Day 20 - Sault Ste Marie ON (1205 ! km): Fredericton or bust!

What a day! We did get away a few minutes after 0700h, under sunny skies and 15 degrees. We had agreed to try to get 400+ km in by lunchtime and that we did. We grabbed a coffee and gas at Ignace, which is a blip on the radar and has the most striking monument announcing itself at the edge of town (village?) - huge blocks of granite or some stone propped in different directions. The scenery leaving Kenora is beautiful - lots of lush foliage, lakes, ponds and streams. Then it turns to a rural setting, like we're used to in NB, and we saw the requisite deer running along the edge of a lawn adjacent to the road.

Entering Thunder Bay District, the landscape turns to scrubby, skinny trees that don't thrive on rock 'shield' with no topsoil to speak of. But, as Jim reminded me, they're famous in Thompson paintings! It appears that there had been a fire along part of the highway in recent years. The forest does look more normal the closer you get to T Bay. We gassed up and went to Wendy's for lunch - and then hit the road. NO ONE can do a gas fill-up, have lunch and pee any faster than we can. Jim must have been missing BC's twisty roads since right outside the city, he turned off into the Terry Fox Memorial site (feature photo) which has a twisty road up to it. We grabbed our photos, I mauled a beautiful golden retriever and we were outta there!

Highway 17 has a sign, what seems to be every kilometer, with either a moose or a deer symbol on it and the note: 'night danger'. Leaving T Bay, we were cruising along and I saw yet another sign so here was the thought pattern: "we all know that the forest rats are out in the daytime, too (we saw 5 on Sunday, for example); case in point - the one we saw running after Kenora; and just as I thought to myself "oh, they be out and about for sure", in my peripheral vision there was a deer standing in a ditch - really, only head and shoulders visible, checking out my commander helmet! If he'd made a dash for it, it would have been ugly - just a messy collision that would end up with us both getting hurt but not necessarily dead. Here's a true story - close your eyes if you don't want to know how it ends. This was told to me by a woman at the Rally - from Calgary - who was riding pillion with her husband on an FJR and a friend was following. This scene was harder for the guy behind as he saw everything. The front bike was doing "highway speed" (ie about 120 km) when Sylvia "felt a bump". "Did we hit something?" Yup - they hit something all right. A deer crossed in front of them and her husband never saw it - just hit it and tore it in two. Back half went to the ditch; front half into the median. Grabbing a handful of brake could have been the worst thing to do since it causes the front of the bike to compress and become lower which could have scooped the deer up and over the bike. Thankf ully, in spite of all the warning signs (and we could never have said we weren't warned!) and the fact that we were still on the road after 2100h, we never saw another critter.

Jim wants me to note the number of Harleys on the road today. Which, according to him, is something you'd expect in the States (and they're in epidemic proportions there) but not so much here. I noticed a lot of bikes but didn't ID them as HDs. Most were friendly enough - for the most part, they waved back at us New Brunswickers :-) A lot of people do not return this courtesy - especially out west. We NBers wave at everyone. Except maybe the squidlys.

MY note is about all the trucks. What a blight on an otherwise beautiful landscape! There were a lot yesterday, too, across the Prairies except a lot of them there were hauling tandem loads - aargh! Talk about carbon footprint. Highway 17 is all 2-lane - curvy and hilly in spots. There are passing opportunities and they're marked (the 2-lane passing symbol and a distance noted eg., 2 km). Sometimes, there are 2 or 3 of these rigs travelling together. Fortunately, our bikes have giddy-up to spare so we have very little trouble getting around anything on the road. But cars? Another story. I was going to say I'd never drive on that highway in a car - for that reason. But there seems to be a difference in traffic 'before Wawa and after Wawa'. And the scenery after Wawa, going east, is spectacular. And that section of road also seemed to have less traffic - but I don't know what happened to it since there's no other highway to travel on. Must have been my imagination.

The temperature rose steadily today until it hovered around 27 degrees. HOT. For the first time since we left home, I got to remove my wind/rain layer. And I was too hot even at that.

