Summer Solstice

At 5:05am Robin shouted at my tent, "Tim! Good Morning!" Luckily I was already awake. We got all our things packed and were pedaling by 5:30 -- 4 minutes before sunrise. It was cold and foggy and windy. I hadn't eaten breakfat or filled my water bottles. After about 20km we got the Agawa Bay Campground, where I did all those things and Robin tried to stand under a hand-dryer in the bathroom.

By 9:45am we had already covered 60km -- more than half of the 110km required to get to Wawa, Ontario, our next stop. We found a nice patch of grass just off the highway and napped in the sun until 12:30pm. We decided a 3 hour nap was enough, and then pedaled another 30km to a beach on Lake Superior. Even though we had been along the shore of the lake for the past 2 days, we could never see much of it due to the fog. This time it was sunny and beautiful.

The beach was at the mouth of a river, so I swam out into the river a little upstream and let it float me out into the lake. After not too long, I was scared of being swept away, so I swam sideways, vigorously, parallel to the shore. Once I escaped the river current's grasp, the water temperature dropped about 10 degrees, since I was now swimming in Lake Superior water instead of warmer inland river water.

Robin and I napped on the beach until 5pm. My back got suburned pretty badly, but I didn't stop laying on the beach because it was beautiful and the sand was warm.

We continued onwards towards Wawa, and Robin had a friend of a friend's mother who worked at a restuarant nearby, which if you know the size of Wawa, it's a pretty improbable place to know someone! Her name was Suyin. We met Suyin at the restuarant and she gave us the key to her house and told us to make ourselves at home, which we did. At 10pm, she returned and brought back a bunch of ribs and veggies and rice and a beef stir fry. We had already eaten dinner, so we packed it up to bring with us the next day. It was nice to have a soft and free bed to sleep in! (We also took a short ride near Lake Wawa at sunset, at 9:42pm, to complete our summer solstice goal.)