insects.
We also saw a cougar. That was very, very cool, you don't often see these dudes. Cruising along the highway somewhat north of Wawa and I see a shape crossing the road. The brain quickly goes through the choices: "Wolf, no way, not a canine. Obviously not an ungulate. Way to big for a lynx. A cougar? I didn't think these were around here. Awesome!"
That took all of about a half second, then it was point fast and yell at Hillary, "Cougar, mountain lion up there, look!"
It padded across the road and up into the trees. We talked very loudly for the next few minutes (since we were climbing, we weren't riding overly fast) but I really wasn't concerned. Better to be prudent though, we were downwind.
As far as the riding goes since Thunder Bay, good, with some downs, but we're getting to that.
We cheated on our first day out of Thunder Bay. There was a long stretch of construction. We drove over it a couple of times on our trips out to the mine and Ouimet Canyon. Enough to have a long and difficult debate as to whether we should actually ride it. Basically it was the extended gravel sections with lots of traffic that did it. Given that we completely re-routed our path through BC (Hwy 1 to Hwy 3) based on construction, we elected to skip it. So we missed 30km of road. I'm hoping skipping %0.4 of the trip isn't too bad. :) I'll make it up elsewhere, I promise.
We had decent weather that day though, the first 60km flew by and then we turned into the wind at Nipigon. Due to us feeling good, we ended up doing about 140km and stopping at Rainbow Falls Provincial Park. Spectacular, as were the bugs.
From there, we continued through amazing country into Marathon, where we splurged and got a motel for the night so we could have baths for pretty much the first time in months. The hills got pretty serious on this ride, we had at least two that were upwards of 7% and somewhere in the ballpark of 3km long. Nothing compared to the big mountain passes, but still difficult. Starting to get warm as well, which is a nice change.
Marathon to White River was flatter, but definitely rolling. Hot sun beating down on us most of the time. Note that I am not complaining, we've been waiting for the chance to do this. This part of the ride was not quite as scenic, the roads were straighter and the trees were closer. The dominant feature of the day was going through an area where a massive forest fire had gone through a few years ago. The road wound through the short trees and blasted trunks for probably 15-20km.
Finally, White River to Wawa, starting to get back into the rocks and climbs. Again, not as serious as Nipigon to Marathon, but you can tell it's coming again. And that's where we are now.
And likely to be for at least a few days. Hillary took a minor injury a few days ago, which got infected and now requires some professional treatment. So until we get the okay from the doctors, we're parked.
Depending on how long that is, we may have to skip ahead to Ottawa to get back on track, or I may be riding alone for a few days. Regardless, we'll see how it goes.
Showing posts with label ontario. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ontario. Show all posts
Friday, June 15, 2007
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Internet is scarce out here.
Long time no blog.
We supposedly had an internet connection in our campsite in Kenora, but it was... Flaky.
As it is here. I am learning that 'free wi-fi' means 'we have a cheap router and want to add the bullet point to our advertising'.
Anyhow.
The good mechanics at Olympia Cycle in Kenora were able to get my wheel back in business while I waited and the next morning, we were off. Happy days.
The route off the main highway we were taking was fairly deserted, which was a nice change after several days of fairly packed roadways. On the other hand, we had seen several signs which indicated we were entering bear country, which somewhat heightened the various senses which were responsible for scanning the woods.
About halfway through the day, Hillary starts dropping the hammer and mumbles something at me. I catch up and say, "Pardon?"
"There is a bear in the trees, on the left."
"What? Where?" as I slow down to check things out. Hillary then speeds up even more and I see her side of things and match her speed. I see nothing but trees, but whine for a few days that next time she should warn me before if some interesting wildlife is in the woods nearby.
The rest of the ride was fairly uneventful, save for some CN workers deciding to blow what I assume was a stump when we were less than 100m from it. If you've seen footage of mortar shells hitting the dirt in WWI or WWII and that's exactly what it looked like. We were close enough that I could feel the whomp in my chest. Worrisome, especially when debris started raining down on us. Mostly water and some light dead wood by the time it hit us on the road, but that's hardly the point.
We made it to Kenora and into Ontario later that day. Home province now, w00t!
From Kenora we were basically back on highway 17 and the Trans-Canada, which in large part meant that I missed much of the scenery. The traffic wasn't overly bad for much of the day, though by late afternoon it was pretty solid. The worst part was the transports. Not one at a time, but when you'd get batches going in both directions at once. Regardless,whenever traffic got busy, I found myself just focusing on the road and not the shield in general.
