Massey to Sudbury, Ontario

Across the street from the Mohawk Motel is the Back Home Bistro, where they served me french toast with peaches for breakfast . . . yum!

It was a foggy Sunday morning as I started out, heading south of Massey across the Spanish River to continue along the LHNC trail.

Here the trail followed the quiet Lee Valley Road.

I had been seeing signs like these for the last couple days, indicating Amish in their horse and buggies, but it was only on Lee Valley Road that I began to actually see them.  

They kept coming and coming, apparently on their way to church.  It was somewhat surreal!  I would have liked to take pictures, but I believe photography is disrespectful for the Amish.

Lee Valley Road leads to Espanola where I turned north briefly on Highway 6 before continuing east along another quiet country road called Jacklin Road.

Jacklin Road meets Highway 17, but here the highway is part of the LHNC trail, and the shoulder is not only well paved, but there are even lines indicating a bike lane!

The Highway 17 stretch is only about 8 kilometres, and once again the trail leaves the highway and goes through a place called Nairn and then along the-mostly-deserted Highways 5, 4, and 3.

After 25 kilometres or so of that stretch, I crossed Highway 17 on an overpass and entered Whitefish, a community on the west side of Greater Sudbury.  Now I was on Highway 55, the "old Highway 17," the first place all day that the riding conditions were not ideal.  Actually, for some stretches of Highway 55, the road was in such rough shape that large pieces of the white line were missing altogether.

Anyway, after a stressful and unenjoyable 20 or so kilometres I once again crossed Highway 17 and was beginning to enter Sudbury proper.

At some point I had to choose between taking the shorter route to my motel or cycling up a hill to see the famous giant nickel.  It was hot and I had now ridden over 100 kilometres, but I decided if I did not ride up to see and photograph it I would regret it, so up I went.

From the nickel I cycled back down and made my way through the city to the southeast end, passing under the "Bridge of Nations," which I found pretty cool.  Apparently the flags represent the heritage of people living in Sudbury.

I think today was the hottest of the days I have cycled yet, so once I reached my motel I turned on the A/C, ordered in pizza, showered, and then lay on the bed for a few hours resting and cooling off.

Eventually I had to go out to cycle down to a laundromat, and I was lucky I did not wait any longer, because I just made it in time to get my load in.  I cycled around while my laundry washed, past this park where a lady warned me to be careful because she had just seen a bear!