Day 48: Port Stanley, ON to Dunnville, ON

I'm a day behind in my last two postings as we've been without internet. Last night, I found an unsecured wifi network to tap into while we walked to dinner! So there I sat at the edge of the road to faithfully post my blog!
This morning we woke to sunny skies and westward winds. A good combo! We were especially grateful, given the terrible storms that passed through last night. After a delicious breakfast at our hotel, we rode out of town around 9:45. It was hard to leave this cute little beachside town, I would have liked another day to explore the lighthouse and lay on the beach.
Our route today would take us in a northeasterly direction along the shoreline of Lake Erie. We passed through quaint little towns with names like Port Bruce, Port Dover, etc. The roads we chose had very little traffic and had nice views of the lake. Lake Erie is very sandy and shallow on this side of lake. The beaches are quite beautiful and the water looks like the ocean with various shades of aqua blues.
We stopped for a lunch of soft serve ice cream in the town of Port Burwell. (Not just any soft serve ice cream but specially flavored ice cream). I had the Creme de Mint flavor and Marc tried the Pistachio Nut. It was refreshing and really good! The Canadians must really like their ice cream as every town seems to have ice cream shops with lots of customers.
We pedaled into the town of Port Dover around mile 70. I was tired and ready to stop for the day in, but Marc encouraged me to keep pedaling. Our goal was to go the 100+ miles to Dunnville so that we'd have a shorter ride tomorrow - giving us some extra time to check out Niagara Falls. In town we met a father and son that were biking from North Dakota to Maine. Their destination for that night was Dunnville as well!
About halfway between Port Dover and Dunneville, Marc stopped for water at a small gas station. The gas station attendant told Marc that they did not have any potable water, but if Marc watched the store, he'd go get him some water. Wow, talk about trusting strangers! The man crossed the street and headed down the sidewalk to the Fire Station. He returned several minutes later with Marc's water bottles filled with ice cold water. Wow, what service!
The town of Dunnville came into view around mile 107 of our route. Dunnville is a relatively small town located on the edge of the Grand River, about 35 miles southwest of Niagara Falls. We had a hard time locating a motel so we rode around town for a bit. (As if 107 miles wasn't enough for the day.) There was one hotel in the downtown area but it reminded me of a boarding house so we decided to pass. After asking a local, we found the Riverside Motel which is reminiscent of all the other cheap, bad motels that we've frequented along our route with the exception that this motel has beautiful views of the river. Why do all the cheap motels have terrible smelling rooms? Our room smells horrendous - like stale smoke covered with cherry scented air freshener. Oh well, after 108 miles of riding I'm just thankful to have a shower and bed.
We ate at a local pizza restaurant (Canadians must like pizza too as there were three pizza restaurants within 1 square block of our motel.) So my pie for today was a mediocre sausage & mushroom pizza pie.
Tomorrow we are headed back to the good ol' USA via Niagara Falls. We should have a relatively short ride - about 60 miles - to our final destination of Lockport, NY. We'll be staying with Jeff, who is a friend of Julie's from her days when she lived in Lockport.


Marc's stats:

108 miles

6 hours 50 minutes

Average MPH - 14.9