Kenora, Canada - Polarsteps

Rest stop to rest stop. We ran into Joey again on the road in the morning; he and Nicholas, another cyclist farther ahead of us, were going to be camping a long day's ride up the way, and we set it as a tentative goal to join them but didn't quite make it. We desperately needed to do laundry so stopped in Ignace and gave a couple of hours to it. The one public laundromat was part of an RV park/campground, and while we waited for our laundry Kini headed to the camp office to ask about filling our water bottles, was told they'd have to pay for water, and then was aggressively approached by the owner on the way back for "trespassing through the campground," something he tried to apologize for later with the excuse that sometimes people do their laundry and try to sneak into the camp showers. We filled up from the spigots in the neighbouring cemetery, finished our laundry, went up to the highway, tried and failed to find gas for our camp stove, noticed the most visible Freedom Convoy support we'd seen so far in the country-- on every business, on every other passing vehicle-- decided Ignace wasn't feeling great and it was time to get out, and headed down the road. We made it to another rest stop on a lake; lots of overnighters in vans and a couple of other tenters. I'd noted down that starting in Ignace the highway shoulder was going to go intermittent, but when we got on the road it turned out to be newly paved with plenty of space for us to ride; we savoured every inch of it. -Sara