Thank you for adopting us ...

Jul 3 - Rock point to Turkey point: 64 miles / 102 km

Lake Erie view

Something wakes me up in the night. I hear a snuffling and scratching noise right by my head. I start and say "hey!" and can hear something of moderate size scramble away. Maybe a cat? 

When I wake up for real in the morning, I find that there's now a hole in our tent netting. Not big, but the first ever, and this tent has been a lot of places. Admittedly mostly wilderness and not Canada provincial parks where there is food out on all the tables, even overnight; and alcohol can be consumed in plain sight. Though I suspect that the animals are mostly interested in the food not the beer?

It's a late start this morning, we slept in well past our usual 6:00-6:30 am wake up, and then I'm catching up on notes for the blog, writing out turn by turns for the day, while heather is reading.

By the time we reach our first town, less than 15 miles, Dunnville, it is basically lunch time and we are both starving.  There's some kind of sidewalk fair going on, at one stand I can buy ice cold lemonade and have my palm read by the same woman. Nearby stands offer baked goods, household items, jewelry, children's clothing, ...

Dunnville Ontario  

We are peering into cafe windows wondering which place has the right combination of willingness to accommodate our bikes and food we want to eat. While we are peering into one place, the proprietor of the place next door who is sitting outside chatting with someone else approaches us and gives a pitch on the good whole food with veggie options and 'plenty of room in the back'. Sold. We're still in there 90 minutes later.

So now we are finally leaving dunnville, we are into the hot part of the day, and today it is definitely warm.

We ride along roads with variations on the name "lakeshore drive" and "front road", passing a mix of different houses, mostly small vacation cottages, with roadside signs indicating the owners names, and some with people out enticingly relaxing on Adirondack chairs on the porches or lakeside decks. 

Late in the afternoon I reach a major diversion at a shadeless intersection with an enormous industrial area where there's a big roadblock and sign that our intended path is closed to through traffic. Instead we must all go down this relatively major highway. I sit right down on the gravel roadside, break out the solar charger and settle in to wait for Heather. 

Before too long another lone touring cyclist comes along, we have a quick chat. She has cycled from Vermont and is headed to Wisconsin, currently following the same route as us. She's bound for turkey point, I'm  not sure of our final destination point for today yet, but we're going that way as well. Right now, my turn by turns have turkey point as 10+ miles short of our target mileage for the day.

Heather pulls in, and the three of us chat some more in the middle of the road before setting off again down the diversion path. Each of us going our own pace. 

I should mention here that in MA and NY, we relied pretty heavily on our cell phones to message each other about where we were. Once we crossed into Canada, Heather's husband had arranged for cell coverage in Canada. My husband had attempted to as well but we changed our provider to one that had better data coverage for my trip, and now he discovered that we had not been cell customers for the requisite 90 days needed to add Canada roaming to the plan. Without this, I could still use cell service in Canada, it was just painfully expensive, especially the way we were using it. So I was running in airplane mode - voice and data turned off; and when we split up, we're reliant on just following the same path and stopping to wait when it seemed appropriate.

I find that being on a narrow fast road with traffic makes me want to go faster.  So I end up way ahead and continue following the diversion signs into the next major town, port Dover. This leads me through a major intersection and then a left turn onto a more minor road. I wait there because I'm not completely sure heather will remember to follow the diversions. I almost blew right past the sign myself.

I'm waiting there for quite some time when a big white truck does a u-ey on the main road and comes back to my corner. A gentleman greets me "are you missing your cycling partner?" (Many thoughts cross my mind at this point) "yes, my sister". "She's waiting for you at the last intersection.  I can go back and let her know you're here so you don't have to backtrack." "really?? thank you so much."

I wait some more and the truck comes racing up the minor road and stops next to me again. "She turned off at the last intersection she's headed straight into Port Dover so she's ahead of you now and she'll meet you there."  

Better than a cell phone, right? I guess a lot less efficient...

So I make my way into Port Dover on the scenic cycle friendly route, while Heather takes the efficient main highway straight into Port Dover center.

So maybe by now it's five-ish in the evening. We're a little cranky, The mileage is getting up there, well past my estimates in the turn by turn, and we're now completely agreed that turkey point is a good target for tonight. 

We've got no food, and we agree to split up again - heather head to the campground, I'll cycle out an extra couple miles at port Stanley to a real grocery store and get supplies.

I manage to barely crunch all the food I get (tofu fruit snacks oatmeal vegetables) into my little backpack and set off back to where we split up.

Leaving Port Stanley, our nice flat route now became rolling hills and then some steep nasty long lowest-gear out-of-the-saddle 6-mph "dammit I am NOT walking my bike" hills.

I find her on the roadside in a couple miles trying to pump up her rear tire which has gone pretty soft.

Argh, not our first flat! Bad timing. Long day. Tired. Getting late. This sucks.

I help heather pump up the tire, it seems to hold air. I stick with her for little bit to make sure.  We hit some more hills and I go ahead again to get us a campsite. 

I pass by a couple other campgrounds, 'not Turkey point', hoping heather doesn't curse too much when she sees them (and that I didn't stop).  

When I finally get to turkey point, I am a little worried about the amount of traffic turning in here. Then, at the queue of people at the camping registration. I start to chat with the gentleman ahead of me in line. The normal where have you cycled from / going to conversation occurs, and I express my concern about getting a site.  

Without blinking, he offers that there is plenty of room for us on his site if we have any trouble. 

When I get to the front of the line, the young staff there does not blink either when informing me that if I don't already have a reservation, there aren't sites. I do my (very true) sob story, similar to the prior evening: we've already cycled 100 km we can't go any further, we'll take anything, aren't there overflow sites or something?  Nope.

I dash after the gentleman with the kind offer, he is now with his friend or family member, evidently they were here at the office to buy firewood.

"No problem! We're at site 211 and 212, they are next to each other. Do you want us to wait with you for your sister?"

I let them go, and try to discretely hang out near the park entrance. H arrives before I can get settled in. While I'm still in earshot of park staff at the entrance, I just tell her "yup, we've got a site." I'm pretty sure that we are not supposed to be doing this and I definitely do not want to cause any trouble for the nice people that offered to help us.

I explain the situation on the way through the campground. We enter a maze of smoky number-designated campsites.

We arrive at the site and immediately introductions are made... Wives, teenage daughter, a grade school son... Furniture is rearranged and an enormous space is made. Food, stove, fuel, beer is all offered. They pretty much give up one site altogether to us while they congregate together to eat and socialize in the other. It was clear that we were welcome but that they were trying to give us some privacy (in THEIR site that they reserved and paid for). We have an entire picnic table to cook and arrange gears on.

We would love to take them up on their offer of food and company, but now my grocery store bounty MUST be used. We are NOT carrying it tomorrow, and I got some good stuff!

By this time it's dark, we are now in food and long-hot-day comas and soon we are passed out in our cozy sleeping bags with the extra subtly comforting knowledge that we are being looked out for tonight.

Camping with our adopted family - thank you!!!!