On the Way to the West Coast and the Bay of Fundy

 

We cut across the northern part of Nova Scotia today, continuing our southing toward wine country. But first, we wanted to watch the tidal bore from the Bay of Fundy. They said that the Salmon River, where it flows from Truro to the Cobiquid Bay is a good place. That's about 90 km from where we stayed last night in Pugwash (that's a whole 'nother story that I'm not going to get into without a lot more time...), and the tidal predictions put the bore as being at a Fundy Discovery Centre at about 1300. So we needed to make good time.

 

 We left the Pugwash BnB early. Actually, we couldn't leave early enough. But I diverge and already said that I wasn't going to get into that. So we rode. Fortunately, for the first real time since we started this trip, we had a smokin' tail wind. 30 kph gusting 60 kph. Wahoo! We were flying like we had an appointment at the Bay of Fundy. We even had a 10 km climb to ride (that big lump you see in the profile above), and we flew up it (of course, it helps to have a big hand of the Wind God pushing you!).

Along the way Lorie took only two photos, a ski area near the top of the climb, and a vista from the top.

Nice little ski hill. I can't remember its name...

Looking south from the summit

It was sunny but pretty cold again. I don't think that we were higher than 6 degrees all day. But we kept warm enough.

As we approached Truro, we still had about 15 km to ride and the time for the tide was drawing near. So we took a short cut along a section of super highway. It wasn't that bad, but I'm really not excited about riding on the TransCanada Highway if I don't have to. Everyone is very courteous, but cars and trucks passing at speed are terrifying.

But we made it! There is a "Discovery Centre" on the Salmon River just where it meets Cobiquid Bay. The very helpful ranger at the centre told us that we had about 30 minutes to spare. So we layered up in coats to stay warm, and hid in the lee of the center. Then, about 15 minutes later the ranger shouted out, "Here she comes!" We ran to the top of the levee and watched as a wave moved up the river about as fast as we can ride our bike, and reversed the flow of the river. It happened super fast and was awesome to see. Brown, silt-filed water just flowed backwards, upstream.

Here are a few photos and I'm trying one video. I'm not sure that you can appreciate what we watched, but regardless, it is an amazing display of the force of nature. One that is repeated daily here in Truro.

Before the tidal bore started

The first glimpse of the bore heading upriver

The water level rises unbelievably quickly

Secondary waves. At this point the entire river is flowing backwards

In short order, the entire river was full and the sandbar that was high and dry a few minutes ago was submerged under roiling brown water.

The river looks pretty wide at this point

Hopefully this video works.

A visit to the Bay of Fundy is definitely worth it. If I might be so bold, I suggest that you come in late July or August...

We are heading southward along the west coast of NS tomorrow. More cool, no, cold weather tomorrow. But no rain...:).

Back to Nova Scotia

 From Cape Tormentine, NB, we ride today in an easterly direction back into Nova Scotia and to the little town of Pugwash. Pugwash is on a little port. We knew that. But other than that we had no idea about the town; it was simply a place that had an AirBnB and which was located about 100 km from Cape Tormentine.

The ride was pretty nice and the roads were very quiet. One long stretch of road had lots of moose signs and zero traffic for about an hour, but alas, no moose sightings for us. We rode quite a ways on the New Brunswick trail, a dirt/gravel path that looks to be used mostly by ATVs. But we saw no other vehicles or bikes or walkers at all.

Riding the New Brunswick trail

Along the trail

A vineyard along the way

As you can see, we did pass a vineyard along the way. The winery was not open, so we kept moving. We had intermittent rain throughout the day, but it was fairly warm and we didn't get too wet. As we entered Pugwash we saw a lot of industrial stuff, including a huge pile of something that looked pretty industrial. 

Entering Pugwash

Industrial salt

It turns out that the piles are salt and that a huge underground salt mine lies below the town. The people who own the place we are staying at said that the mine shafts run about 800 feet below the town and the river and the harbor, and that we shouldn't worry if at about midnight the house shakes -- it is when they do blasting. Wonderful.

The Thinkers Lodge

Good ideas but they haven't gotten much traction

The other thing that Pugwash has is that it is the home of the Thinker's Lodge. This was where nuclear scientists from both sides of the Iron Curtain gathered in 1957 to try to figure out a way to eliminate nuclear weapons. So far as we could find out, they only met once.

The real excitement in Pugwash was our AirBnB booking. We had made the reservation, paid for it, received confirmation and got the address. We didn't have any trouble finding the place and it looked nice from the outside. So Lorie knocked on the door. The nice guy who answered said "No, this isn't an AirBnB house. It is our house and we've lived here since last August." What? We explained our situation to him and he understood, but explained that the woman who had listed it on AirBnB had moved to France over a year ago. He added that she left under "suspicious" circumstances and that she apparently was quite a crook. Seems she's still at it.

