Day 13- Lake Superior Circle Tour: Flour Bay to Sault Ste. Marie
Day 13
Day 13 had us waking up in our cozy green tent to cravings of “apple fritters the size of our faces.” We left our little campsite under the cedars on the shore of rocky Flour Bay quickly and without ceremony. We had 18 miles to go until we reached Voyageurs’ Lodge and the famed apple pastries.
To our surprise these first 18 miles of the day were fast and easy. The hills were rolling and none of them were too big. The shoulder was narrow, but since it was early the traffic wasn’t too bad. One of our favorite things on our bike tour were these early morning miles. If you can knock out 10-30 miles on the Trans-Canada before breakfast, it makes touring on the busy highway much more tolerable. With this easy riding, we exited the wilderness of Ontario.
We had heard rumors of these fritters far in advance of Voyageurs’ Lodge.
This place has the massive portion sizes you want while bike touring!
Not quite the side of your face, but still pretty delicious.
Soon we arrived at the Voyageurs’ Lodge and Cookhouse in Batchawana Bay. In fact the lodge is mostly what there is to see in Batchwana Bay (aside from the provincial park.) This restaurant is one of those campy tourist places with a little bit of everything—a gas station, motel, a general store, and those “your face here” boards where you can take your photo. We parked the bikes near a window where we could see them, and found a seat in the roadhouse style restaurant. They had plenty of outlets to allow us to charge our power banks and speakers.
We each ordered coffee and apple fritters. To be fair they were not as big as our heads, but they were large, hot, and delicious. Following the pastries, we each ordered a full breakfast. I ordered the Grand Portage, which was two eggs, two strips of bacon, two sausages, ham, home fries, baked beans, and toast. The waitress was skeptical, but I proved her wrong by putting it away handily.
The Voyageurs’ Lodge was probably our favorite place to eat on the entire bike tour. We rolled out of Batchawana Bay fat and happy. For the next 20 miles, the highway has been rebuilt. The pavement is smooth and there is about a six-foot shoulder—a huge relief for one of the final sections of the Trans-Canada Highway on our Lake Superior bike tour. The highway follows the shore of Batchawana Bay before leaving the shore and crossing the Goulais River. It rained gently, but not so hard to slow our roll or need to pull out or rain gear.
Celebrating being nearly done with the Trans-Canada, at a tribute to the building of the road.
One of the wider sections of shoulder on the Trans-Canada Highway. Traffic picks up outside of Sault Ste. Marie.
Then, at about seven miles before we could get off the Trans-Canada for good, the highway shook it’s cruel and vindictive fist at us, as if to say “you’re not done with me yet!” We lost our wide paved shoulder turned to gravel. We had to climb a massive hill where there was a guardrail tightly against the road, preventing us from even bailing off the road if a car were to get too close. To make the ride even more sketchy, because we were so close to Sault Ste. Marie the traffic began to get busy.
Finally after these seven harrowing miles, we got off the Highway at 6th Line E. We had survived the Trans-Canada Highway. It felt so strange to be off the busy road after having been battling the logging trucks and RVs for a week. It was weird and almost unexpected to be riding on the calm low speed roads.
To get into Sault Ste. Marie, or “The Soo” as many Canadians call it, we took Landslide Road and Old Garden River Road. Sault Ste. Marie is the eastern terminus of lake Superior, and it’s on the corners of Lake Huron and Lake Michigan. The city is half in Ontario and half in Michigan, but the Canadian side is much larger, with 75,000 residents. The city is industrial, with an economy that thrived on steel, paper, and the maritime shipping industry.
Our first stop in the city was at a bike shop called Velorution on the north side of town. We had been planning to stay at the bike shop, because they offered a free campground behind the shop. However, when we arrive, they said they were going to be closing the campground down in just a few days because they had some creepy folks hanging around and things had been stolen.
Ian’s shift cable was frayed and needed to be replaced in Sault Ste. Marie.
Sault Ste. Marie is a common crossroads for bike tourists, and the bike shop, Velorution is ready to help out traveling bicyclists.
We basically decided that we didn’t want to stay there if things had gotten so bad that the bike shop was closing the campground, so I made a reservation at a cheap hotel nearby—the Northlander Motel. While at Velorution, we got some free coffee and donuts and Ian had to fix his shift cable because it was literally frayed. While we were hanging out at the bike shop, there was a wild downpour of rain, and we were so glad that we had gotten off the Trans-Canada relatively early in the day.
We met another bike tourist who was currently on a tour around Lake Huron. In fact she was actually trying to bike around all of the Great Lakes and had already done most of them except for the northern portion of Lake Superior because of the dangerous traffic on the Trans-Canada of the north shore of Superior. We answered all of her questions about riding on the Trans-Canada, and she answered our questions about the other Great Lake bike tours, before we headed over to our hotel.
Despite being pretty cheap, the rooms at the Northlander Motel were newly renovated and extremely clean. Plus the motel is easy to get to by bike. We hadn’t planned to stay at hotels so often on this tour, but we didn’t have time to cross the US border and bike to public land in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. We also figured that since we were also ahead of schedule, we had saved money in other places, and it was worth spending the money for a safe place to sleep.
We were very happy with how clean this little motel in Sault Ste. Marie was.
When you tell your boyfriend to pick up a couple beers, and he comes back with seven tall boys.
We were about to head out of the room to get some beer and groceries, when I discovered that Ian had a quarter-sized worn out spot in his bike tire that was about to burst. Not in his tube—he had literally worn out the tire itself over the course of the last 1000 miles. Ian ended up having to trudge back to the bike shop to buy a new tire.
Ian had worn a hole through his tire by day 13 of our Lake Superior Bike Tour.
It’s lucky that we were so close to a quality bike shop in Sault Ste. Marie.
The Trans-Canada Highway will wear you down…all the way to the cords!
I asked Ian to get a couple beers while I took a shower. He came back with 7 tall boys… We went on a shopping spree/resupply at a nearby grocery store for dinner. It was the first time since Marathon that we had been able to go to a full grocery store, rather than a gas station/camping/general/hotel/grocery/hardware/liquor store so we went hog wild.
While we gorged on microwavable sliders and pad thai, Ian completed the extensive repairs on his bicycle as I watched cable TV. It was a restful night as we prepared to reenter the Motherland the next day.
See our full route on Strava!
POSTS ALSO TAGGED:
AEROTECH DESIGNS, Batchawana Bay, BEACHES, Beer, Bike Clothing, BIKE ROUTES, BIKE SAFETY, Bike shops, BIKE TOUR PLANNING, BIKE TOURING, BIKING, BlueTooth Speakers, Border Crossings, CAMP FOOD, CAMPING GEAR, CANADA, cities, Coffee, CYCLING GEAR, Flat tires, FLOUR BAY, Food, FREE CAMPING, FRUGAL TRAVEL, Goulais River, GREAT LAKES, HIGHWAY 17, LAKE SUPERIOR, LAKE SUPERIOR CIRCLE TOUR, Michigan, NORTH SHORE, ONTARIO, Outdoor Tech, Power Banks, PROVINCIAL PARKS, PROVINCIAL LAND, PUBLIC LAND, RAIN, Rain Gear, Sault Ste. Marie, TENTS, TRANS-CANADA HIGHWAY, TRAVEL, WILDERNESS
Have you done a long bike tour or traveled around Lake Superior? Share your tips and favorite spots in the comments below?