After posting last night, I ended up giving myself a freaking head wound. I went to get my bug spray from out of my bag, inside a trash bag, inside the trash bag in the garbage can (for safe keeping from bears). I propped it open (stupidly) thinking it would stay, leaned in, and had it fall on my head. Hard. I bled decently. All I could think was, "Damn, I need to get this cleaned up so my blood doesn't attract unwanted attention." I went into the washroom of the community center and did my best to clean it up, just before they closed.
Sometime in the night I woke up, peered out from my sleeping bag, and saw a wolf not five feet away. It turned and ran fast as it could when it saw me. I don't know if my blood attracted it or not, or if it would have acted any different had I not seen it, but it freaked me out more than a little. Sleep came slow after that.
I got around as quick as I could in the morbing, determined to hit White Lake Provincial Park, and in so doing cut a day off of my original schedule for Ontario. As the city official lady told me yesterday, I had done some hard climbs, but there were more ahead. And so there were. Most the whole day was climbing up just to come back down and then go back up again. And while there were some gorgeous views of the lake, other smaller lakes, cliffs, and forest...there was never anything outstanding, and as I grew more tired throughout the day, it all grew more repetitive. It was cloudy most the day too, and at a point fairly early on it started dropping on me, and I worried about it at any moment turning into (unpredicted by the forecast) rain.
I stopped at Neys Lunch and Campground, desperate to use the bathroom. I was handed the key for the washroom by the nice gentleman running the counter. When I returned it, he asked me if I was staying dry, then chatted me up a little, and was even nice enough to check the forecast for me, telling me it wasn't even supposed to be doing the dripping it was doing now, and didn't look like it should rain. He also warned me that after Marathon there would be a lot of nothing all the way to White Lake, but said I had plenty of daylight and he believed I could do it.
I stopped again at a Marathon gas station. I wanted to fill up on water, but their bathroom water didn't look particularly potable. I got an energy drink of the sort I next to never drink to have later and bakery thing I devoured on the spot and couldn't even tell you what it was. The gas station guy came out and chatted me up a bit while I ate. He asked about where I was going, informed me I'd done the worst of the climbing and had a monster downhill ahead (it was awesome), way underestimated the time it would take me to White Lake, talked about the bush, and told me about the animals around here (how bears are generally afraid of people, how there are huge timber wolves up here, how wolves alone like I saw are usually old or sick but when they're in a pack you need to be concerned, how moose are the most deadly thing around, and how beavers are apparently dangerous too). It occurred to me that while I may not quite be in the wilderness, I am at all times at the edge of it up here, and I'm not used to that. I'm used to being out in nature...but a nature that is very much tamed and controlled rather than truly wild.
From there it was just a long grind to White Lake, with mostly nothing to see save trees and more trees. I downed my energy drink toward the end to keep me going. As I finally came into White Lake, I saw two other bike tourists headed the other way. I wanted to ask why they were going the wrong way and where they planned to head, but we passed with mere hellos. I startled the hell out of the guardhouse attendee as I came up on the washroom, desperate to go for the third time in the day. When I found out the place costs $36 CAD...so what, $27 US? and asks you to boil all your water before drinking it, I understood why the bike tourists left. But it was getting damn late, and I didn't feel like I had much choice, whatever choice they felt they had. Besides, she was super friendly, told me there had been no bear sightings in the park yet, and she even arranged for some park personnel to bring me some bottled water (and when they showed up they asked if there was anything else they could do and were just all around incredibly nice).
It turned out it was not only a stupidly long ride from the road to the gate but then again from the gate to camp, but so it goes. I spent the rest of the sunlight and a little bit after, taking care of my bike, setting up my hammock and bugnet, cramming all the food in I could, garbage bagging my food and setting it under the grate in the firepit (hopefully a sound plan), taking a shower (no extra charge), and borrowing a phone to make a quick call home (and getting no answer).
...Well, I guess I had more to say about my boring day than I expected. I best sleep now. Tomorrow will be here soon and I have a long way to go yet again, but hopefully with a place inside at the end.
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