As we approached the town of Terrace Bay on Lake Superior, we hit a bank of fog and the temperature plummeted to 11 ! And the fog was weirdly beautiful. Of course, we could see from a distance we were going to ride into it. We rode through a rock cut and the fog hovered over the road and we rode under it - like a canopy. We were quickly back into sunshine and the temp rose but we were still by the lake so the temp got to only 18 - 19ish. Stopped for gas, back on the road and hit construction. (There was construction this morning as well). By this time, I had my sheepskin folded so that it was 4 layers thick and, consequently, raised me ever so slightly in my seat but - combined with a full tank of gas - was enough to give me some grief when we had to stop for the construction. No harm, just a little 'pucker moment' ;-)

At Thunder Bay, the time changed to Eastern so we lost another hour today. But we made good time - travelling (don't tell mom) 25-30 kph over the speed limit of 90. (BTW, it was only 100 on the 4-lane highway in Manitoba; duh). We rode 1205 km in 13.5 hours. Our destination today had been Wawa, which is just under 1000 km from Kenora. This was going to make for a long day tomorrow (Thursday) to get to Jan & Dave's and a late arrival. As we approached Wawa, the temperature started to drop and by the time we got to the town, it was so socked in by fog we could hardly see. Apparently, it rolled in at 1400h and hung around. Coming into Wawa from the west, before you turn left up over a little knoll there's a big wooden goose sculpture soaring over the road - he's wonderful! Unfortunately, we could get the posted photo only from the back (ie, from the main street) and he blends into the foggy sky. Too much truck traffic to go back onto the road (plus we were in a hurry) in order to get a shot of him soaring over us. We rode what we figured was the length of town, checking out business and scoping out motels. Prima facie, there was nothing that matched our Comfort Inn standards so we had a quick chat and decided to press on. It was another 220 or so km to the Soo and it was 1900h. Jim figured there was another 3 hours of light but, quite frankly, it was so foggy (AND, I forgot to mention, COLD = 9 degrees! from the 22 - 25 it'd been on the highway - a change that occurred in only a few kilometers), I'd forgotten there'd be sunlight SOMEwhere. I had much trepidation about heading down the deer/moose trail at dusk and I wasn't sure my butt could take much more but poor old Wawa was so bleak looking, I had to try.

I'm so glad we did...
1. it makes for a much nicer and early-arrival-in-Manotick day for us tomorrow
2. the light was so wonderful at that time of the evening that all the colours of green, rock and lake were saturated
3. and, the scenery was nothing short of spectacular. The road's in good shape, it's interesting with hills and turns, there's dense forest, huge rock cuts (Carol, you would LOVE the rock along that road; all shades of pinks, greys, browns in different shapes and textures - I immediately thought of you, it's so beautiful) and unparalleled views of Lake Superior. For a little bit, I could almost imagine myself back in BC.

At one point, we rode up a hill and around a turn right into the sun - such that I could barely see in front of me. Over the crest of the hill, the road turned at the bottom and I actually had to slow down to stare at the sight in front of me. We had been riding in and out of fog (and temp up and down). If you look at a map, you'll see how hwy 17 hugs the lake. This view had the sun coming through clouds, the fog had settled on the lake so that IT looked like soft, thin clouds and the only way you could distinguish water beneath the fog was by the glistening swath the sun made over the water. I felt as though I was above clouds looking down and it was the effect of the fog on the water. I'm afraid I've botched this - I don't know how else to describe it. There was NO opportunity to pull over to photograph it, which is just as well since it would have been impossible to capture with our pocket jobbies. We did stop later on where there was a pull-over spot but we just couldn't get it right. Suffice to say, the rest of the ride along the lake and watching the sun start to set over the lake made my forget about my aching bum bones.

Coming into SSM, the sky was blue with white clouds in one part; pink, lilac and coral in another part (sun reflecting off clouds and fog?) and, for those of you who work with stained glass, part of the sky looked like cathedral glass - bluish and pinkish with swirls of white. My, I'm waxing poetic tonight. I was mesmerized by the sky so it was a good thing there were no deer or moose!

We're at the same Comfort Inn we were in on June 6th and tomorrow morning we'll start retracing our steps. Manotick tomorrow by around 1700h, and hopefully, Freddy Beach on Friday night. I've been asked "what's the hurry?". I feel as though I've been away for a lot longer than 3 weeks. I'm missing John & The Girls (badly) and my flowers as I look at roses, poppies, peonies, lupin, and lilac here; and I need a new pedicure - the polish is worn from the medial aspect of both great toes from the pressure in my boots!

As always, I SO enjoy your comments. I'd like to answer them individually but can't since I don't have your email addresses. We'll chat soon! Oh, and Dave - about the 'skeeters in Wawa... they're not so much big as they are numerous! We stopped to get a photo of The Goose and by the time I got back on my bike, they had swarmed the Feej. And it was only 9 freaking degrees. They're tough little suckers, too!

I still have people looking for stories when I get home. Not happening - it's all here! But I DO very much appreciate your interest ;-) (and I'm always for a Girl Partay)