Written by Nancy

Day 67 – August 3 – 84 Miles, 1,801 feet climbing (St Thomas to middle of nowhere hotel)

Well, another bust for us on camping in Canada.  After some pretty heavy consistent rain this morning we again ended up soaking wet by lunchtime and started reviewing our options for the night.  We found a funny little country motel not too far from our intended camping spot and they had some rooms available on this long holiday weekend.  Perhaps we are becoming weather-wimps as we get older…

But on to our day today. After that great Indian meal for dinner last night, we had a comfy rest at the Comfort Inn – haha.  Breakfast at this chain hotel is pretty consistent across the various US hotels, but the breakfast at the Canadian hotels seems to be a bit of an upgrade.  Various scones were added to the standard fare of waffles and cereal, and I think the coffee tasted a little bit better.  A spare scone or two may have made their way into our bags for snacking later in the day.

We had high hopes of a dry ride today.  Our first 25 miles or so were under cloudy skies, and the temperature was almost comfortable.  We had our first look at a new plant for us – we thought it might be tobacco, and a conversation with a local couple at lunch confirmed that in fact it was tobacco.  Apparently the area used to be full of tobacco farms but the area under cultivation is much reduced today.  Nearby each of the farms there were long buildings with lots of ventilation pipes, which we figured were likely for drying the tobacco.

We also passed some more of the cucumber fields we’ve been seeing, and this time both Dave and Chris did some road kill salvage, picking up two big cucumbers to have later with dinner.  It turned out that one of them was a bit sketchy so it went into the bin but the other was quite tasty.

Then, unfortunately the sprinkles started.  We first thought it would just stay as light sprinkles, but it soon turned to pretty steady rain.  The rain lasted for the next several hours, and was getting pretty unpleasant.  We did have a funny encounter with a dog that got loose and came out to visit us while we rode by in the rain.  He wasn’t trying to bite us or anything, but the young fellow owner could not get him to return home.  At one point there were 4 cars all stopped at a corner with us on 3 bikes while the dog wandered around, clearly having fun.  Then he tried to leave his mark on Chris’s bike, so some stern words were spoken and the young owner finally got hold of him. It was just about our worst dog encounter of the trip – we’ll take it.

At that same intersection we saw a Road Permanently Closed sign that seemed to cover the road we were routed to take.  So we had to do some re-routing in the rain, hoping for paved roads, which thankfully turned out to be the case.  It continued to rain steadily on us until we pulled into the town of Port Rowan around noon.  We found a restaurant right by the water that was open and quickly parked the bikes and dripped inside.  I am not sure they really wanted us to come in but it would have been to mean for a Canadian to say no, I think.  Over lunch we looked at the road up ahead to see if we had any options.  The nearby town of Simcoe seemed to be fully booked out, likely due to the long holiday weekend. 

After some further internet searching we found this funny little hotel that was further on toward Niagara Falls, seemingly out in the middle of nowhere.  But thankfully they did have some rooms available so we nabbed what they called a ‘suite.’  It was about 35 miles from our lunch stop to the hotel, and we made one stop in a nice little town called Port Dover to get some supplies for dinner that we could cook in our ‘suite.’ 

At the last stop Dave and Chris put some more oil on the chains.  While Dave was oiling his chain he got very perturbed about his chain, muttering to himself that somehow it wasn’t on right.  Funnily enough, since he put the new chains on in South Dakota they have been making noise and he insisted it was just that the chains were new, etc.  I didn’t really believe it, but he was insistent he couldn’t make any adjustments without messing up the shifting, etc.  Well, hmm, what do you know, the chains were in fact installed incorrectly and that is why they were so noisy.  He has apologized but I doubt that will make any difference the next time I try to politely point something out… (Junior editor’s note: Yes, I messed up, kind of a rookie move. Just goes to show you that a) you should listen to your wife and b) you’re never too old to learn a new way to screw up!)

We were welcomed to our hotel by two friendly ‘guard’ dogs.  After laying all our things outside to dry out I am just hoping one of them doesn’t run off with my shoe liners.

Tomorrow we have a shorter ride of something less than 60 miles. We’re headed to Niagara, Ontario where we’ll have a chance to see the falls from the Canadian side. Everyone says that the views are better on the Canadian side but none of us have seen the falls so either way will be new for us.