Day 40 – North Bay, Ontario

A Pleasant End to a Good Day on the Road

It’s been six days and and quite a few miles since my last post – 1,286 miles to be exact.

Day 35, 36, 37 – Grand Forks, North Dakota to Winnipeg, Manitoba. Not a particularly long ride, but interesting. Winnipeg is a pretty good size town so I assumed the highway would be pretty up to date from Grand Forks. Not so much. Actually, whether it is Google’s preference or just there is no other choice, Google routed me through a number of unpaved roads on this route. Good thing I have an adventure bike, I don’t think Marshall’s RT would have been to accommodating here. This part of Manitoba is very rural and absolutely covered in crops of one type or another. The crops that really caught my eye were the expansive fields of what I believe to be rapeseed which is used to make canola oil. They were is bright yellow-green and the fields went on for miles and miles.

I ended up staying two days in Winnipeg. Not a lot to report there. It struck me as a pretty much working class town. It may have had it’s own charm but I wasn’t there long enough to discover it. I did get some time to give my bike a much deserved wash down and attend to the obligatory chain maintenance.

Day 38 Winnipeg, Manitoba to Thunder Bay, Ontario – Where most of the western US states like Nevada, Utah and Arizona seem to have little in the way of lakes and rivers, Ontario has them in abundance. Plus, Ontario share a lot of shoreline with Lake Superior and Lake Huron. Like the Pacific west coast, where there are large bodies of water, there is plenty of fog and cooler temperatures. All the lakes and rivers seems very clear so it was a pleasant ride. I am again struck as I was in the US Midwestern and western states of just how sparsely populated the majority of North America is. For example The US population density is 97 person/sq. mi. and Canada is only 11 persons/sq. mi.. Contrast that with India at 1,256 and China with 386. You just really have to travel this country to drive home just how much open land we have. Hit rain coming into Thunder Bay, but it could have been worse.

Ohh, yeah, watch out for Moose

Day 39 – Thunder Bay to Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario – Again this ride was pretty much all along the coast of Lake Superior so cooler temperatures and heavy fog over the water. A pretty ride, again very sparsely populated, lots of provincial parks. Absolutely no rain on this ride, which was really nice!

Day 40 – Sault Ste. Marie to North Bay, Ontario – A mostly unremarkable day. Scenery was relatively bland compared to the previous days. But, thankfully, with a couple of 400 mile plus days that preceded it, this ride was fairly short at 270 miles. The early day afforded me this time to catch up on my posts. A couple of cold Stella’s on draft made for a perfect ending before turning in.

Tomorrow it is off to Montreal, Quebec which just got hammered by the remnants of Hurricane Beryl. Hoping things will have cleared up by then. Looking forward to spending a few days exploring the town with my stepson Jason who will me me there on Friday.

Onward!