T+112: “There’s No Lodging ‘Round Here”

Mile 4030: LEBANON, NH: We cleared 4000 miles today, after tearing down the Sherburne Pass in mid-Vermont.  The towns are super-busy with leaf-peeping and all sorts of people out celebrating a 3-day Columbus Day holiday.  We are in an expensive generica hotel near Dartmouth and are glad to have it.   Last night we were in the first ski lodge built in America.  You can guess which one we prefer… but now my mind is going back to our first day in Canada, where finding a place to stay was a formidable challenge.

 

After the ferry ride, we landed in the tiny village of Sombra, where there a just a few shops and houses.  We needed a map of Ontario.  There was none at the General Store.  ”Surely the shop across the street will have what you need”, the shopkeeper told us.  We rushed across the street to a rather run-down looking shop advertising. “Books, Maps, and Great Lakes Shipping”.  However, it was closed.  We note there is a tourist information station in the local library.  Closed again. 

Thus we head out on the first major road to the east.  The Adventure Cycling map suggested turning south to the town Wallaceburg.  This strikes us as a long way around; we want to make our east, and meet Lake Erie as it moves northeast at Port Stanley.

Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time. 

The road we head out is due east.  It is newly finished and prominently marked as a bike trail.  We head out through farm fields, very limited traffic, and a heavy-duty headwind.  We travel and travel, and see not a store, not a town, just mile after mile of scattered farm houses and fields.   This goes on for 35 miles.  The wind is wearing and we need a food stop. 

I try to use my phone to locate some services and find out that I have almost no access to Canadian Bell. With no map and no phone, we are flying blind into the wind.  Finally, we see a township hall, and go in to seek information.  I tell them we are somewhat lost, ask for a map of the area (they don’t have one) and inquire about shops or restaurants.  The clerical help seem befuddled by our questions, think hard, then the younger of the two says, “There’s a Tim Horton’s down in Dresden!”  We will have to backtrack and head south if we take this option.  Is there nothing to the east.  Well, there’s a restaurant down another 8 miles or so, but it’s closed on Monday.  Of course, it is Monday.  Dresden is just 4 miles from here.

Well, drat.  At least it will put us back on the cycling map.  We leave the flat farm lands of Lambton County, and enter the much more populated environs of Essex County.   Dresden is a very small, but quite picturesque farm town with lots of 1890’s red brick shops clustered on either side of their little river.  On the High Street, we stop and can’t find any place to eat but a pizza delivery shop.  Wes waves at a fellow just parking his car.  He is an older, heavy-set fellow, who tells us there are two places—the Tim Horton’s on the south side and then the Hooks back over the bridge.  He would recommend the Hooks to anyone. 

We backtrack again to the restaurant which looked closed, but was not.  There is a group of elderly women and a single waitress with a nose piercing in the shop.  We are quite hungry by this point and it is getting late in the afternoon.  We need to secure a place to stay for the night.  I can’t use my phone and the waitress does not have the wifi password, though she can connect to the internet on her personal phone.  As we order, we ask the waitress about motels or bed and breakfasts around here.   

She can’t think of one, but will ask the ladies at the next table.  As two of the three women are leaving, they suggest that we either go to Wallaceburg (a back-track of 12 miles) or go to Chatham (20 miles due south).  Neither are particularly useful suggestions.  The remaining woman, who must have been 75 or so, quite slender, with a teased and sprayed hairdo, then engages in intense conversation with the young nose-ring waitress.  “Isn’t there a bed and breakfast in Thamesville?”  “I think it’s gone.”  “What about at Kent Bridge?”  “No, I think you’d have to go all the way down to Blenheim.”  This goes on for quite some time.

The waitress pulls out her cell phone and starts checking listings.  She finds a B &B in a nearby town and calls to see if they have openings.  “So sorry,” she says, “full up.”  She is now in full travel agent mode, waitress duties forgotten.   She and the older woman think of several more options, while Wes and I stare at them hopefully, eating our tuna sandwiches.   After several strikeouts, and no better solution than the first ones suggested by the exiting women, she gives up.  She apologizes profusely while we thank her for many efforts.   As we get ready to leave, she suggests, “You might have better luck using the Wi-Fi at Tim Horton’s.  That’s what I would do.”

It is now after 4pm.  We sent our camping gear home with Keith and Tada.  We have to find a solution.  We cycle up to the donut shop and begin searching.  This is obviously not a tourist area, because there are so few listings of any kind.  Finally, I spot a listing for bed and breakfast 36 kilometers away.  I call and leave a message.  Not a good sign.  We are running through our limited options, when the proprietor calls back and tells us she does have an availability for this evening.  She has some other obligations right now, but if we can get there, she’ll find a way to let us in.

OK.  It is now nearly 5pm and the bed and breakfast is in Ridgetown, down a busy highway, across the main 401 freeway, then up on the coastal ridge about 5 miles from the Lake Erie coast.  It will be dark by about 7:15 pm.  We need to ride the 24 miles as fast as we can in about 2 hours.   As we leave the Tim Horton’s without finishing our coffee, we drag our bikes out the road to begin the sprint, and meet up with the first fellow we met entering town.  He had seen us coming to the Tim Horton’s and wanted to know if we had tried and liked Hook’s.  We assured him we did, and then he launches into a big story about he has had a ministry for travelers for years that took him up as far as the Yukon.  He wants to know more about our travels.  We know he means well…and that he probably has some great stories…and we are touched that he has followed up with us…but we feel acutely the time ticking away. 

We finally extricate ourselves and make our way onto the narrow highway with the afternoon rush.  We push as hard as we can, not stopping, not talking, through mile after mile of tall corn.  We pant as we cross the lovely Thames River, which is glimmering in the late afternoon son.  We are not yet to the 401, when the sun sinks behind the corn stalks. We are sweaty and tired, but still pedaling as fast as we can.   We still have 3 more miles to go—uphill in the increasing darkness.  We rely on adrenalin to keep us going.

Ridgetown is a college town and a surprise.  It is full of High Victorian architecture.  It is nearly dark, when we find our bed and breakfast across from a huge and elaborate Presbyterian Church, which was just as a landlady said.  “You can’t miss it.”  The sign says a bed and breakfast, but there is no doorbell or office.  There is no response to the first door we knock on.  We try the next.  When a woman answers, she lets us know that she is a tenant, but that she can call our landlady.   She does so.  We are told how to get into our quarters, and told to wait until the proprietor can come check us in. 

We let ourselves in to the foyer of what appears to be an apartment and wait.  And wait.  And wait.  Our muscles start to freeze up because of the hard exertion, followed by a hard stop.  After about 45 minutes, the impossibly young proprietor appears with a market basket of food.   She signs us in, leaves us the makings of a nice continental breakfast, and explains that she has been in town only six months and owned this building just four months.  Her main job is being a nurse.  She takes her leave.  We don’t see her again.

We are in a lovely two bedroom apartment in a well-kept 1890’s building.  It is homey and has a full kitchen.  There’s a grocery store down the street, so we go get the makings for a sort of “home dinner”—tiny chicken tarts and mixed vegetables.  We set the table and make ourselves at home. 

That night my knees cramp up so badly I can barely sleep.  However, the bed is snuggly, and the next morning we revel in our privacy and the little pleasures of eating by ourselves at a dining room table.  We still don’t have a map, my knees are really mad at me, and we will have to follow the Adventure Cycling map, but everything is right with the world.  Somehow or another, we found a way out of a jam and landed on our feet.  Next stop, Port Stanley on the north shore of Lake Erie.