AirBnB didn't have any problem taking our money, though. We did find one other place in town that had a room and we rented that. That's a story in itself, but not worth getting in to. We did jump right on the computer and called AirBnB. After going through about 4 layers of "consumer service," Lorie was able to talk to someone who (a) refunded our money, and (b) shut down the AirBnB listing. Weird, eh? We're just glad that we found a room since the next lodging we could find was about 35 km away and we'd already ridden 100 and didn't feel like riding more in the pouring rain.

Lorie then checked all of our other reservations for the rest of the trip and they all check out well.

So to commiserate, we had poutine...

It seems like we have to get poutine at least once every time we're in Canada...

Tomorrow we head due south toward wine country, and we are looking forward to it and maybe some better weather. 

Ride Day 15: From PEI to New Brunswick

 After two plus weeks of riding we are getting into a kind of rhythm of how to do the little things. Each morning we check the weather. If it is going to be rainy, we gear up and pack the rest of our rain gear and gloves near the top of the bags where they are easy to get at. If it is going to be sunny (which has been, what, 2 days?), we pack our rain gear away and go with warm but less waterproof clothing. And the same goes for the riding; we can manage our speed and how hard we work based on how far we are riding and how long and steep the hills are. Getting into a rhythm makes the work easier and the riding more enjoyable.

Today we rode from Charlottetown, PEI to the PEI side of the Confederation Bridge. It was a nice ride in beautiful sunshine after the clouds burnt off, with a bit of wind. We stopped by Victoria Harbor on the Northumberland Strait and had a nice lunch. Lorie had a lobster roll and I had fish tacos. The lobster rolls at this particular restaurant were voted the best on the island. We haven't had any others, but Lorie reports that this one was fantastic, so we agree with the vote.

The restaurant at Victoria Harbor

Lorie's Lobster Roll

My fish tacos - very good

The route today took us in a westerly direction along the Northumberland Strait and a lot of the route was on dirt roads (the soil here is all very red colored).

When we made it to the bridge station at the PEI end we "hailed" the shuttle service from a little phone booth type of thing. They said that they'd be there as quick as the could be. And in about 5 minutes a pickup truck arrived; it had a conventional bike rack on the back. The girl that was driving looked at our bike and said, "Crap, I need to get the other truck. The one with the trailer. I'll be right back." And she was. We loaded up the bike (took the bags off first) and we were off over the bridge.

I had to give the bike a wash when we arrived at our destination for tonight

Loading the tandem on the trailer and securing it

The bridge is, IMO, scary!

Looking back at the bike on the trailer

The shuttle driver got us over the bridge in no time whatsoever and we quickly unloaded the bike. She was off right away to pick up the guy back on the other side who's bike wouldn't fit with our tandem..,

This was our first foray into New Brunswick. We had only about 10 km to ride, so we leisurely headed to Cape Tormentine, which is just east of our drop off point. It is kind of marshy here -- the locals call it muskeg - so I'm glad the wind is blowing (when the wind isn't blowing the black flies and mosquitoes are out in droves, which causes Lorie to hide!).

New Brunswick muskeg

Looking back at the bridge. The beaches here are the same color as the soil on PEI

Cape Tormentine, where we are staying, is remote by any measure. We have a tiny cabin close to the beach and it is just fine. The neighbor down the road said that there is a convenience store at the RV park that is about 5 km away, so we rode down there and got some stuff for dinner and even found a couple of beers (maybe convenience stores are licensed in New Brunswick?).

Upstreet Brewing's Eighty Bob Red Ale

I hope that you're all enjoying the long weekend and doing something fun!

Ride Day 14: To Charlottetown

 

Charlotetown is the biggest city on PEI. We are not sure what to expect but are looking forward to seeing it. We ride a fairly short distance again, but that may be good because the weather is supposed to be pretty nasty.

 

 

From St. Peter's Bay of the bad fish & chips, to Charlottetown, is about 70 km. The weather forecast is for fairly warm temperatures but rain and, sadly, very strong winds from the southwest, the direction we're heading. Nothing for it, though, so after a super breakfast at the BnB (I had Eggs Benedict, which I haven't had in decades. It was good, if a bit rich...) we got on the rain gear and headed down the road. Not 30 minutes into the ride the wind did what it was supposed to do and made the day pretty hard. At times the wind was so strong that I pulled my shoe off the pedal in case we got tipped over. 

Can you see wind in a still photo? It is blurry because the rain.

Lorie found a great farmers market on the outskirts of Charlottetown

Lots of good stuff

But for all my complaining about the weather, it wasn't that bad and we made it to "Town" fairly fast. The farmers market had all sorts of interesting food and we were pretty hungry. So we got some crab cakes and they were delicious!

Made with PEI rock crab rather than snow crab -- the women at the food stand said that the rock crab are better than the snow crab.

Some of our route followed the "Confederation Trail." We were passing the runner, not the other way
around.

Charlottetown is pretty big. It has a large university and after 2 weeks in really rural settings it is a bit of a shock. But they have some good craft breweries and that helps with re-entry, right?

