Day 45 - Our second day in Ontario - "easy" day

Today was supposed to be a relatively easy 71-mile ride from our BnB near Port Stanley to our BnB in Port Dover. The climbing, the weather, the wind all seemed to suggest that today would be an easy cruise. I think I've discussed this in earlier blogs, things don't always go to plan! We decided that since today was going to be "easy" we would get an extra hour of sleep. We set the alarms for 6am instead of our usual 5am. So at 7:45 we were on the bikes ready to have our "easy" day! First 5 miles, cold nasty rain. This prompted a stop in downtown Port Stanley to have a coffee and a butter tart (this may have been the highlight of the day - we were told yesterday by some locals that butter tarts are a Canadian thing and that they are to die for. As it turns out they were amazing!). This uncharacteristic early stop put us another hour later into our "easy" 71 mile day! Ok, now the rain let up. That was promising. Just as we were becoming optimistic, we hit our one hundredth (it feels like) road closure. This one was a real road closure that we could not sneak our bikes through. We had to take a detour. We were told it would be about a 3-mile detour - nope! it was an 11-mile detour! Now our "easy 71 became a bit more challenging 82 mile day. About the time we hit our big detour we had phone issues and lost all contact for several hours with our illustrious SAG captain Kevin so no access to our hydration and nutrition and concern over Kevin's well-being. Next, we find out that what looked like not that much climbing was less true due to detour and the changes in elevation that were generally short hills but steep ones. Also, we ended up heading north on cut back roads into quite a bit of head winds!

Today did not feel "easy"! But enough whining. Frankly, when I explain things not going that well, this would be about the time my lovely wife would send me a violin emoji! lol.

Lovely farmland along the slopes of Lake Erie. It really has been nice seeing Canada. Tomorrow, we have one more full day along the lake, crossing the Peace Bridge back into western New York late in the day. We are looking forward to having a barbeque at Kevin's sister's house tomorrow night in Lockport. We will avoid saying "tomorrow is an easy day" until we actually execute it!