We have lots of new pictures in the web album and blog updates for the past 3 days.
Day 42 (14 Sep 09) St. Clair to Port Stanley Ontario 104 miles
We started the day with breakfast in the room and then headed south to catch the Blue Water Ferry in Marine City. When we arrived at the ferry dock, no one was around except the customs agents of which there were three sitting around in the office. We went inside to find how to pay for the ferry whereupon we were told by the female agent to use the sidewalk when we went out and that we pay on the ferry (bear in mind there was no one else around; Leonard wondered silently …). Eventually, one car showed up a few minutes before the ferry arrived from Canada. It turned out that the driver had worked for Ford for 27 years and had been laid off. He was now working for GM in Canada shutting down a Chevrolet plant. Now he’s laying people off.
A sign next to the cafe in McGee’s Corners declares that the chef loves to shake his pepper. A sign in New Glasgow directs you to Joe’s Bush whatever that is.
We ate lunch at a gas station in Morpeth. A Hindi guy running the place was watching a C movie and grilling burgers. The gas station had no gas.
We arrived at our destination, Port Stanley to find that we had reserved rooms at a fantastic inn, Inn on the Harbor, run by a very nice woman who among other things made our reservation for the following night in Port Dover. Based on a recommendation of a resident of the town we ate dinner at the Kettle Creek Inn and had one of the best, if not the best dinner of the trip. The woman who owns the Kettle Creek Inn is also a cyclist and when she found out what we were doing, despite not having any available tables, had one set for us so she could talk to us about our trip. Last year she did a bike trip from Uzbekistan to Beijing - makes our trip look rather mundane. It would have been great to have enough time to spend two days instead of only one.
Day 42 (15 Sep 09) Port Stanley to Port Dover 68 miles
Breakfast at the Inn on the Harbor was at 9 AM and we decided to stay - a wise decision. As a result, we were off to a much later than usual start and even though it was a relative short day for riding we did not arrive in Port Dover until after 4 PM.
This was a day of ups and downs. Each little village is on creek that flows into Lake Erie and the main coastal road is on a plateau above the lake. The result is that every time you enter a village you have a 100 foot drop followed by a very steep climb out of the village - and we thought it was going to be an easy day.
The highlight of the day was a huge wind farm (the Erie Shores Wind Farm) that stretched for 25 kilometers along the lake shore. As the day worn on, the wind speed picked up and more and more of the wind generators were spinning at top speed. There are 66 1500 kilowatt generators for a maximum capacity of 99 megawatts. The generators are located on farm land. Too bad we couldn’t have captured some of that energy to help us along - we had head and cross winds as usual. Where oh where are the “prevailing” westerly winds?
We stayed at a very old motel in Port Dover, widely known for its perch dinner which we sampled. The food was good, but not up to the standard of the night before.
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