We woke up a little later than we wanted but we still managed to catch the 7AM ferry to Manitoulin Island. The ferry was full and there were quite a few cars that could not get on and would have to wait until the next ferry in 3.5 hours. Throw that in the pile for the pro list of biking across the country!
The view from the ferry was very nice and we had breakfast on the ferry and enjoyed moving without us having to pedal.
When we arrived on the island we tried to find the tourist office but we didn’t have any luck. Instead we ran into a guy who was bicycle touring around Lake Huron. He was from Michigan and had the exact same Ortlieb bags as us except his were black. He told us about the free campground he had stayed across the street with free showers. Would have been handy to know last night!
Using the brochures from the ferry we called a couple campgrounds to see about availability since it was the the Friday of the long weekend. One was full and the other wasn’t quite full yet. We weren’t sure how far we’d get today so we decided that we’ll just wing the campground and see where we would land up.
We decided to head to Mindemoya on the advice of Dave who we had met for dinner a couple nights before (it’s where he used to live!). The roads were really quiet and the roads were not too hilly. Locals chatted to us from afar and quite a few waved to us as they drove by. Manitoulin Island seemed like a very quiet and friendly place. We biked by several beautiful lakes. Manitoulin Island is the largest fresh water island in the world, and it has many lakes of its own.
We arrived in Mindemoya after a couple hours. The place was packed with cars and people getting groceries. We got some groceries and headed towards the nearby campground as we were both feeling quite tired and needed some R&R.
We came across the local tourist office in a new building so we stopped by. It was occupied by two kids who weren’t very helpful as tourist guides, but we did learn that some of the campgrounds were already full for the weekend. We biked a little further and saw a sign for two campgrounds on Mindemoya Lake. We ended up at Mindemoya Court Campground. The owner was very nice and luckily they had 2 sites left. It wasn’t a very big campground and there were about 15 site in total with some cottages. They even had wifi internet that actually worked which was a bit of a pleasant surprise!
We had a very good chicken couscous stir fry for dinner and enjoyed our half day off relaxing on their dock on the lake and getting our bikes ready for our trip through Northern Ontario.
Tomorrow we are headed towards Espanola!
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