It’s hot. It hasn’t been this hot in more than a decade, the news says, so we take the day off. We are tourists today and we explore Port Dover. At lunch our server tells us the local museum was worth seeing and she was right. The history of Port Dover is a history of Lake Erie; gun ships during the War of 1812, fishing, ship wrecks and miraculous rescues, and the Underground Railroad. We got a personal tour from a woman at the museum with facts about the origins of many of the museum artifacts as well as more in depth explanations of the displays. One thing that surprised me was to learn that Lake Erie is the shallowest of the Great Lakes, and because of this shallowness it is more tempestuous and unpredictable, and has a history of more ship wrecks than any of the other Lakes.
It’s a good day to review heat injuries. Heat cramps and exhaustion, heat stroke, and Grand Canyon syndrome. Bicyclists should drink plenty of fluids, take breaks and rest, get inside some place for a break if possible. Travel early, or late, to avoid the heat and replenish electrolytes. Grand Canyon syndrome, hyponatremia, is caused by drinking water without replenishing salt lost due to sweating, so also have snacks frequently that are salty, as well as having sweet snacks to provide energy.
Greg
We are on the road by 6:00 to avoid the heat. No place in town is open so early, so we plan on stopping for breakfast at our first opportunity. Port Bruce, about 15 miles down the road, has a small business area with nothing open until 9:00. We ask a resident about breakfast in town and he says an old guy used to have a place open early in the morning but it closed up over a year ago. We pedal on. When we arrive in Port Burwell we have been riding for 25 miles, a couple of hours, and we are still looking for breakfast. Port Burwell has a nice little downtown with 3 or 4 restaurants, but nothing open this early. A man on a small tractor with a portable pump is the only one around downtown, watering hanging baskets of flowers. We ask him if there is any place serving breakfast. He says we can get a pretty good breakfast at the Canadian Legion Hall, a purple building, about 10 blocks down the road. When we arrive at the legion hall we see three cars in the parking lot, and an empty outside dining area attached to a brick building with no windows. Inside is a hallway with washrooms on the right and a kitchen on the left. The hallway opens into a big open area with ten long folding tables, with chairs to seat quite a few people, and a step up platform with Legion paraphernalia at the far end of the room. Four men, all in their 60’s or 70’s, are sitting around the first table looking at us curiously, as if surprised we are there, it look as if they had been playing cribbage. ‘A man downtown told us we could get breakfast here.’ One of the men immediately gets up and says, ‘He did, did he? Well, yes you can. There’s coffee over there in the corner, help yourselves. What do you want for breakfast?’ We sit at an adjacent table, he brings out a simple typewritten menu, and we order. Then he goes into the kitchen to help a woman cook our order. The other men ask us about our trip and tell us about the Legion being open this morning. Our cooks, Tom Kirkpatrick and Martha Marshall, have been voluntarily opening the Legion hall for breakfast for the past three years since no other place nearby is open this early any longer. This is really just a place for the locals, normally. A woman named Norma comes in and sits down at the table with us, and the men at the other table drift away, out the door. Norma talks about her 14 year old grandson, and about how kids go away to school and then get jobs someplace else. We are joined by Bill who tells us about how Scouting used to be very popular for kids in the area a few years earlier, they had met in the Legion hall and had great jamborees with hundreds of boys in the nearby Provincial Park. He told us about the local indians and said the Port had shipped coal at one time, but now the railroads were gone, mostly farming and windmills around now. Norma has a bandaged knee and tells us about her knee surgery and subsequent nosocomial infection, from which she almost died. ‘How do you like the Canadian health care system?’ Both Norma and Bill, like most Canadians, are very happy with their health care system, and how well it works. One problem they talk about is aliens illegally getting medical care. We finish breakfast and go outside to resume riding. As we are leaving we notice a man in his 40’s sitting outside in the patio area. He asks us where we are going. After telling him, he says, ‘When you get to the detour sign down the road just keep going straight, you’ll save yourself a couple of miles at least. It’s a dirt road for maybe a quarter mile, but not bad. I walked it last year and you can get your bikes through pretty easy. There’s one place where the road caved into the lake is why the road’s closed, but it hasn’t gotten any worse’. When we get to the detour sign we have to go through a latched gate. The road is paved for a quarter mile, then dirt, then two overgrown weedy trails until we came to the collapsed road. It’s more like a half mile of trail. Just as we had been told, we could pass safely by, although I certainly didn’t want to be closer to the edge. The overgrown trails continue, it looks as if no one has used these trails even for walking, in quite a while. Finally we arrive at a barricade and a paved road. A car with a flashing yellow light is driving towards us as we lift our bikes and trailers over the barricade. The driver is only delivering mail, looks at us quizically, turns around, and drives away. By then it is getting quite hot and we are glad we took the short cut. We arrive in Port Dover as it is really starting to get hot and check into Angelos of Dover. Downstairs is a bar, pretty empty at 2:00 in the afternoon, with renovated hotel rooms upstairs. Our bikes can stay downstairs in a back room.
