T1 Day 52 (Keelin)

 Day 52: 7/28/2023

I will give you guys a fair warning, it’s been a long few days of biking so this is going to be a short and sweet summary of our day! 

We started off riding 15 miles with no water since we stealth camped the night before at a provincial park/house museum. First night stealth camping was a success!! Little buggy but the stars were awesome and no people around, perfect conditions. Liz may have been a little spooked by some animal noises and a nightmare dream but she is okay !!! We then rode into a cute town about 15 miles away in the morning called Port Stanley where we got a water and coffee from a coffee shop. We didn’t have enough water to cook our oatmeal at camp so Liz and I set up shop on a bench of the quaint downtown streets to pull out our campstoves and cook (Kayla opted for a bagel sandwich from the cafe). We left Port Stanley and rode to one of the next port towns, Port Burwell, where we ate lunch  at the beach of Lake Eerie!!! Kayla and Liz decided they were going to change and go swimming- I didn’t want to fuss with my clothes (and I was ravenous and hangry and needed food immediately) so I just ate lunch at the shaded picnic tables. We met a woman there who was so sweet and talked to us for a while about our trip - she suggested the ice cream shop up the street that we promptly made our next stop of the day at (Canada was experiencing heat warnings today so it was HOT). She also wanted to take our photo… seems that everywhere we go we become local celebrities inspiring people to get out on their bikes!! It’s pretty awesome and kinda funny. Unfortunately we didn’t realize they didn’t take American credit or debit cards so, if you’ve checked the exchange rate recently, we severely overpaid for our ice cream. We finally made it to the warm showers and we were soooo pleasantly surprised with our cute little guest cabin that was the perfect size for the 3 of us. We took showers naked in the backyard of the hosts house in their outdoor shower… ICE COLD !!!! For dinner we had local sweet corn and burgers (and beyond burgers) on the grill. We learned SO MUCH about all of the mystery plants we had seen and about canadian farming it was incredible.  The hosts had so much knowledge to share- from feed corn being different than sweet corn to what asparagus looks like after it’s gone to seed all the way to the process of gin seng farming that they used to do on their property !!! We felt like we were learning so much. After dinner and chatting we headed back to our little cabin and got in bed…. another successful day of biking in the books. I will admit I’m starting to count the days down until we get home, not many more nights left!Y