Day 80 July 25, 2011 Sault Ste Marie to Batchawana Island 61km

Alone with my thoughts

So as I was leaving the MCC to start running I picked up my iPod and turned it on. To my surprise it was empty. Well, not really empty, but completely unreadable. Somehow the whole thing had been corrupted overnight. Fantastic.

So I started running without my iPod, which was too bad because I’m really into my Wilbur Smith book Those in Peril.

Then Google maps struck again. I was running along route 17b, the old trans-Canada, when Google maps told me to turn right and head along a gravel road to the new Hwy 17 and then across. As soon as I crossed the highway I found myself on another dirt road. I continued along it and came out in the middle of a golf course, with Mike and the MCC right behind me. All the golfers on the course stopped and looked at us. I asked Mike if we were in the right place and he said we were so I continued along the golf course with Mike driving along the golf cart path behind me. Soon, as you can expect, the course marshal was behind us in his cart asking us where we were going. We showed him the map and he laughed and said that it was taking us on an old road that no longer exists. Thanks Google maps. We did get a funny video of golfers staring at us as we passed by their golf carts in our RV.

Otherwise it was a pretty nice run. I had lunch at 40km and continued running to 61km. We had mounted the GoPro camera on the driver side wing mirror and it took a photo every 30seconds for the entire day. We got some pretty nice shots and if you scroll through it quickly it looks cool. My feet felt good all day, and only my shins were bothering me. The temperature was nice and the humidity manageable.

After getting back to the Delta the girl that had checked us in, Angel, offered to drive us around the Soo to look at the locks and the bridge to the USA. The locks were pretty cool, the ones we saw were for pleasure craft but across the way they were so big that multiple tankers could use them at the same time. We also saw what is apparently the only functioning swing bridge in Canada!

Tomorrow I start the long stretch between Sault Ste Marie and Thunder Bay!