Vermilion Bay

Northside Hotel, Vermilion Bay

Sunday 7 Aug 2005
Northside Motel, Vermilion Bay Ontario
8.40 – 4.30
123.4 km
5 hrs 41 minutes riding time
21.7 kph

Jim dropped us at the Clearwater Bay store, cutting about 12 km off a long day to Vermilion Bay. Because now we are on the Canadian shield and it is ALL HILLS and very hard work. Also very beautiful. Hot day, lunch stop at Willard Lake, lunch and a little R+R.

Really hard day – Olin in front the whole way and he is pretty tired. I’m done in as well, 120 km is very much on the high end of our capabilities and with constant hills, more up than down, very high temperature (+30 degrees) and slight head wind, it was hard work. We had to take quite a number of breaks towards the end of the day – usually sitting right at the roadside on a rock shelf in the shade.

Our restaurant at Vermilion Bay

The granite and rock formations are very beautiful, lots of pink granite a la high end kitchens. Enormous granite works on the west side of town.

Vermilion Bay is disappointing – I thought it would be a nice little lakeside town – instead small scale sprawl. Lakefront is about a km away and we are too tired to go there…. Dinner at Village Corner at the Esso station, very nice young waitress.

Fortified by our dinner we did take quite a long walk through lovely downtown Vermilion Bay (co-op store in town, water treatment centre at the lake, nothing really on the lake front at all). Back to our motel for an early night and good sleep!

On the road - Cdn shield