Day 12- Lake Superior Circle Tour: Lake Superior Provincial Park to Flour Bay
Day 12
Rabbit Blanket Campground in Lake Superior Provincial Park may have been the first campsite on our bike tour around Lake Superior where we could actually eat breakfast at the campground. We had made overnight oats the day before, for more about what we eat while bike touring, check out our blog post about it. There were plenty of mosquitoes to be sure, but a tolerable amount.
Biking in the early morning on the Trans-Canada Highway on the shore of Lake Superior in Ontario.
We headed out early in the morning, before many of the car campers had even gotten up. We liked to get up early in order to beat the traffic while biking over the Trans-Canada Highway. After the campground was a 20 mile descent which made biking in the early morning even more enjoyable, despite the fact that it was a little bit rainy.
Eating a snack in the morning while biking through Lake Superior Provincial Park.
The entire North Shore of the Lake in Ontario has the biggest hills of the Lake Superior Circle Tour.
Lake Superior Provincial Park is one of the prettiest sections of circumnavigating Lake Superior. We had a lot of fun passing Mom, Dad, and Baby Lakes, and then a few miles later discovering Orphan Lake. The forest here is thick and dark with a myriad of rocky outcroppings.
Many people like to stop at Katherine Cove and Agawa Rock Pictographs while traveling through Lake Superior Provincial Park. There’s a lot of hiking trails to explore in the park too, but while bike touring, we usually were reluctant to go hiking on top of biking 50 miles.
We stopped at the Lake Superior Provincial Park Visitor Center. There are some pretty interesting exhibits, but more importantly they sell ice cream. We were probably eating upwards of 5,000 calories a day at this point, so the ice cream tasted like the best thing we had ever eaten. Actually I hadn’t intended to eat any of it, and then I ate Ian’s ice cream while he was getting me coffee and I was resigned to buying him some more.
A park ranger gave us the advice to stop at Voyageur Lodge and Cookhouse to try their massive apple fritters. She told us it was 17km away, but it was waayyyy further than that. In fact it was so much further that we had to wait until the next day to get it.
The rest of our day of riding was a series of six hills. The first three were “small,” so we were able to conquer those relatively quickly. However as the day progressed, the headwind started to pick up. It was so strong that we were lucky if we were able to achieve a walking pace on our bikes. The headwind was so strong that we were literally pedaling in order to stay moving on 7% downhill grades.
The shore and the woods in Lake Superior Provincial Park are beautiful.
The biggest hill of all was right after we left Lake Superior Provincial Park--the Montreal River Hill, which we had been warned about. This is a long twisting three-km hill that drops in elevation from over 1200 feet to the level of the lake (about 600 feet).
Riding in these headwinds was actually painfully difficult. This was probably the most physically challenging day of our bike tour around Lake Superior Circle Tour. Late in the day, we really needed water, so once we got to a spot near the shore of the Lake, we clambered over a guardrail and down a really steep bank to a pebble beach.
Gathering water around the world’s largest lake can be surprisingly difficult.
As soon as we sat down in Flour Bay, we realized just how tired we were.
The rocky beaches are one of the best parts about bike touring around Lake Superior.
Once down to the shore we rested and purified water on the rocky beach. We were in a small protected cove surrounded by low-slung cedar trees. As we sat on the shore, we began to realize how thoroughly exhausted we were.
The headwinds on day 12 of our Lake Superior Bike Tour were killer, but fortunately we found a protected cove to camp in at the end of the day.
We loved swimming at least once a day while bike touring around Lake Superior.
Fortunately under the cedar trees there was a clearing where it was obvious than many people had camped. It was strewn with garbage, but it was private and out of site of the road. We were so close to the shore that there were very few mosquitos.
We camped in the cedar trees right behind where Ian is sitting.
Kalahari Biltong—one our favorite foods for bike touring.
Ian started cooking a dinner of Knorr Pasta Sides and Kalahari Biltong, while I went for my nightly swim. It was a bit chilly and cloudy for swimming, but it makes you feel so much more refreshed to wash the salt from sweat and dust from the highway off before getting into the tent.
Thunder started to rumble in the distance, while we were cooking dinner on the beach, confirming that we made the right decision by staying. We had barely finished cooking before it started raining. Poor Ian, he had to take his bike apart and work on it out in the rain after dinner because somehow his cranks had started loosening up.
This cove was absolutely beautiful. We later looked it up on the map and found out that this amazing spot is called Flour Bay.
As I fell asleep in our cozy tent, we listened to the sounds of the waves rattling the rocks into the shore as the storm rolled through. Under the dense canopy of the cedars, we hardly even got wet.
Ian’s bike with the cranks removed in the middle of our bike tour.
It stormed for a lot of the night, but fortunately our campsite under the low cedars was very protected.
See our full route on Strava!
POSTS ALSO TAGGED:
AEROTECH DESIGNS, Agawa Rock PictoGraphs, BEACHES, BIKE ROUTES, BIKE SAFETY, BIKE TOUR PLANNING, BIKE TOURING, BIKING, Biltong, CAMP FOOD, Camping Gear, CANADA, CYCLING GEAR, Flour Bay, Free Camping, FRUGAL TRAVEL, GREAT LAKES, HIGHWAY 17, Katherine Cove, LAKE SUPERIOR, LAKE SUPERIOR CIRCLE TOUR, LAKE SUPERIOR PROVINCIAL PARK, Montreal River, NORTH SHORE, ONTARIO, Pebble Beaches, Provincial Parks, Provincial Land, PUBLIC LAND, RABBIT BLANKET, Rain, STEALTH CAMPING, Tents, Trails, TRANS-CANADA HIGHWAY, TRAVEL, Water, WAWA, WILDERNESS
Have you visited Lake Superior Provincial Park or biked around Lake Superior? Tell us what you loved on the Lake Superior Circle Tour by leaving a comment.