Which was too bad. For the first 100km or so east of Kenora was quite nice. Short little climbs and descents winding around rocky formations and lakes. As we got closer to Dryden, the rollers became more gentle and we broke out into farmland.
The next two days, ending at the Cobblestone Lodge and English River respectively, were pretty unpleasant. We had a fairly stiff headwind that kept our speed way down and it was cold and rainy. The high point of the two days was seeing a few moose and the gift of some freshly caught trout fillets from a camper at the Cobblestone Lodge. A most excellent dinner those made.
English River, really nothing more than a little fishing lodge, was not supposed to be the destination for the day, but after a 4 hour slog to get 84km up the road and encountering heavy transport traffic, we decided to pack it in for the night. The hope was that we'd hit better weather the next day, which really didn't require much.
That night, we got a pretty serious thunderstorm that lead into a great tailwind. Power got knocked out of the entire town for most of the evening, you can see Tanya's blog for more details on that... Anyhow, to make up for our short days, we did our first imperial century of the trip. Total mileage for the day was 167km, or about 104 miles. That was exciting.
We ended the century at Kakabeka Falls Provincial Park and celebrated our lengthy ride with a couple of pints and a hike down to the falls. The falls were pretty impressive, but Mom really didn't like the idea that the power generation company basically remotely controls how impressive the falls are. Essentially the power company has an agreement with Ontario that they will keep the water flow over the falls to at least x cubic metres per second at various times. Weekdays, the falls are less impressive, weekends, when more tourists/campers are out and about, they turn up the volume. It sort of takes something away from it.
From Kakabeka, it was a short ride through Thunder Bay to Shuniah. Rather than take a rest day, we elected to do a short ride, then tour around in Truck for a bit to see some of the natural things around here we'd miss on our bikes.
First stop was an amethyst mine. Not a whole bunch to actually see there, but the best part by far, was the mining part of it. They dump their tailings and cuttings in a 5 acre pit and let anyone root through it. The ground is speckled in purple and for $3 per pound, you can carry off whatever you find. I found a nice big chunk that is going to go on my desk and we found several smaller chunks with nice colour that we should be able to get cut into earrings or something similar. Not the highest gem quality rocks, sure, but still pretty cool.
Getting to the mine involved going up, then down, a 12% or so gravel road. It was a bit hairy, but no problems, despite some stress leading up to the descent. And I saw a bear on the way down! Gone before we could get the camera out, but still.
Next stop was Ouimet Canyon Provincial Park. On our way to the park, who did we see pedalling up the 17? Tanya and Attila. (forgive me if this is misspelled, I'm going from memory, I'm writing this offline and will just cut and paste and probably forget about checking) Probably surprised them, but it was good to see that they hadn't been eaten by bears yet. :)
The canyon is also pretty cool. It's basically a glacier carved hole in the ground 3km long and 150m deep. At the bottom, it's basically it's own microclimate and has a bunch of arctic plants that you can't find anywhere south of Hudson's Bay. Due to this, you aren't allowed to walk down there, but you can overlook it.
Finally, back to the Terry Fox monument. We all know about him, so it doesn't need to be repeated here, but still. Riding across the country is much faster than running and it's taking us a long time. A marathon a day would have been beyond ridiculous. Unimaginable.
So that about brings us up to date. We're heading back into the back country, so it might be a while before the next update. We're taking a real rest day today, we're utterly covered in bug bites and could probably use a real day off to do laundry, play some mini golf and just relax.
We supposedly had an internet connection in our campsite in Kenora, but it was... Flaky.
As it is here. I am learning that 'free wi-fi' means 'we have a cheap router and want to add the bullet point to our advertising'.
Anyhow.
The good mechanics at Olympia Cycle in Kenora were able to get my wheel back in business while I waited and the next morning, we were off. Happy days.
The route off the main highway we were taking was fairly deserted, which was a nice change after several days of fairly packed roadways. On the other hand, we had seen several signs which indicated we were entering bear country, which somewhat heightened the various senses which were responsible for scanning the woods.
About halfway through the day, Hillary starts dropping the hammer and mumbles something at me. I catch up and say, "Pardon?"
"There is a bear in the trees, on the left."
