Day 60

Today is Canada day!!! Our priority for the day was to make it to a place where there would be a celebration! We didn't want to just go to Marathon, 27km away. We wanted to actually cover some distance! So we were aiming for Wawa, but if White River had better celebrations, we would just stay there and bust through tomorrow instead. We made our first stop in Marathon (after only hitting the road around 10am... we woke up early enough, but wanted a full night's rest, and a shower in the morning, so we didn't get out of the campgrounds for a little while). We were hoping to find some chocolate milk, maybe something substantial to eat (we are getting sick of the lack of fresh fruit and meat in Northern Ontario!), and fireworks (specifically sparklers because realistically, we don't expect to be anywhere that will let us set off proper fireworks tonight. Sparklers are fun and more acceptable, and essential for Canada Day!!!). Unfortunately, we found none of the above. So, we ate trail mix. But we did happen to find Anne. She didn't stay at Neys, but instead at Jackfish with Mary and Peter. They all had an early start (they hit the road at like 6am this morning...as per usual) so were were running into them. Anne took off before us from Marathon, but we passed her later down the road. It was a nice cycle, where the winds would change from a cross-tail to a cross-head wind. But we flew and were doing pretty well for time! Wawa was about 200km from where we left this morning, and although we knew we would probably get in a bit later, we really wanted to get there to see some fireworks! At the info center, they assumed Wawa was more likely to have a display than White River, but they weren't sure if either was even having anything. With those odds, we no longer even considered White River. Along the way we also passed a man with a wicked mustache (I'm a girl and even I was jealous!). He was cycling from Vancouver to Ottawa. He was very nice and friendly. Unfortunately we didn't catch his name though. We made only one other stop before White River, where we found sparklers! So now we were set! Sparklers, rye and coke. All you need for a make-shift Canada Day in the middle of nowhere! When we got into White River, there was a cyclist cycling towards us from the other direction. He crossed the road to talk, so Michael and I stopped. As we started talking, Mary and Peter came by as well. The other guy was Jimmy (Mary and Peter told us about him, but we didn't bump into him until now). Peter and Mary said they were going to stay there for the night. Michael and I said we would continue onward to try and hit Wawa. Jimmy, at first seemed like he was going to stay in White River until we said we were continuing on, then he decided to join us. It was good because he was roughly our pace and it was nice to have someone else to celebrate Canada Day with (the more the merrier!). He was also very nice and easy going. So, although it was like 4-5, we busted forth to potentially hit Wawa, 90km away. We were making good time, and we would have been able to get to Wawa tonight by 9pm, but we got to a provincial park about 50km from Wawa and we figured we would stay there. We thought that we could bust it to Wawa, and POTENTIALLY see fireworks, and only be able to enjoy them for a short while, or we could just head in now (around 6pm), have a bonfire, go for a swim, and have some drinks (Jimmy stopped off along the way to buy alcohol as well). So that's what we did, and we're glad we did! It was such a good Canada Day! The park wasn't busy so we had our pick of the best site (right on the water!). We went for a swim, did some laundry and showered, then started a bonfire! We had our music playing (with two radios and an am/fm transmitter so it was like surround sound... make-shift). We ended up staying up until 3am before we went to bed, but it was the best way possible to spend Canada Day!