Greg
This morning we rode in heavy fog with flashing head and tail lights. it was warm at 6:00 and the fog condensed on us as we rode making us as wet as if in a shower. We stopped in Dresden about an hour later for breakfast. Dresden, Ontario has a historical museum they call Uncle Toms Cabin. Harriet Beecher Stowe based her 1840’s Uncle Tom on a man named Josiah Henson. He was born a slave and, after escaping slavery via the underground railroad, started the Dawn Settlement in Dresden to provide refuge and an opportunity for former slaves to make a new beginning. After leaving Dresden we rode to the coast of Lake Erie and pedaled along highway 3 which is the old Talbot trail. The Talbot trail was a corduroy road constructed in 1820 to connect the Niagara region with Detroit. Colonel Thomas Talbot established the Talbot Settlement along the road, and according to a local, ran it as if it was his own personal fiefdom. He was apparently a despotic and absolute ruler. We arrived in Port Stanley to find another cross country bike group, a supported group of high school kids riding bicycles to benefit wounded veterans. Their website is spscyclist2011.org, if you’re interested.Greg
We left this morning at 6:00 to try to get a jump on the heat. Our route at one point was blocked due to road construction, a crew was working on concrete forms on an overpass, but they let us wheel our bikes through their work area.We stopped in Memphis for breakfast about 8:00. When we reached St Clair we were able to take a bike path to Marine City and the Blue Water Ferry. Blue Water is a good name, the St Clair river is the most azure color of blue I’ve ever seen The ferry ride to Canada is just $1.00 for bicyclists. Once in Canada it wasn’t too far to Wallaceburg. Wallaceburg has a mystery from the 1840’s called the Baldoon mystery. Apparently a man named McDonald had some prime land apparently coveted by an old woman. When he refused to sell his property to her strange things began happening; timbers in the barn would fall for no apparent reason, stones and bullets would fly through windows at all hours until every window was broken and boarded up, fires would start spontaneously. Mr McDonald consulted a stone reader who told him that if he shot the strange black goose that was seen near his property that his troubles would then be over. he shot the black goose in the wing, and next time he saw the old woman she had a broken arm, and he never had trouble again. There is a statue of the black goose in town.
Good thing we finished riding early, it’s oppressively hot, humid, and thunderstorms are rolling through.
Greg
We talked to Woody this morning while we had breakfast, we took his suggestion to alter our route because it’s predicted to be so hot today, and because it’s Sunday and traffic may be better. On our route we went through Marlette where we found the second to last Carnegie library built in the United States. It’s a beautiful building and still serves as a library. 1689 Carnegie libraries were built in the United States between 1889 and 1919, and about half still serve as libraries. Most Carnegie libraries were unique structures but the funding was according to a formula. Usually a women’s group was formed that would demonstrate a need for a public library, then they would look for a building site, then they would demonstrate that the community was willing to support the library through taxes – the community had to provide 10% of the construction cost annually for maintenance. Finally, the library had to provide free service to all. While taking a break today we talked to 2 motorcyclists, Stan Pobe and Paul Smith, automotive design guys, who were returning home from a road trip. We compared notes on bicycling and motorcycling similarities, and they also had a suggestion for an alternate route for tomorrow. We got to Imlay City (that’s pronounced Em lee) early afternoon, 50 miles and too hot to ride any further.
Greg
2guysbiketrip 