Happy July the 4th to our American friends celebrating today. Enough of them were celebrating in the Penn Lake campground last night with fireworks and large volumes of alcohol. No l didn't invite myself over. When your doing a hundred plus kilometers a day sleep takes trail wind to make up for it presidence over teaching yourself a lesson you've learned many times before.
The ride was sunny but down right cold. Where is this heat and humidity everyone talks about. I figure I'll be eating those words in the near future but I feel like wining because the day I'm writing this post, July 5th, not only was it cold it rained on us, too! There was a good tail wind to make up for it so good time was made to White River.
Not much happening economically in this area. Closed motels and cafes along highway 17 between towns speak of less people in the area. Pulp mills, mines and forestry made up the economic backbone and it suffering a little "Osteoporosis" right now. I stopped to check out a down hill ski operation just East ofMarathon but was informed it was closed down in 2009.
We free camped behind the Esso on a grassy area since no campgrounds are run in this city. We had it all to ourselves until a guy put his tent up not more than twenty feet from our tents. I walked over to introduce myself but returned feeling uneasy with his presence. When I tried to have a conversation with him he wasn't making sense, to me anyhow, and was saying how he needs a bicycle to ride out West to get a job in the orchards but all the, "Mexicans" are taking his work away. Mental health issues with an obvious self-medicating problem were tormenting this young man who has been stuck in white river for three days unable to hitch a ride. Karin and I corralled our bikes and gear between our tents and suffered through an unrestfull night. He and his tent was gone right after we started to break camp. Free camping can have it's drawbacks.
White River was home to the black bear "Winnie" who was given to a British zoo and made famous in the "Winnie the Poo" stories.
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