Algoma, Canada - Polarsteps

This was the day we emerged back into human civilization, in the form of the cheesiest tourist stop at Pancake Bay (which we'd heard about because the German cyclists we met travelling the other way in Thunder Bay had camped there and made pancakes in the morning for the occasion). We celebrated with ice cream, and sat for a while and talked with a few vacationers before hitting the increasingly busy highway towards Sault Ste Marie, which was getting frustrating; we were dodging onto the loose gravel shoulder a lot so that cars could pass each other and us, and this was also where we started running into rubber stripping running invisibly under the white line at the side of the road, which causes a bike tire to fishtail when it hits it. Somewhere in the midst of this there was a turn-off to a plaque marking the midpoint of the Trans Canada Highway; I asked Kini if they wanted to pull over to see it and I'm pretty sure their response was "Fuck the Trans Canada Highway." At the very end of the day, getting close to the Soo, we gained a big highway shoulder for the rest of the day and (because we didn't know better) figured we'd have an easy ride into town the next day; we finished the day on the high of knowing we were through the hardest, most dreaded stretch of a cross-Canada bike tour. We camped boldly in plain sight on a public beach in the middle of a cottage community, watched a family of beavers swimming by, and had a sunset swim, our last in Lake Superior.