CANADA!!!

St. Ignace, MI, USA – Sault Ste. Marie, ON, Canada

When we pulled in to St. Ignace yesterday I realized that the main road from St. Ignace to Sault Ste. Marie is an interstate. My first thought was that maybe I had the U.P. all wrong. They have an interstate – makes it a real place after all.

But after I got over my snarkiness, my next thought was concern. Could we even bike on the interstate? What if we couldn’t? There aren’t usually alternative roads in the U.P. You’re lucky to get one road that takes you generally where you want to go. If we couldn’t take the interstate our 55 mile ride might become 107 miles . . . Ugh!

The rest of the day I kept doing google searches like this one: “Can I bike on interstate 75 to Sault Ste. Marie?” Google didn’t seem to understand my queries, and kept directing me to travel websites.

Then, late in the afternoon Diana mentioned that it looked like a nice route to Sault Ste. Marie. She had – brilliantly – used the biking routes feature of google maps – which told her there was a secondary road the whole way. Duh! That was a stroke of genius. (It’s a wonder I can figure out how to brush my teeth in the morning . . .)

I will say that Diana and I are not usually big fans of the biking routes feature of google maps. I mean, it can obviously be useful at times. But more often than not the biking feature sends you 273 miles out of your way in order to avoid a three-block stretch of what google maps deems to be heavy-ish traffic. Sometimes we start following the biking directions, and then, when they bring us on a path around a nuclear power plant in order to avoid a “road” – adding seven miles to a two-mile trip, we get disgusted and turn the feature off. This is maybe why I didn’t even think of it . . . Or, it could have to do with my continuing disappointment with the one pastie I had while in the U.P. or my growing obsession with finding apples along the way.

Apples. We found a lot of feral apples today. Some that were really good. I’ve been eating them, Diana’s been considering apple-based desserts, and I’ve been thinking about whether I could cut a scion from a tree whose apples I liked and bring it back home in order to graft it onto a rootstock and have that very apple growing in my yard. (Pretty proud of myself for using both the words “scion” and “graft” in one sentence. As an amateur orchardist I’ve learned these words in the last few years. Though it’s one thing to kind of know what the words mean, and something else entirely to actually do some grafting . . .)

Anyway, we’re seeing apple trees and for the first few we’re stopping to grab apples. In one of the trees the really good apples are way up high. But fortunately I can jump kind of like Michael Jordan so I had no problem grabbing them. (See video.) But remember kids, if you’re going to jump that high it’s important to wear a helmet like Uncle “Sky” John.

Identifying apple trees became kind of a game as we rode along. “Apples” I would say – and point at the next tree. (The unstated rule was it had to be a tree we could, in good conscience, pick from. That is, not right in someone’s yard.) After a while it became obvious that I was pretty proud of myself – I was spotting a lot of apples . . . So Diana, never one to let me get a big ego, told me not to hurt myself patting myself on the back.

“Well, no one else is patting me on the back,” I returned.

“I couldn’t even if I wanted to,” Diana said. “My shoulder hurts too much from the whiplash you gave me . . .”

And so it goes. Air Munger just never gets a break . . .

But (this) man cannot live on apples alone. (Although Steve Jobs tried to do it at one point. Nothing but apples for like two weeks. Didn’t work out so well . . .) And, once again,it’s not like there were any pastie shops along the way today. (Where are they when you need them?) Fortunately, I had some leftover smoked fish to nibble on. See picture. It was yummy.

But back to the roads. Not only did today’s roads have lots of apple trees – kind of indicating that there used to be more people along this way (maybe before the interstate came in it was the main thoroughfare?), but the roads were gorgeous. No traffic. Heavily wooded. Kept thinking that we would see a bear or a lion or something along the way – especially what with me being a now-recognized groundbreaking explorer and all . . .

Well, it’s important to recognize the people who put our beautiful byways together for us. On that score, have you ever heard of Frank Rogers? Neither had we.

But Frank was a pretty important guy in the U.P. about a hundred years ago. He was the State Highway Commissioner from 1913 to 1929 – probably a time that there was some pretty major construction of roads going on in the U.P. Not that easy of a task based on what I’ve observed. When you peer into the woods along the road you see pretty much an endless array of tangled trees and wetlands and potholes. Can’t imagine making a walking path through woods like that, let alone a road. And their equipment was probably pretty rudimentary compared to what we have today.

Frank’s reward for his service to the Great State of Michigan: a pile of rocks. See pictures. These U.P’ers really know how to celebrate their heroes.

I know, I know – the moment you’ve all been waiting for. Canada. Yes, we made it to Canada. And yes, I didn’t lose my passport on the way across the U.P. (which, according to Diana, is a small miracle.) And yes, they did let us in. And yes, it was pretty darn cool riding over the two-mile long International Bridge (Those Birkie Fans out there should be pretty excited about any reference to the International Bridge. I mean it was two miles long and had amazing views of the Soo – a reference I really don’t understand but lots of people seem to say it around here – but it wasn’t quite as nice as the old International Bridge at Telemark . . .)

The thing is, Sault Ste. Marie is just another name for Thunder Bay. Which is cool. We love Thunder Bay – although since COVID the Hoito – a Finnish restaurant in the basement of a church-like building where you had to be at least 77 to be a server, and where they served Finnish pancakes that were AMAZING – closed.Needless to say, Sault Ste. Marie does not have the Hoito. And it was kind of a long way to ride just to end up in another Hoito-less Thunder Bay.

But we made it. And tomorrow we set out on the second half of our journey . . . Kind of weird but now that we’re in Canada we start heading more south. And, of course, the forecast is now calling for rain starting tomorrow night . . . I guess we had better head to the grocery store. Do they use plastic bags for their vegetables in Canada?