July 10 – Sault Ste. Marie to Spragge

Bike log: 172.4 km, 657m of vertical, avg speed 30.6 km/h

The theme for today was – heat! It got up to 32C, pretty near 90F! It was pretty humid too, sort of felt like it could be thunderstorm weather, but that held off. Tomorrow is supposed to warm up a few more degrees as well! Pretty hot for biking, I couldn’t tell you how much water I drank. The hottest part is on the hills, when you don’t have much of a breeze to cool things down, and the sun is really cooking the old black pavement. On days like this, I am really glad I have a camelback, with a drinking tube hanging on my shoulder, rather than having to reach down for the water bottle every minute.

One of our rest stops today was at a town called Iron Bridge, and Cheryl managed to find a place we could get into the river there. It was great! I had just done a 50km stretch from 12:30 to about 2PM, pretty much the hottest part of the day. Did it feel great to take a break and get in the water! At the next rest stop, I didn’t really have the time (nor was there a place) to swim, so I settled for a towel soaked in ice water and then stuck on my head!

Tomorrow’s ride should be shorter (jinx!) as we get onto Manitoulin Island, but I wanted to cover as much distance as possible today. Mostly this was because today is Sunday, and this road, which connects Sault Ste. Marie and Sudbury, gets very busy with truck traffic through the week. I’ve only got about 65km or so to go before the turnoff for Manitoulin.

We are staying in a KOA tonight. We have not stayed in one before. They sure pack them in! However, everything is clean and well kept up, and there was a pool which we hit to cool down. We were lucky to get a spot with a bit of shade, it must have been cooking inside some of those trailers!

Although we are now travelling along “The North Shore”, as this area along Lake Huron is called, we only got a few short glimpses of the lake itself as the road winds its way along some distance from the lake. We started passing through farmland today, which is something we have not seen in a long time. There was a little bit of farmland around Thunder Bay, and some just north of Sault Ste. Marie, but otherwise that has been all since leaving Manitoba. The shoulder was pretty good for the most part, except for some overzealous application of the rumble strip in a few places. The wind was a mix of head, tail, and cross as the route was far from a straight line. Also, the hills have more or less stopped. I miss them already!

I passed 2 cyclists going my way early in the day, as well as seeing 4 others heading the opposite way. I did not see anyone I knew from before, not surprising since we took 2 full days off in the Soo.