July 4th, 2017, Day 43, Kapuskasing to Cochrane, Ontario, 115km

As we charged along, Charlie said to me, “If the conditions continued just like this would you want to bypass Cochrane and go straight to Iroquois Falls?”

We left the cheese factory at 8:10. Gone are our original plans of being on the road for 6am. Gone for now, that is. If the weather continues to heat up it would be to our advantage to “get’er done” before the searing afternoon sun. Today’s high was forecasted to be 25, but in the early morning it was a refreshing 12 degrees Celcius and sunny.

The road was great. Mostly flat, what appeared from a distance to be hills flattened out under our wheels. We were making good time and we were both “in the zone.” Traffic was light, allowing the trucks to swing wide into the left lanes to give us safety. The skies were clear, the sun was shining, the winds were light. Perfect cycling conditions!   

Cochrane was 119km from Kapuskasing. Iroquois Falls, another 50 after that. We planned on staying with a “Warm Showers” host in Cochrane tonight and then cycling an easy 50 km tomorrow and staying with another “Warm Showers” host there. Kind of like taking a rest day but still getting somewhere. Our focus after that will be to get to North Bay and from there, to Ottawa. We are both feeling that getting to Ottawa will kind of be like getting to Shangrila, that most of the hard work will be behind us. I’m sure we are in for some surprises!  

So…..”Would you like to go straight to Iroquois Falls?”

NO! As much as I will be very, very , excited, pleased, over the moon, esthatic, delighted, happy, relieved, etc to put Ontario behind us, it’s just too many km per day for me, even with these near-perfect conditions. (I say near-perfect because the bugs are still something to contend with.) No, it’s too much if I’m going to keep it up day after day after day. Charlie said he was just wondering….that it was more than he wanted to do today too.

We are at Tims, recaffinating. Charlie’s drinking mint tea but I felt like a jolt of java. We just enjoy this quiet time, together but apart. I have finally been able to download another iBook. The wifi was too weak when we were in the land beyond. Soon we will be headed out to the grocery store to pick up food for the road for tomorrow, and we will pick up a nice bottle of wine for our host tonight. Another day. Another 115 km done!!!