"What? Where?" as I slow down to check things out. Hillary then speeds up even more and I see her side of things and match her speed. I see nothing but trees, but whine for a few days that next time she should warn me before if some interesting wildlife is in the woods nearby.
The rest of the ride was fairly uneventful, save for some CN workers deciding to blow what I assume was a stump when we were less than 100m from it. If you've seen footage of mortar shells hitting the dirt in WWI or WWII and that's exactly what it looked like. We were close enough that I could feel the whomp in my chest. Worrisome, especially when debris started raining down on us. Mostly water and some light dead wood by the time it hit us on the road, but that's hardly the point.
We made it to Kenora and into Ontario later that day. Home province now, w00t!
From Kenora we were basically back on highway 17 and the Trans-Canada, which in large part meant that I missed much of the scenery. The traffic wasn't overly bad for much of the day, though by late afternoon it was pretty solid. The worst part was the transports. Not one at a time, but when you'd get batches going in both directions at once. Regardless,whenever traffic got busy, I found myself just focusing on the road and not the shield in general.
Which was too bad. For the first 100km or so east of Kenora was quite nice. Short little climbs and descents winding around rocky formations and lakes. As we got closer to Dryden, the rollers became more gentle and we broke out into farmland.
The next two days, ending at the Cobblestone Lodge and English River respectively, were pretty unpleasant. We had a fairly stiff headwind that kept our speed way down and it was cold and rainy. The high point of the two days was seeing a few moose and the gift of some freshly caught trout fillets from a camper at the Cobblestone Lodge. A most excellent dinner those made.
English River, really nothing more than a little fishing lodge, was not supposed to be the destination for the day, but after a 4 hour slog to get 84km up the road and encountering heavy transport traffic, we decided to pack it in for the night. The hope was that we'd hit better weather the next day, which really didn't require much.
That night, we got a pretty serious thunderstorm that lead into a great tailwind. Power got knocked out of the entire town for most of the evening, you can see Tanya's blog for more details on that... Anyhow, to make up for our short days, we did our first imperial century of the trip. Total mileage for the day was 167km, or about 104 miles. That was exciting.
We ended the century at Kakabeka Falls Provincial Park and celebrated our lengthy ride with a couple of pints and a hike down to the falls. The falls were pretty impressive, but Mom really didn't like the idea that the power generation company basically remotely controls how impressive the falls are. Essentially the power company has an agreement with Ontario that they will keep the water flow over the falls to at least x cubic metres per second at various times. Weekdays, the falls are less impressive, weekends, when more tourists/campers are out and about, they turn up the volume. It sort of takes something away from it.
From Kakabeka, it was a short ride through Thunder Bay to Shuniah. Rather than take a rest day, we elected to do a short ride, then tour around in Truck for a bit to see some of the natural things around here we'd miss on our bikes.
First stop was an amethyst mine. Not a whole bunch to actually see there, but the best part by far, was the mining part of it. They dump their tailings and cuttings in a 5 acre pit and let anyone root through it. The ground is speckled in purple and for $3 per pound, you can carry off whatever you find. I found a nice big chunk that is going to go on my desk and we found several smaller chunks with nice colour that we should be able to get cut into earrings or something similar. Not the highest gem quality rocks, sure, but still pretty cool.
Getting to the mine involved going up, then down, a 12% or so gravel road. It was a bit hairy, but no problems, despite some stress leading up to the descent. And I saw a bear on the way down! Gone before we could get the camera out, but still.
Next stop was Ouimet Canyon Provincial Park. On our way to the park, who did we see pedalling up the 17? Tanya and Attila. (forgive me if this is misspelled, I'm going from memory, I'm writing this offline and will just cut and paste and probably forget about checking) Probably surprised them, but it was good to see that they hadn't been eaten by bears yet. :)
The canyon is also pretty cool. It's basically a glacier carved hole in the ground 3km long and 150m deep. At the bottom, it's basically it's own microclimate and has a bunch of arctic plants that you can't find anywhere south of Hudson's Bay. Due to this, you aren't allowed to walk down there, but you can overlook it.
Finally, back to the Terry Fox monument. We all know about him, so it doesn't need to be repeated here, but still. Riding across the country is much faster than running and it's taking us a long time. A marathon a day would have been beyond ridiculous. Unimaginable.
So that about brings us up to date. We're heading back into the back country, so it might be a while before the next update. We're taking a real rest day today, we're utterly covered in bug bites and could probably use a real day off to do laundry, play some mini golf and just relax.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)