Day 63

This morning we woke up, super keen and ready to rent a car to go down and see Manatoulin and Tobemory. We just finished 2/3rds of Ontario, and we figured it would be nice to break it up with a day off! Last night we looked it up online and found that Discount was open at 8am. We got there just after 8 to rent a car. Turns out, they aren't open AT ALL on Sundays! Not cool! So, we went across the street to a motel to ask the front desk if they knew the best place to rent a car (being in tourism, we figured they would know the score). He was very nice and called around for us. Turns out we were S.O.L. Apparently the Soo shuts down on a Sunday. We finally found out that the car rental place at the airport was open on Sundays so Michael and Jimmy took a cab out there to get us a car! Unfortuantely, they came back empty handed. The fates were against us! Jimmy had some credit card technical difficulties and they wouldn't take Michael's card because he wasn't the driver. So, we had two options: we could either take the day off in the Soo still (which didn't sound appealing. We didn't want to just take a day off for no reason!), or we could cover some ground (which also didn't seem very appealing because it was SO hot! It was supposed to feel like 38!). So I talked to Kerry about our options and she said that Ian wasn't supposed to be working today, and she was mad he was because she wanted to go to the beach (Ian has his own company designing and building bikes and so he works a lot and so Keryy and him don't get to spend much quality time together). So, she said she still wants to go to the beach anyways and asked if we wanted to come. Our answer was OBVIOUSLY yes! We bought some fruit and juice and hit the road for Pancake Bay! As we were leaving the parking lot, a guy (Doug) pulled up beside us on his bike. He was the Warm Showers that Peter and Mary were staying with. He came to invite us to dinner tonight. We were definitely keen and excited that today is turning out to be a great day after all (esp after all the technical difficulties in the morning!). It was SOO nice to be on the beach on such a hot day! Lake Superior was cold, but it was SO nice to cool us down! We spent the entire afternoon either swimming or sleeping on the beach! Kerry was meditating most of the time, then went for a swim as we packed everything up. We stopped off at the "Canadian Carver" store, where there were a bunch of cool wood sculptures and ice cream. We didn't buy ice cream though because we were hungry and looking forward to something savoury from the Warm Showers! We headed back into the Soo and quickly changed out of our bathing suits then Kerry was super nice and dropped us off at Bruce's. Peter and Mary, along with another guy (cycling alone from Victoria, where he went to university, to Peterborough, where he's from). It was a really fun night with TONS of food! We had both Venison and Moose, a bean salad, green salad, corn on the cobb, baked potatoes, ice cream, need I say more? And it was tons of fun having so many touring cyclists talking about their adventures! Doug didn't complete the cycle across Canada when he set out to do it because he was badly injured when he was hit by a truck in Manitoba. He ended up breaking his back (and was hit so hard he was thrown into the air). But, as we saw today, it didn't keep him off his bike for good, which is good! But both him and his wife were very nice and fun, as were all the other cyclists present! When we were leaving, he gave us a big block of cheese and some boiled eggs for the road.