Heading Towards Dryden

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Heading Towards Dryden

Wednesday, 8 August 2007

Although my ride yesterday had been really quite enjoyable, I wasn’t sure I felt like having Bob drop me off where he’d picked me up, so that I could ride another 60 kilometres away from Fort Frances, meaning he’d have to travel 120 km to return to pick me up. On that ride I’d noticed another highway, #502, which travels north from highway 11, heading towards Dryden, which is about 200+ kilometres away. I thought I’d maybe give it a try, and, when Bob spoke with Darell this morning about our dinner plans, Darell said it was a nice road, a lot quieter than highway 11 and maybe more scenic.

Again, I asked Bob to drop Silver & me off at the same place we’d used yesterday, the driveway to some plant or something. It was a nice, sunny morning, as have been so many for me on this trip - it’s like someone knows I don’t like to go out in cloudy weather.

As Darell had said, it was a lot more scenic, more trees & rocks, fewer signs of “civilization”. There was also less traffic, with the loaded logging trucks again heading the opposite direction from me - yesss. There WERE still quite a few pick-ups pulling boat trailers, again often in small convoys, as there are some major fishing lakes along that road.

Oh yes, and there were hills. Lots of them! If I’d have cycled faster it might have been like a roller-coaster, up, down, up, down, up, down…but most were quite “doable”. There was one, it must have been steep, although it didn’t look it, where I finally had to walk & push the bike up the last 1/3 or so - frankly it surprised me that I couldn’t get up it on the bike, but that was that! (The hill WAS followed by a descent which warned trucks that the slope was 18%! Maybe that had something to do with it…)

Again I decided to call it quits at a “load check site”, but this was at the exit area for a logging operation, and they had those drums set up for the trucks which were heading onto the highway. I was able to get a few photos of the drums without any trucks in the way before Bob came to pick me up. He’d taken Casper in for routine maintenance & was delayed somewhat - which we’d kind of expected.

That evening we met Darell & Patti at the Rendezvous (sounds like a dance bar I used to go to in my college years…) & had a very nice dinner again. It is fun to see friends in the course of travels - I just wish we’d had the opportunity to do so more often this trip.

DAY 43: 61.4 km, in 3:26 hours, ave. speed 17.8, max. speed 44.6 (guess where!)

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