Day 44 - First Day in Canada

The Coast-to-Coast journey continued today as we left Michigan, taking a small car ferry from Algonac, MI to Walpole Island in Onterio. Our 84-mile day was pretty uneventful. A brief rain shower with very little climbing and some decent cross and tail winds made today the fastest paced ride for the trip to date averaging somewhere north of 17 miles per hour. Although the roads today were lacking in paved shoulders, we found the drivers we encountered to be super courteous, giving us lots of room on the edge of the road.

Today we stopped for lunch in the town of Ridgetown, ON at a really nice coffee shop - Pinnell's Pastries. We met the Rotary Club as they were having an informal meeting when we came in. They were really good guys and after hearing about our journey and our mission to help The Seeing Eye, they called Jim, the owner of the Ridgetown Independent Newspaper. Jim came in and introduced himself and interviewed us for his paper! We'll have to see if the story gets published, but Puppy Ride has just gone international! What's cool is that there is 111 Seeing Eye graduates currently in Canada and last year The Seeing Eye had 24 canadian partnerships and 17 more this year - year to date. So it's cool that the local press in Onterio took notice!

One shout-out from Day 43! I wrote my blog yeasterday before we went to a very awesome picnic at our good friend Janet Harden's mother's house. We feasted on Hamburgers, Brats, salads and really amzing home cooked deserts! Nice group of people. Janet's brother and sister, Her friend Porche, her sister-in-law and of course Janet's mom were there. Lots of talking about the ride and the mission. What a sweet jesture and so very apprciated by all of us on the Puppy Ride team!