Beer run

July 23, 2016

We took the ferry from Sombra across the St Clair to Michigan this morning. While waiting for the ferry we chatted with a biker heading towards Oshkosh for the air show. His bike was a bit faster than ours, so that was only a two day trip for him. He mentioned that his friend who had started out with him on a BMW motorcycle had bailed out when the BMW broke down. Apparently the same thing had happened on their last trip. " No worries", he said, "his son has a pickup truck. Handy when you ride a BMW."

Waiting to cross the St Clair River to Michigan. The biker is on his way to Oshkosh.

The main reason for Canadians to use the ferry is to buy Canadian beer in the USA at a discount.

When we got to the Michigan side we saw soon to be happy Canadians boarding the ferry.

The Michigan side of the St Clair River is a lot like the Canadian side. There is basically one road along the river and no side streets. The main activities are watching ships go by and watching Canada.

We are somewhere on the lower thumb of Michigan.

If you look closely, you will notice that the stoker is not pedaling as the ferry crosses the river.

And yet her GPS continues to add miles as the ferry chugs along! Cheater! The GPS even knows the name of the ferry, which is more than I do.

After a brief ride down the Michigan side we took another ferry back to the Canadian side (more illegal GPS mileage). We arrived back in unceded First Nation territory.

We headed into the interior, away from the river and into heavily agricultural land. There were lots of wind turbines and lots of "Water Wells First" signs. There is a belief that vibrations from the turbines causes sand and sediment to clog water in the aquafier. I am not in a position to comment on the validity of that belief. We were told farmers can get $900 to $1600 per month for each turbine on their land, so you can see how this could pit neighbor against neighbor.

We were in the middle of a 30 mile stretch with no services and it was scorching hot when we got to the tiny town of Dover. There were no stores and the fire station was closed, but there was a park with a baseball game being played. We went over and were delighted to find they were selling soft drinks and hot dogs to raise money for the little league. Not that we were thirsty, but we did buy a bunch of ice cold drinks to help out the kids.

The guys in Dover told us about a better route to Leamington.

We should have followed the advice the Dover locals gave us on what route to take. We soon found our route was taking us on a gravel road. We added some extra miles to switch over to their superior route.

Carrots. If you look closely you can see rabbits in the field.
If you still can't see the rabbits, you should eat more carrots.

We saw lots of beets growing. The folks in Dover told us they were sugar beets and the sugar plant was over in Michigan. We expected to see lots of tomatos but we only saw a few tomato fields. We speculated that was because the Leamington Heinz plant had closed. As usual when it comes to agriculture we were wrong. While we were resting under a shade tree a farmer named Mark drove by and stopped to chat. He explained that tomatoes needed the sandy soil further south, closer to Leamington.

Farmer Mark stopped to disabuse us of our misconceptions about tomatoes.

We felt much better after our shady break talking to Mark. But the best was yet to come. When we got to our hotel in Leamington we found it was next door to a family run Greek restaurant called Peter's Kitchen II. We had one of the best meals of our trip. The moussaka had eggplant and sweet potatoes, a new twist for me. The food was great and the owners were amazingly friendly.

Step 2 - hungry and thirsty bikers. This explains why they need to bring so much beer in over the ferry.

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