It rained heavily on Friday night and I was concerned that the weather would carry over to Saturday and turn the day into a totally miserable experience. However, the day dawned dry, cool, and sort of clear. Upon leaving the hotel I disregarded my GPS because it was giving me conflicting directions and headed to the four lane highway that I thought I had come in on. It was not and I found myself on the Interstate 75, headed south to Fargo, ND. The GPS finally found its way and directed me to a county road that took me back to US2 at Crookston, Minnesota. That glitch being disposed of I got rolling to the east on Highway 2 through places with names like Fosston, Bagley, Bena, and Grand Forks.
My goal for the day was to make it to Hurley, Wisconsin, where I had a room reserved at the Silver Street Motel, which reviews described as 'rustic' but had the advantage of a price of around one hundred dollars for the night. I have tried to stay in that price range, and to this point had been lucky, with some rooms being very good and others being marginal with limited TV channel selection and very slow wifi. More on that later.
Highway 2 had a speed limit of either 60 or 65 mph, so I was able to tick off the miles. The landscape changed from the open prairies (plains) with huge farms, to farms interspersed with woodlands and muskeg -type features and further on the scrub brush with swampy land interspersed with evergreen trees. There did not seem to be much human habitation along the highway except in small towns that dotted the route. The BNSF railway (railroad) parallels the highway for a great deal of its length, both in North Dakota and Minnesota.
As the highway approached Duluth, farms began to reappear, although not at the same magnitude as those in North Dakota and western Minnesota. This is iron country with the Mesabi Iron Range to the south of Duluth. The mines in this area produced much of the iron ore that was turned into steel to build tanks, aircraft, ships, artillery and rifles that were used to defeat the Axis in World War II. The largest iron mine is near hibbing, MN, birthplace of Robert Zimmerman, better known as Bob Dylan.
The iron ore was hauled to Duluth, MN, to be loaded onto freighters for transport to steel mills in the east on the Duluth, Mesabi, and Iron Range Railroad. In 1942 this railroad had eighteen of these very large locomotives built to haul the ore from the mines to the port. One of those locomotives, Number 225 is preserved in the town of Proctor, just west of Duluth. It was in service for twenty years, from 1942 to 1962 before losing its place to diesel locomotives. During those twenty years, this locomotive alone hauled forty-four million tons of ore. And there were seventeen more just like it. That gives an idea of the magnitude of iron ore that was mined in these deposits.
Duluth, Mesabi and Iron Range 2-8-8-4 locomotive 225 in Proctor, MN.
The ports of Duluth, MN, and Superior, WI, are adjacent to each other straddling the Minnesota-Wisconsin border. A notable feature of the cities is Richard I. Bong bridge which spans the bay between the two cities, It is 3600 metres long and is 35 metres above the water, crossing St. Louis Bay. It is an impressive structure but with heavy traffic, it was difficult to appreciate how massive it truly is. The bridge was named after Richard 'Dick' Bong a pilot and Medal of Honor winner in the WWII Pacific Theatre who was the highest scoring ace in the Pacific war with shooting down forty Japanese aircraft. He was killed while test flying the F-80 just before the end of the war.
Part of my ride was along the south shore of Lake Superior. Near the lake the temperature dropped noticeably because the lake is so could and does not warm appreciably during the summer. Lake Superior is so large that it is not possible to see the other side of it. It is very similar to the views from the west coast near Ucluelet and Tofino with the exception being that on the other side of the lake is Canada while on the west coast of Vancouver Island the next stop is Japan or Korea. The ride across the rest of Wisconsin was somewhat uneventful, and I arrived in Hurley, WI, around 6:00 p.m. having ridden a distance of 642 kilometres - a good run.
The Silver Street Motel was as expected, a low cost minimal facility which advertised air conditioning, and wifi along with TV programming. The first thing I discovered was that the wifi was non-existent. Try as she might, the lady running the motel tried to find a network that I could access to no avail. Hence the blog for Saturday being written on the following Wednesday. The TV was glitchy, freezing and being frustrating to watch. The accommodation was adequate, but I believe that if a service is advertised and you pay for that service, it should be delivered.
