Day 32 - Steinbach, MB to Duluth, MN

After having breakfast in the restaurant at the Frantz Inn, we headed northeast to pick up the TransCanada highway and continue the trek eastward. The day started off quite nice – warmest start to any day on this trip so far at 22C.

It wasn’t too long before we reached the Manitoba/Ontario border and the scenery started to change at that point. The rock cuts along the highway are quite impressive and as we entered the Lake of the Woods area, it made for some nice pictures.

After fueling up in Kenora, we picked up Hwy 71 south towards Fort Frances and it didn’t disappoint, as it passed many lakes and rolling hills along the way. The stop at Nestor Falls brought back memories of trips up that way while I was working – and made for a good pit stop too!

When we hit Hwy 11, we beelined it to Fort Frances and the border with International Falls, MN. We cleared customs and kept out eye on what looked like storm clouds that were coming in from the west as we travelled along Hey 53. By the time we stopped at the T Patten Café in Orr, we thought we had left them behind. Well, we were quite wrong. It rained quite heavily while we were having lunch at the Café, and when it eased up, we suited up in the rain gear and headed south.

The storm clouds were quite intense and we had to pull off a couple of times along the way to get out of the heavy rains. Eventually, the skies did clear up and we wound up making it to our destination in Duluth, the Super 8. We managed to make it to the local Harley dealer – HD Sport Centre – in time to pick up a poker chip to add to our collection.

We really didn’t feel like getting back on the bikes, so we just walked across the parking lot to the Perkins restaurant … for some so-so food and some terrible service. It’s not often that I don’t leave a tip of any sort, but our server sure as heck didn’t deserve any.

For the day, we logged a total of 691 kms, for a total to date on the trip of 16,500 km