Batchawana Bay Provincial Park to Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario

Today was my shortest day of riding, not even 70 kilometres, so I took my time getting up, and lingered over a large breakfast.

As the server took my payment and asked me about my ride, she mentioned "oh, you'll have to ride up Mile Hill!"  I had not heard about Mile Hill, so I played it cool, then quickly Googled it.  It is not quite the climb that Montreal Hill is, but any climb that has a nickname is obviously going to be a challenge!

I rolled out at 10:30, to what was my nicest weather day yet.  Again the route was beautiful, with lake views, but also views of hills full of trees with changing leaves.   

After about 45 kilometres of riding I reached Mile Hill, pausing beforehand to eat the apple fritter I had taken to go from The Voyageurs Lodge.

Mile Hill should really be called 1.5 mile hill, because it was 2.4 kilometres from the bottom to the top.  The shoulder was lousy, but luckily there was little traffic on the climb, so it was not too bad.

After about 10 more kilometres on Highway 17, I left the highway and came into the Soo on back roads.

I reached my hotel just before 14:00.  I was done!

An hour later, I was showered, had a rental car, and swung by Velorution, the Soo's bike shop that had tuned me up two years ago when I rode Sault Ste. Marie to North Bay.  

Velorution had a bike box for me, and soon I had my bike broken down and ready to fly.

I will actually be in Sault Ste. Marie for two nights, but I will definitely not want to ride my bike tomorrow!

With my errands complete, I headed down to St. Marys River to enjoy a celebratory beer on the waterfront.

With this ride done, I have now cycled between the Pacific Ocean and North Bay, Ontario, and from Ottawa to Moncton.  That leaves me with the gap between North Bay and Ottawa and then from Moncton to the Atlantic Ocean--so perhaps as little as two more summers to go before my ride across Canada is complete!

Sault Ste. Marie to Thessalon, Ontario

I dawdled setting out this morning, finally rolling out of the Super 8 parking lot at 10:30.  I had found some good maps for the Lake Huron North Channel (LHNC) trail, a relatively recently completed network that connects the Soo to Sudbury, and I intended to follow them as much as I could. For the most part the LHNC avoids Highway 17, which I was keen to do.

I cycled out of Sault Ste. Marie on Queen Street, past Algoma University, and onto 17B.

Highway 17B goes through the Garden River First Nation, where apparently at least one person wants to ensure you realize you are on "Indian land." 

After Garden River I passed through Echo Bay, and then headed inland where I was now on rural roads, mostly passing farms, but also this Presbyterian church!

While apparently snow was falling back home, I was worrying about sun burn and dehydration!  

At a place called Desbarats, I had to head south to the highway because the LHNC joined a gravel road, and my bike's tires cannot handle gravel.

It was only a 12 kilometre stretch, but it was miserable, because in many places the paved shoulder was virtually non-existent, and Highway 17 has a lot of traffic, including a lot of semi-trucks.

At Bruce Mines I was able to leave the highway and go back to the country roads, and it was quite the relief.  I was beginning to worry about what the highway would be like further on, but for the rest of today I was able to stay on the LHNC

The non-highway routing means cycling further distances, but it was well worth it, because it was far more relaxed (most of these back roads had virtually no traffic at all), and the rural roads were also quite shady!

I arrived in the little town of Thessalon just after 15:00, and checked in at the Carolyn Beach Inn.

This place is expensive ($130 after tax), but I have a Lake Huron view!

They also have a nice restaurant, and as soon as they opened at 16:30, I went for "lunch" of whitefish from the lake.

After lunch (I am calling it lunch, because I had not eaten lunch, and it was not going to be my last meal of the day!), I enjoyed the motel's private beach.

My trip from the Soo had taken me 97 kilometres, which was tantalizingly close to 100, and I was curious to see the town anyway, so I went for a little (5 kilometre) ride into Thessalon before the sun set, thereby finishing my metric century of riding for the day.

Something I had noticed along my bike ride and again here in Thessalon are these large solar panels.  

