Journey Notes

Today, I rode across New Brunswick. Not the widest part but I rode from just about the US border with New Brunswick at St-Léonard to Campbellton where I can at least see the Atlantic Ocean. Actually, it's really the Restigouche River but it is affected by the tides so I'll call it the Atlantic. This is the first time on this ride that I've seen the Atlantic so it was quite an emotional feeling as I crested a pass just above Campbellton and could see the bay in the distance.

I woke up this morning to rain and thunder. It was still dark but I had it in my mind that I had to get up early to be able to cover the 144 km in daylight. I kept listening to the rain and thinking, "if it's raining, I might as well sleep in a bit". That was until I checked the clock and saw that it was 3:30 am.

I ended up sleeping in until 8 am. The rain had stopped and by the sounds of the trucks on the highway, it was dry. The start of the ride at 9:30 am was dry and stayed that way for a while. I did have two rain showers that totalled about 15 minutes of wet so it wasn't too bad. It was quite cloudy and cool for most of the day so I rode in my rain jacket and leg warmers until late afternoon.

Because the route was almost completely without cell phone coverage, we made plans to meet at several places to make sure my bike and VanGo made it that far. The first was at St-Quentin, where I got this picture of a big maple leaf.

The second stop was in Kedgwick where there was a nice park with covered benches and a washroom. If it had been sunny and warm, it would have been much nicer. We ate lunch at Kedgwick.

The maps showed almost nothing from Kedgwick to Campbellton so we picked a spot about half way and decided to meet along the road. That worked well. Rochelle ended up waiting for as much as an hour at each of these places but at least she had the Bell MiFi to get on the internet. Too bad Fido/Rogers cell coverage is so poor in the Atlantic provinces.

The day was very hilly but I did have a tail wind for most of the way with a few sections with very strong head winds. In fact, I had one of the steepest long downhill stretches that I've had across the whole trip. There was a 5 km section with grades up to 11%. I'm glad there wasn't a complementary uphill across a valley. The last 40 km or so seemed to be much more downhill than up. That was nice to have at the end of a long day.

Tomorrow, we move into Quebec again and follow the south shore of the Gaspé Peninsula to visit some of my family tomorrow night.