August 16, 2024. Rondeau Provincial Park, Ontario to Algonac, Michigan.

    Yesterday when we checked the weather it was supposed to be a dry night but it it did sprinkle just a little bit. We were thankful that it wasn't raining as we ate breakfast and packed up.

  From this area along Lake Erie there were a number of diagonal roads running SE to NW, which was the way we wanted to go to head toward the ferry to Michigan. Even though we were gaining elevation as we headed away from the lakeshore, the miles flew by, helped by a tailwind. We averaged 12.0 miles an hour moving time for the first 30 miles which is fast for us, before we turned off a busier road onto a quiet gravel road along the Sydenham River, which we followed to Wallaceburg.

  Earlier, we stopped at a restaurant/small country market that may have been run by Mennonites, and had some marvelous ice cream and bought some raspberry streusel muffins and a package of locally-made stroopwafels for later. 

   We rode through productive farmland. Corn and soybeans, but also tomatoes, some kind of root vegetables and possibly some other sort of beans. Years ago we saw lots of fields of tomatoes in Ontario, and wondered if we would still see them now and we certainly did see them today

.        Tomatoes Being Harvested

We also saw a humungous greenhouse building, part of a complex called Greenhill Produce which had ant least one more large greenhouse and a huge propane tank. 

    In Wallaceburg, we were looking for a place to have lunch. There were 2 places across the street from each other on an online map, but when we got there the one on our side of the street no longer existed. As we were talking about this on the sidewalk, an old guy passing by said, “you are right in front of a restaurant.” As it was starting to rain and there was a small overhang over the sidewalk, we ate there at the Riverport Restaurant instead of crossing the street. It started to pour while we ate our very pleasant meal and then we hung around probably an extra half an hour until the rain pretty much stopped.

    West of Wallaceburg we again encountered the same “Waterfront Trail” signs we had seen since entering Ontario. On Walpole Island, we went through Ojibwe land. The ferry crossing to Algonac went well and we were back on US soil!

   The motel that we had made reservations at was just 4 miles down the road. When we arrived, there had been some confusion as to what day we were coming and they had tried to text us, which we didn’t see. So they had rented the room to someone else. They offered us a nicer room for the same price or their “overflow” room for $50. As we weren’t there on vacation to go fishing or boating and just needed a room for the night, we took the overflow one after seeing it, even though it smelled a little smoky and they hadn’t finished updating it after having a long-term renter. It was right on the north channel of the St. Clair River, so we had a pleasant swim.