The plan for Sunday was to make it Sault Ste. Marie, cross the border into Canada, then find a reasonably priced room east of the city. At one small crossroads village I saw a crudely painted sign on a four by eight sheet of plywood. The message was 'Impeach Joe and the ... (word that means a woman of ill repute' because I can't post this link on FB if I use the word which rhymes with Joe.) It seemed like a perfect example of the polarization in American society, the lack of respect for anyone who has a different perspective, and the willingness of right wing believers to resort to ad hominem attacks on people rather than being able to expound on the values and virtues of their political perspectives. It seems that the right wing in America is bankrupt of any meaningful ideas except to cut taxes and to make the poor pay for it with cuts in services that they need to survive. It is to weep!
I followed Highway 2 across most of Michigan until I arrived at the village of Blaney Park. I spoke to a woman at the service station there and asked her advice on which way to continue. She suggested that I get off Highway2 because people drove like crazy, so I rode over to State Route 28 and did the remaining eighty-four miles to I-75 with minimal traffic. It was good advice and a good choice.
The traffic on I-75 was moving at 75 mph and it was a short run to the border. The bridge crossing the Saint Mary's River is a high one that allows lake freighters to pass under it unimpeded. Clearing customs was a formality and after threading my way through the streets of 'The Soo' I was on Highway 17 rolling east. About 100 kilometres down the highway I stopped at a Tim Horton's in Iron River to try to reserve a room. Unfortunately, the only rooms I could find online were $250 and more. The only reasonable priced rooms were in Sudbury, about 215 kilometres away. I reserved the room and began riding.
One of the things that surprises and irritates me is the speed limit on Highway 17 in northern Ontario. The distances are vast, the highway in most places is decent, and traffic is not too heavy. The highway could easily support a 100 kph speed limit. As an observation, most traffic was moving along at 100 kph. People doing 90 kph were soon passed. It looks like the people here have developed a passive strategy to beat the people who live down south and impose such stupid speed limits. They simply ignore the limit, but stay within a range that will not get them fines because fines start at 110 kph so most people stay under that limit.
Between Iron River and Serpent River it was possible to see the North Channel of Lake Huron between the mainland and Manitoulin Island. I arrived in Sudbury just as dusk was falling and checked into the hotel for the night. I had travelled across Michigan's Upper Peninsula and more than 300 kilometres into Ontario, for a total distance of 922 kilometres, by far the greatest distance I had travelled in a day during this trip. However, it put me closer to my destination by 200+ kilometres so Tuesday’s ride would be somewhat shorter.
I slept until 8:30 on Tuesday morning, the efforts of the previous day having taken a toll on my no longer youthful body so it was a later start than usual. Escaping from Sudbury was problematic because again my GPS gave me conflicting directions, but eventually I made my way to Highway 17 and continued my trek east with the first stop being at Tim Horton's in North Bay. The break allowed me to get off my now aching posterior and move around.
Heavy grey clouds were threatening rain on the way but the sun would reappear and ease my concerns. It was all a trick. About 50 kilometres north of Deep River it began to rain lightly, so I stopped, covered my pack, put on my rain gear and carried on through a light rain. By the time I arrived in Deep River the sun was shining so I took my rain gear off and had a coffee at Tim's. As I was drinking my coffee another rider entered the shop, asked me if that was my bike outside (I was wearing a Harley hat, jacket and chaps) because I might want to turn my helmet over because it was raining.
The rain was falling lightly so I took the chance and rode on without my rain gear. Bad choice. By the time I made it to Chalk River the rain was pounding down so I stopped, put on my rain gear once again and continued on. This time the rain came down really heavily but I was dry with my rain gear. Except for my boots and gloves which quickly became rain soaked. This continued for about 30 kilometres until the rain stopped and the skies began to clear up. By the time I passed Renfrew the sun reappeared and it began to heat up.
I was on a roll now and the speed limit on highway 417 increased to 100 kph so I didn't stop to get rid of my rain clothing. However, by the time I reached Carleton Place it was getting so hot that I had to get rid of my rain jacket. The rest of the ride passed quickly and I arrived in Perth around 5:00 pm. The ride across town to my brother Dave's place was short, but in the almost 6-1/2 years since I had last been in the town, very little had changed. I arrived at my brother's house at about 5:15 after clocking 523 kilometres on Tuesday's leg of the journey. My brothers were sitting in the back yard so we met, I sat down on a chair and had a cold beer and a small package of cheese curd, a fitting end to a 4901 kilometre seven day ride from Vancouver Island to Perth Ontario.
Clean Harley
Now to rest visit and enjoy my time here before turning around and pointing my Harley back to
Vancouver Island and home.
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