I woke up early in the morning just as I hoped. After packing up my stuff roughly, I went to the lake itself and sat by the beach watching the sunrise. It was really peaceful morning. I played the ukulele and spent some time chatting with others. One woman who I spoke with was a yoga instructor from Winnipeg and we ended up having a deep conversation about life. What a great way to start off my day!
After a while I decided to continue moving towards Kenora. It really wasn't a long ride at all, but the terrain had changed from The Plains of Manitoba to The Rolling Hills of the Canadian Shield. Seeing all of the trees, rocks, and hills reminded me of British Columbia, but it was also different in a way too. Rather than mountains being the backdrop to the trees in the foreground I felt that the main feature were all of the lakes which Western Ontario is surrounded by, and when I heard about the Lake of the Woods around Kenora I was awestruck by the concept of it.
The Lake of the Woods sounds like something from a fantasy novel and I never knew it actually existed before but it's beautiful and dotted with thousands of little islands where people live and work. For fishermen this area is paradise, but with all of the standing water there sure were a lot of bugs that came out-- especially at night. I really like the idea of the Lake of the Woods. It's almost like Venice of the wilderness in the way that thousands of islands with cabins create an interconnected community outside of the need for roads.
Anyway, I was deciding between going straight East towards Dryden or taking a detour South and then East through Fort Frances I decided in taking the latter rather than the former. The route was much longer (over 100k longer), and there was a storm on the way but it seemed like south was the best way to go.
I arrived in Kenora and stopped at the local Taphouse where they have a Craft Brewery. The food was delicious and I randomly met a couple of other cyclists who are crossing Canada for autism so we had a beer together. We had originally met in Moosejaw and they went ahead, but they had taken a day off in Kenora. They were also deciding whether to take the Eastern route or the Southern route. I was having second thoughts and I couldn't make up my mind. Should I go with the original plan south or to go the way that they were planning? East might be a way to avoiding the rain storms and thunderstorms coming in from the West. I said goodbye and found a campsite still undecided whether I would go east or south the following morning.
No comments:
Post a Comment