We had an early start to the day to try to beat the holiday traffic on the TCH. We left about 7:45AM and found the traffic actually quite light on our side of the road almost the entire way. We even had a little tail wind and with good pavement we made it all the way to Thessalon for lunch. A whole 80km before noon! The weather was also cooperative as it’s been cloudy and cool (great for biking). Our new plan of stopping and getting off the road when the trucks are behind us with oncoming traffic has been working very well and the TCH has actually been really good to us since then. I am surprised none of the other cyclist mentioned doing this. The truckers seem to appreciate it as well as they would be squeezed as well otherwise. A few of them usually wave to us as they go by. With cars it never seem to be a problem as there is always enough room for them to get by on the TCH. There also has been a few stretches where the shoulder’s been very wide which has been fantastic.
We have also started to meet fellow touring cyclist more frequently now that we are all on the same road. We met a couple from Montreal who were on a tandem bike. They said they thought the TCH was “just awful”. The guy had biked out west and his wife joined him for the return trip back. The second couple we met, Grant and Jenn, were from Vancouver and they were heading to St. John’s. Grant and Jenn were probably the most similar to us in terms of character and their age. They were very upbeat and we had a great chat as we shared our stories (and complaints about the general cost of camping in Ontario!). They had found the TCH was “just fine”. It’s funny how different people’s opinions can be! Grant spoke excitingly about how many people they had met who are also cycling across Canada. They had done the West Coast route before and they said they had a great time and the campgrounds were much cheaper and even had special sites for cyclists. Grant and Jenn also told us about the bike shop and free camping in Sault Ste Marie. That bike shop gets more free advertising from touring cyclist then any place we know! We told them about the side road from Walford or Massey that goes all the way to Espanola and they were quite pleased to hear about that route.
As we arrived in Thessalon for lunch, we found that most of the stores were closed due to the Civic Holiday here in Ontario. We did find the local bakery/pizzeria open so we stopped inside for lunch. The girl at the counter was super friendly and made us feel very welcomed. I had 3 slices of pizza and a pretzel while Katherine had a few cups of hot coffee and a salad with some crackers (again the soy free diet). I have a feeling I am going to gain a lot more weight than Katherine on this trip. As we were heading out we met two couples from Michigan who we had a nice chat with about our trip.
We are aiming today to get to a campground around Bruce Mines which is another 20km away. While we were having lunch it started to pour rain, so we decided to just head up the street one block and hang out outside the Thessalon Municipal Office/Library. This is where we are right now. As we were hanging out we saw many tourists stop by to use the public wifi as well. At one point there were 4 groups of us all with our laptops out!
We will update once again on how the rest of our day went. The rain is finally starting to light up and the radar is looking good!
Update:
Although the rain stopped it was a little misty/foggy and we were glad we did not have to bike very far on the TCH. We saw a fancy sign for our campground on the highway, and were pleasantly surprised when we arrived in Bruce Mines that our campground was a municipal campground and only $10 for tenters! Unfortunately it started to rain as we were putting our tent up. We went out to the local Bavarian restaurant for dinner as Katherine had been thinking about the place ever since she saw a sign for it many tens of kilometers before. They had a sign that said they took pride in their service but the restaurant was a little overwhelmed with the number of people that night and with that the service pretty much fell apart. We met Fred, from Ohio, who was sitting next to us at a larger table with his family. He was interested in our trip so we had a nice little chat. Before he left he gave us $20 to put towards our dinner! Thank you so much Fred!!
Trip Around The World 
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