Day 23 Dryden to English River

"There is a town in north Ontario" (Neil Young )

Because of the distances between towns we had some decisions to make. From Dryden to Thunder Bay, it is 340 km, which should make for a nice three days of cycling. Nevertheless the towns with accommodation are not evenly spaced. So we had to get an early start, which would get us to Ignace at a time that would allow us to continue on to English River if we felt strong enough. We stayed at a Mom and Pop motel  next to the McDonald's and they started breakfast as early as 5 am. The wide paved shoulder lasted for about 50 km before it became quite narrow - as narrow as 30 cm in some sections. Nevertheless the shoulder was generally in great shape and smooth, making for very pleasant peddling. The temperature could have been a bit higher as I could see my breath at 11 am. The sun came out only in the last half hour. Our distance covered today was 163 km.

We arrived in Ignace in the early afternoon and called the English River Inn to make sure that we had a room. We got a recorded message and left our cell phone number. We had planned to pick up large subs at Subway to take to English River because there are no restaurants in English River. Wouldn't you know it, there was a scheduled power outage for Ignace and many establishments were closed until 4 pm. We decided to wait for our callback from the English River Inn by having a snack at the only restaurant in town with a generator. The bacon cheese burger and fries went down well. After we had finished eating, we received the callback we wanted and booked our room for the night. After that it was a nice relaxing 56 km ride to our hotel knowing that we were set for the night . We stayed here during our 2010 ride and is still as good as it was then. We were able to buy TV dinners and heat them in the microwave oven. Not elegant dining but they filled the cavity. 

We didn't see interesting wildlife today but saw plenty of scenic lakes. We also saw many nice people. At a construction stop,  the first vehicle had a guy from Quebec who gave us bottled water and invited Gramie to keep warm in his truck. While eating our snack in Ignace we met again a couple whom we had seen earlier at the hotel in Kenora. They had been watching for us and wished us "safe travels" again.