Well the day didn’t start out quite as we expected but exactly as planned….we woke up this morning with an air quality forecast in Sault Ste Marie (herein referred to as the Soo). The original forecast had been 5 but had changed to 10+ overnight…..we had some decisions to make….not the first time we have had to make decisions about altering our plans due to unknown or impacting conditions. We have become old hats at it in fact. Today we had to weigh the possibility that the air quality index could change again and in looking at the weather there was a good chance that the forecasted rain could change everything for the better….at worst we could always turn around and that was the only plan B we were going with…
Decision made to go forward so we quickly loaded the bikes to get down to the ferry landing before 7:30 am. We made the quick trip around the corner, checked in and since we had a little time to wait Larry went up to a local coffee shop to grab us a breakfast sandwich. While he was gone another couple pulled up on their bikes to line up for the crossing….they were from England and had freighted their bikes over, quit their jobs, sold their house and anything they didn’t want to keep to spend the summer travelling across Canada! Nice couple, they had picked up their bikes in Halifax.
We loaded on time, tied down the bikes and headed up on the deck. The day started to clear and we were looking forward to a beautiful drive through Manatoulin to Espanol which is where we connected with the TCH 17. Beautiful ride through, unfortunately not enough time to stop so we will keep that for another time…what was really funny were all the signs and folks telling us to watch out for the turtles! No joke! The only thing we saw more than turtles were OPP cars!
We stopped at Tim Hortons and had a bowl of chilli…yes Paula, Larry even made a joke about whether they had it or not and had to concede his error….I think he’s going to message you to make sure you know you were right, or more importantly he was wrong lol.
For a day that started out so uncertain, the weather was amazing and the smoke issues did not present…even better was that we had some amazing DDs….designated decoys. Those folks who risk driving faster than the 90 km/hr speed limit. They generally pass us and we stay a healthy distance behind while maintaining the pace….so to say that we arrived sooner than we expected would be an understatement however we did have 4 km of rain downpour on us just 30 kms from our destination….we had a good chuckle about that…I told Larry if his old ass didn’t need that last bum break we would have arrived dry but then he would not have met up with his new friend Jonathan….Jonathan Seagull!
Poor Teddy was riding under cover because of the weather and air concerns. He was happy to peek out on our stops.
We saw lots of waterfalls, valleys, mountains, turtles and OPP…the first three were beautiful, the 4th was lumpy and quick to pull in his head while we made our way around what we thought was a “rock”……and the last..well as long as we see them and they don’t see us, we are good!
Tomorrow we will be riding our longest distance thus far…a healthy 500 kms. We plan to stop in Terrace Bay where we will meet up with John who is travelling in the opposite direction from Vancouver. The circumstances that we had to evaluate this morning are the very same decisions he had to make for today….his original route was going north-east at Nippigon which would mean that we might miss each other. Not all plan Bs are bad plans…sometimes they are the best ones!
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