Graphic Lake

Robin left Fort Frances at 10am and I left at 2pm. I spent the morning working on this journal and, not wanting to carry a glass bottle, decided to store the remainder of the Canadian Whiskey in my stomach. Happy Canada Day!

I got a flat tire 5km outside the city due to a small tear between my valve stem and the tube. This is the 2nd time this happened on this trip, and I've never seen it happen before. Does anyone know what causes it? Old tubes? Wrong pressure?

At 5pm I was at the intersection of Hwy 11 and Hwy 17, where we would turn North to re-join Hwy 17. Robin texted me and told me she was at Nestor Falls, which had a park and sunshine and a lake and pelicans. I was 56km away, so I went into the convenience store at the intersection and bought a mega canette of Dr. Pepper, and decided I would see how fast I could pedal to Nestor Falls.

After 2 hours I had managed to pedal 51km on the mostly-flat road with a few rolling hills. I've been averaging 100km/day recently, so to cover 51km in just two hours felt like a lot. (Typical I move along at 20-22km/hr, but take a break whenever a picnic area or gas station is available, probably averaging 5-10 minutes per hour.)

Nestor Falls was nice, and there was indeed a park and sunshine and a lake and pelicans. We went to a restuarant and ate nachos and had a really good beer. (Lake of Woods Brewery -- Papermaker Czech-Style Pilsner) We camped behind the visitor center and listened to nearby fireworks celebrating Canada Day as we fell asleep.

The next morning, we decided that it would finally be our last day pedaling together, and that we'd go out in Kenora to celebrate. The road from Nestor Falls to Kenora was pleasant and uneventful. The lakes and small rolling hills had remained unchanged in the past 5 days since Thunder Bay.

Around 4pm we passed Graphic Lake, which Robin had heard had a spot to picnic and swim. We decided to have a picnic and a swim. We had bought 2 beers at a market a little ways back, because we weren't sure what would be open later in the day ahead of us. A lot of the shore of Graphic lake was swampy (trees growing in the water), though we found a nice rock from which to skinny dip; the only downside of it was being visible from the highway.

After our swim we ate a bunch of cheese and then decided it would be easier to stay there for the night than to pedal the additional 40km to Kenora. We had a great time camping there.