Back at the motel, I went for dinner and watched the sun set over the lake (quite the view!).

Sault Ste Marie, Ontario

As summer 2018 comes to a close (it's 0 degrees in Edmonton today!) I am starting out on the next piece of my cross-Canada bicycle trip.

Yesterday afternoon I landed at YAM, Sault Ste. Marie's airport, having flown here via Toronto.

I picked up a rental car and drove straight to Velorution, a bike shop on the north side of Sault Ste. Marie.  I had prearranged for them to do a tune up on my bike, although when I pulled it out of the box it was looking to be in nearly perfect shape.

My bike safely in the good hands of Velorution, I drove into Soo and checked in at my hotel.  Since then, I have been exploring the city.

Last night I went downtown and to the waterfront of the St. Mary's River, whence Sault Ste. Marie gets its name. 

Actually, "sault" means rapids or waterfalls in archaic French, so specifically Sault Ste. Marie's name comes from the rapids of the St. Mary's River.  The rapids forced travelers to stop here while passing between Lake Huron and Lake Superior, and since the late 1800s there have been locks to allow shipping to get by the rapids and up to Lake Superior/down to Lake Huron, depending on the direction of travel. 

This morning I went north along Lake Superior to hike for an hour at a place called Robertson Cliffs.

The weather was lovely, but, sadly, I failed to realize that the morning fog would prevent a good view from the cliffs.

Nonetheless, I enjoyed the hike.

From Robertson Cliffs I drove back into Sault Ste. Marie and to the Sault Ste. Marie Canal National Historic Site.

The historic site is the single set of locks that have ever been on the Canadian side of the river here, and they were built after the Americans refused to allow a steamer full of Canadian soldiers through their locks in 1870.  The soldiers were headed for Thunder Bay and, eventually, further west into the land Canada was purchasing that very year from the Hudson's Bay Company (more-or-less what is now Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta), and presumably the Americans (who seem to have on occasion thought that land might end up theirs) were not so keen on helping Canada assert sovereignty in the west.

Today, the locks that are the final piece of the St. Lawrence Seaway are on the American side, but the Canadian locks are again operational now for recreational purposes.

Besides the historic locks and associated buildings, this site also includes Whitefish Island, which also has an interesting history involving Canada attempting to assert sovereignty and winding up embarrassed.  In this case, Canada expropriated the island from the local Anishinaabe people in the 1890s before finally returning it in the late 1990s.  Meanwhile, during the nearly 100 years of Canadian control, the Anishinaabe burial grounds were removed and the fish spawning location nearly destroyed.  Now, however, apparently Canada and the First Nation jointly manage the island, since it is both a reserve and part of the historic site.

After coffee, lunch, a stroll, and novel shopping at Sault Ste. Marie's only used bookstore, The Skeleton Key, I next headed to Algoma University's Shingwauk Hall.

The tragedy of Whitefish Island is nothing compared to this place, despite how glorious it looks today in the sun and against the blue sky.  While now a part of the university campus, the hall spent its first 35 years of life (1935-1970) as an Indian residential school.  Interestingly, this school's origins (long before the current building was built) seem quite positive, and involved the Anishinaabe Chief Shingwauk's advocacy to have what he termed a "teaching wigwam."  Shingwauk envisioned his people learning the best of Euro-Canadian ways in this wigwam, while of course remaining Anishinaabe.  Needless to say, by the time this hall was built with his name on it, what was happening was quite different than he had imagined.

Algoma University has done an amazing job of turning a floor of the hall into a exhibit, and I spent half an hour or so going through it.

When I was done, Velorution had my bike ready, so I drove there to pick it up.  They seem to have done a great job.  I also needed a new helmet, and, after trying on one with a price tag of $345(!), chose one that cost $120.

I drove the bike back to the hotel, then dropped the car off across the street (Enterprise let me drop the car from the airport in town here, which is nice, because otherwise I would have had to drive out to the airport and cycle back, and each way is 20+ kilometres).

Now I should be all set to start out tomorrow, east towards Ottawa!