Day 33 - 7/27 - Port Stanley to Dunnville, Ontario

On the road again.  It really does not seem like we are in a different country - the scenery is so similar to the mid-west.  Homes are very neat, small family farms.  Traveling along little traveled country roads along the shore of Lake Erie.  We are including a photo of Port Bruce - a small fishing village along the coast - for my favorite brother, Bruce (who lives in Hawaii). 

Apparently, there is a Canadian hero with the same name.  Enjoying a very different drive along this route.  Hotel for this night is right on the banks of the Grand River - reminds me of 'Moon River'.
Patty traveling along

Notes from Tom:  In the last two days we've ridden 156 and 157, and my top speed was 57--really you say?  Oh ya, it's Canada and everthing's in kilometers, so that's really only 96 and 96.5 miles.  Still, the first day was rainy so we really aren't slacking.

Since we entered Ontario yesterday, the terrain and landscape has changed, but it's been fairly consistent.  We seem to be on a kind of plateau because the riding is really flat, and the only time we have any hills at all is if we cross a river or go down to the acual shore of Lake Erie.  This is our fourth great lake, with only Ontario left to see, and we should accomplish that either Sunday or Monday.

The well publicized drought in the mid-western part of the US is not apparent in southwestern Ontario.  The dominant crops here are soy beans, corn, and wheat which has already been harvested.  We've seen corn at 9-10 feet tall, compared to the 5-8 feet we saw in Michigan.  We saw a crop that we haven't seen before, and Jerry deduced that it was tobacco--fitting for a country where smoking is still much more common.  Today we also saw lots of aparagus, some potatoes, something that we think was zucchini, and one field that looked like cabbage.

At one of our afternoon stops, we met the girls at the beer store in the small town of Selkirk.  First of all, the name of the store really is The Beer Store.  Jerry bought a six-pack of Mad Tom IPA which we sampled at the hotel in Dunnville. 

Outside of the beer store we were approached by a middle-aged guy who asked us about our Portland to Portland license plate.  We told him where we had started and how far we'd ridden, but we think he'd already been to the beer store a few times and he had a hard time understanding.  Anyway, when he finally decided we'd ridden a really long way, he looked at us and said "...and you guys ain't no spring chickens,  either."

The drivers here seem much more tolerant of us on our bikes than those in southern Michigan, and the roads have generally been good, but with some sections that have been really bumpy.

Notes from Jerry:  Whether we are in Canada or the USA one thing that seems to be a common pastime is that most everyone is out mowing their lawns on sitdown mowers, probably John Deere wanabes! Whether they are young, old, male or female they all seem to be having fun driving their whiz bang lawnmower/ tractors all over the place - maybe because at the speeds they mow they make a quite a cooling breeze! 

As Tom and Patty have said, the farms are all nice and green and orderly and the roads have all been pretty good.  Port Stanley was a real find, the people were all great and the little town had a lot of character with a small marina on one side with village and on the other side of an inlet was our hotel which was on the beach and part of a popular restaurant.  The town reminded me of some of the little beach towns south of Santa Cruz.  Fun place to visit - a real surprise.

The coastal areas next to Lake Erie have a significant wind farm development and today we got closer than ever to many of the wind turbines.  Luckily the wind was low (for riding) and as a result many of the turbines were not moving.

Gwen and Patty thought of tricking us into doing the last 7 miles into Dunnville so that they wouldn't have to drive us back out to our stopping point the next day, but we wimped out and did what we said we would do which was only ride one more hour after finding the Beer Store that Tom mentioned. 

Short Note From Gwen: Patty and I had a nice back country drive from Port Stanely to Dunnville.  We stayed more or less on the same route as the bike riders.  We again met the guys on the route for a "cooler" lunch out of the back of their "new" 2013 BMW X3 ... it now has over 7,000 miles on it and it is 5 1/2 weeks old! Our picnic stop included a description of the wind farms found in the area with a view of wind turbines like the one pictured above.