9/17/12 Terrace Bay to Marathon, ON

Again at breakfast we ask the locals about the road and hills.  Sure enough, more hills today.  Good thing it's only 48 miles.  The rain had stopped by the time we left but it was cold.  We bundled up but after the first hill we had to take off our raincoats.  The wind was very strong, out of the east.  We had to pedal downhill just to maintain 10-12mph.  Dave and Kristina drove by taking pictures.  The Jet Stream has dipped down right over us so now we're in for cooler wet weather.

 We stayed at the Travel Lodge, getting one of the last rooms.  There's new mines that will be opening so the mine companies bought 3 hotels to turn into bunk houses.  These mines are copper, gold and palladium, used for catalytic converters.  Again the town is very excited to have the mines.  We went to the restaurant a mile west of town on the highway because we didn't want to ride down and back up hills 4 km to get into Marathon.  Also down that road is Penn Lake Campground.

 I talked to some guys and they said from Marathon to Wawa is relatively "flat", nothing like the cliffs we just did the last 2 days.  It's pretty incredible all that we've done, from 2 wks ago in the 80s feeling like I was in the Caribbean, swimming in the lake to now, wearing my heavy clothes, actually thinking about my down jacket and hat.  This is probably the hardest riding I've done, harder than the Big Ride which was a piece of cake now that I've lugged a trailer.