Unfortunately, I woke up this morning feeling under the weather. I think I must have drank some bad water somewhere in the last few days.
A few drops fell on my tent as I contemplated possibilities for the day. A good sign in the bicycle touring world. A rainy day is a cool day, comfortable for riding so long as the rain doesn't get too fierce.
Eventually I made the determination to ride 90 km to Fort Frances and call it a day there. Between my stomach bug and the fact that Google Maps revealed 0 campsites from Fort Frances to Atikokan (150 km), doing a short day seemed inevitable.
As I left Rainy River, I passed through short stretches of wooded prairie fields. I was more or less constantly rained on for 60 km to Emo (great town name), where I topped off my electrolytes and took a lunch break.
After Emo, the boreal forest began to close ranks around me, and a short ways out of town, I was faced with my first real-looking hill for weeks. With some trepidation I began up the ~1.5 km long slope. However, my dormant climbing muscles kicked in immediately and fueled by a week of Winnipeg binge eating, I flew up the hill at 20 km/hr with a smile on my face. I guess the endless tedium of the prairies was getting to me, because I enjoyed the rolling hills from Emo to Fort Frances more than just about any stretch of the prairies.
Once in Fort Frances, I did some shopping, and headed off to the campground. It was an interesting place for several reasons. Beautiful lakeside views but facilities were a bit run down. Tenting was in a big field and my nearest neighbour casually explained how he had been kicked out of his house for marital issues and had just come back from the parole office. He then spent the rest of the evenung split between making very awkward smalltalk or staring at me from 50 ft away. Needless to say, I kept my bear spray, knives, and the Ontario Provincial Police phone number nearby that night.
The next day, I woke up to a decievingly nice sunrise and fixed breakfast. No issues with the neighbours but as I was packing up to hit thw road, a huge, low thundercloud began dumping overhead. My previously dry tent soob becane waterlogged and I was trapped inside for 2 hours waiting for the storm to blow over. To make matters worse, I discovered that one of my water bottlea had leaked, soaking a book, some dinner rolls and my tent bag.
Finally hitting the very soggy roads at 9:30, I was not looking forward to the long ride to Atikokan. Sure enough, it was a pretty awful day. 145 kilometers into a unforgiving and unrelenting 40 km/hr headwind, with over 1000m of climbing thrown in. All in all, one of the hardest days on the bike so far.
The ride through the rocky escarpments of boreal forest seemed nice enough but I was too focused on making Atikokan by a reasonable time to enjoy it.
The town of Atikokan itself was a welcomw refuge. It was small, and gave off a Northern BC vibe, but it had the requires amenities of groceries, beer store and coffee shop.
The campground is also quite nice. It is tucked away into a quiet forest with decent and well-kept facilities. I opted for a recuperating evening of (free) showers, beer and dinner before heading to bed.
Hopefully that will be the last of the really tough days, as I will be in Thunder Bay on Friday and campgrounds seem to become more common from there.
Note: I've had to write this post 4 times as tge blogging app keeps deleting sections during the upload. Very chapped.
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