Journey Notes

Today's ride was quite different from yesterday's. I only had a couple of glimpses of the ocean and the route was much hillier although nothing that was all that challenging.

Soon after leaving Beresford, I drove through Bathurst and was quickly out into lonely forested highway as I crossed the base of a fairly wide peninsula (never figured out what it was called). I was surprised at one point to see a black bear cub next to the road. When he saw me, he ran into the woods. I was grateful that at that point I was moving at about 40 km/h and if the mother was near by, she wasn't likely to be able to come after me. You do feel a lot more vulnerable to wildlife when on a bicycle. Surprisingly, this is the first time that I've seen anything that might be even remotely dangerous on this trip.

I eventually reached Miramichi city and river. I quickly crossed the river and the the city and was back out into forest again. I was almost at the 100 km point before Rochelle caught up to me and we ate lunch in front of an abandoned retail building.

The last 35 km was quite uneventful although the strong tail wind that I had enjoyed all day eventually turned around and was a cross head wind, slowing me down considerably. Up until that point, I had an average speed of almost 28 km/h!

For the first time on this trip, the campground that we picked out had no serviced spots left and we had to take an unserviced one. It's too bad as it will be cold tonight and we will not be able to use our electric heater. Well, we have lots of good blankets!

I arrived around 4:30 pm and was really tired. The campground has a pretty good pool so we braved the large group of kids playing Marco-Polo and did a little swimming. It's really nice to just get into a pool after a long day. I don't swim much but it just feels good!

One surprise that I had in coming to New Brunswick is just how French it is. The province is officially bilingual but there were areas where there were no signs in English. Even the bilingual areas seemed to be predominately French.

Tomorrow, we will come back to the coast again just east of Moncton. We will be just north of the Confederation bridge to PEI that we drove across a little more than a week ago when we were touring the area with our goddaughter. The beaches here are supposed to be the warmest saltwater beaches in Canada and they were pretty warm. Hopefully, we will be able to take another dip tomorrow.