When I planned the trip I gave myself a rest day on Manitoulin Island because I had to reserve my campsite for 2 nights during the Perseids. I was also unsure how beat I would be after three days of riding and being out all day. This is a vacation so I’m allowed to relax a bit right?
So after another cold night I wake up relatively early and no one else is awake. There isn’t really anything to do and it’s still a bit cool out so I just get ready in the most inefficient way possible. Go to the washroom, walk back to the campsite. Go to the empty common area to eat my breakfast, walk back to the campsite. Take a nice warm shower, walk back to the campsite. Now it’s warm and I go to the area with outlets to charge my phone as well as my backup battery. Slowly other people start to wake up and as the individual camp sites don’t have electricity some of them make their way to the charging area as well. As I’m listening to other people’s plans for the day and idly chatting my own plan starts to form: I want to swim in Lake Manitou.
Why Lake Manitou? Well just like Manitoulin Island is the largest island in a lake in the world, Lake Manitou is the largest lake on an island in a lake in the world, so it has that going for it. Also, it’s only about 7km away from the campsite, which is an acceptable bike ride for a rest day. Now in case you’re wondering there are islands in Lake Manitou but none of them are the largest island in a lake on an island in a lake in the world. The honour for that goes to Treasure Island on Lake Mindemoya which is about 20km away – too far away to ride to on a rest day and I’d need some way to get to the island as well. So Lake Manitou it is!
The first order of the day is breakfast and there’s a general store that isn’t too much of a detour so I pick up way too much junk food from there and continue to the lake. Just by looking you can’t really tell the difference between riding on the island and anywhere else on the trip but there’s definitely less people around.
I make it to the hamlet of Sandfield which has a little dock, boat launch, as well as a general store (which is closed, good thing I already bought my food!). There are signs saying “no swimming” so I just dip my feet in the water and then sit at the sole picnic table enjoying my food. It’s a hot, sunny, summer’s day so it’s enjoyable to just sit and drink a cold pop looking at the lake. There are cottages nearby and some of the kids staying there go for a swim off the launch. They leave and later a car arrives with a lady and her grandkid. They also swim off the launch. The lady says the water’s nice and that I should swim too and I figure if it’s good enough for the locals it’s good enough for me. I jump off the dock into the water and it’s not too cold. The dock has a ladder on it so I can either climb back up or swim to the launch. I decide to swim to the launch and walk out but it’s a bit slippery from algae. Using the ladder is definitely the better option. I swim around a bit more and then go back to my picnic table to dry off and eat more junk food. Once I’m dry and bored I decide it’s about time to head back and maybe see about getting some real food.
Conveniently there’s a restaurant on the road on the way back to the campsite, I didn’t pass it on the way to the lake because of my detour to the general store, but it looked pretty good on Google so I was looking forward to eating there. When I got there I had a bit of a dilemma deciding what to eat. Something big like a grilled fish or pasta would fill me up but I was more in the mood for lighter food. I don’t know if that’s because I’d been eating heavier foods in general or because I’d just had a bunch of junk food for breakfast but I decided to go with a soup and salad. Not having had anything else there I can’t say if I made the right choice but they were both very good. It didn’t take much of arm twisting for me to order desert as well as a vegan burrito to take back for supper.
When I get back to the campgrounds I just chill for the rest of the day and turn in early. It’s a rest day so may as well get my rest in after all.
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