Wow that was a long day.
We took it easy yesterday while waiting for hurricane Leslie to pass. It turned out to be not such a bad day after the rain stopped at about 1pm. There was actually worse weather the day before.
It was really cold over night so we got moving kind of slowly but I managed to away at my typical time of about 9:30 am. It was a blue sky with almost no clouds in the sky and a breeze from the west to push me. The route had me going predominately east so the breeze was really nice. By time time that Rochelle had caught me for lunch, I had already covered 82 km and it was only 1:15 pm. We had expected to camp near South Brook, about 128 km from last night's campground but at our lunch break I was feeling so good, we checked to see if there was some place further that I could get to. We decided to meet up at South Brook and decide but the next campground was at about 172 km.
At South Brook, it was 4:00 pm and I was still feeling full of energy so I decided to go for Catamaran Park campground. The road turns south at South Brook and the next 35 km seemed to be all up hill with a bit of a head wind as the winds shifted to the sourtheast. Finally, in the last 5 km or so before the park, there were some slight downhills to ease me into the end of the day.
I arrived at Catamaran Park at about 7:00 pm to find VanGo sitting at a locked gate. The campground was supposed to be open for another couple of weeks but I guess no one told the owners. We were left trying to figure out what to do. I decided I still had something left in my legs and there was still light so I headed off and covered most of the distance (26 km) to Grand Falls-Windsor by the time Rochelle caught up to me and picked me up. We drove about 5 km to the only "open" campground in Grand Falls-Windsor only to find it closed too. So we are spending another night in a Walmart parking lot. Good thing there was a Walmart here!
So today I actually rode two days distance, 198 km. Endomondo said I burned 8300 calories today! I guess we will be getting to St. John's a day early!
I rode roughly 200 km in a day a couple of times about 18 years ago but nothing nearly this far since. This may be my longest day ever. Surprisingly, I don't feel all that bad. The rest day before helped, I'm sure.
Tomorrow will be a relatively easy 100 km to Gander. It will likely be done more slowly after the energy output today. There are a couple of campgrounds in that area but there is also another Walmart as backup!