Upstreet Brewing

The weather forecast is better for tomorrow. We are heading to the Confederation Bridge, which connects PEI to New Brunswick. We can't ride over the bridge but will put the bike on a shuttle. The bridge is about 10 km long (around 6 miles) and I don't like bridges very much.

The Confederation Bridge

Looking forward to the mainland.

Isles-de-la-Madeleine and back to PEI

This will be a double day blog again. It was so perfect on  Isles-de-la-Madeleine yesterday that sitting down to write the blog kind of slipped to the bottom of my list.

This island is absolutely gorgeous on a perfect sunny day. Such days are a rarity this time of year, so we savored the day as much as we could. The island reminds both of us a lot like Iceland. There is very little vegetation and it is windswept and green (remember: Iceland is green. Greenland is ice.). There are brightly painted colorful houses, all manner of boats (mostly fishing boats), also brightly painted and just as colorfully named, headlands, beaches, hills. It has a bit of everything.

Houses across and inlet from where we stayed

Boats waiting for work to be finished

A typical PEI lighthouse

Lobstermen returning to port with their daily catch

It was a real treat to ride the bike "naked," without the heavy bags

They love a big, well-tended lawn on Isle-de-la-Madeleine!

We rode around as much of the island that we cared to ride on our "day off." Fascinating place. Our best guess as to the population is maybe about 5,000. But that's just a guess. In the winter it is surely less, and in the summer it is pretty full of tourists. We visited a fromagerie, a herring smoke house, and a pasticerie. Of course we bought some cheese, smoked herring and some baked goodies. Yum.

The herring smoke houses

Pasticerie

Baked goodies to buy

The fromagerie

We even chanced by a well-stocked bike shop and stopped in to buy a few CO2 cartridges (US Homeland Security won't let them on the plane, even though FAA regulations say that 2 are OK if properly sized) and to use their floor pump.

We watched to evening ferry arrive in port and were amazed to watch the captain's skill at turning the huge ship around in tight quarters and then backing into position. When we came in the night before it was pretty windy and he used a tug to push the bow in. Not this time.

Parallel parking a 300 foot ship

For dinner we went back to the same restaurant that we went to last night. They have seal burgers on the menu and we were excited to try them. The locals say that seal is a hyper-local delicacy. They say that it is strong in the same way that venison can be gamey, but that we should try. We had just arrived and were about to order when the power went out -- the entire island had no power. Argh. The beer taps still worked, though, so we had a couple of beers. But it was soon evident that the power was out for quite a while, so we sadly left without having tried the seal.

We headed home and noticed that the liquor store was open and bought a french wine. Then we had Pied du Vent cheese with baguette, smoked dried herring with baguette and cheese, and some nice wine. Not a bad way to end the day, even though power loss prevented me from blogging (a blessing for both yous and I?).

Bread, smoked scallops, and local cheese

Dinner!

Smoked herring

Candles helped light the darkened restaurant

The ferry is scheduled to depart at 0700 and we had to be at the dock at 0600. So we got up early and since the rain was coming down in buckets, got geared up. They let us on the ferry first, before the cars and trucks, so we didn't get super wet. The ferry ride was 5 hours and was a bit rolly given the wind and driving rain, but it gave our clothes time to dry out.

We donned all of our rain gear and disembarked once we had docked back on PEI, in Souris. It was about 7 degrees, not much wind, but torrentially raining. But we had a relatively short ride to St. Peter's Bay, maybe 50 km, Our Shower's Pass rain gear (from Portland) kept us dry inside (mostly) even though it rained the entire ride. And we made it in record time and got tucked into an awesome BnB right on the bay. We are going to walk to the little village for dinner, and there is even a Ceilidh tonight at the community hall (a local get together with music and revelry). We're going to stop by if the rain lets up a bit.

Here's a few photos from St. Peter's Bay. The rain hasn't let up much. Hopefully tomorrow will be better but probably not.

Rick's Fish & Chips, St. Peter's Bay, PEI

Total grease bombs! Call it Rick's Fish & Skips

The awesome BnB we're staying in.

We head to the big town of Charlottetown tomorrow, but first I wanted to add a short bit about drivers from Quebec. Where ever we are around the world riding the tandem, we quickly get a sense for how the local drivers are. Most everywhere we go, drivers are super courteous. It is always a joy to ride where the cars give us wide berth, slow down, give us a happy honk, etc. That is how it is in Nova Scotia and PEI. But Quebec is a huge exception: the drivers from Quebec are, in a word or two, super jerks. We always ride as far to the right side of the road as possible. Always. But in Quebec the drivers always have their right-side wheels over the white line. In NS and PEI the drivers all pull into the left hand lane when they pass us. But not the Quebecois. Super jerks, and so far as we can recall, the world's jerkiest drivers when it comes to cyclists.

We even tested our theory when we got off the ferry this morning. They let us off first, so we hit the road first. About 50 percent of the cars had NS or PEI plates, and 50 percent had Quebec plates. Our theory was close to 100 percent right. So here's a note to self: never go for a ride in Quebec! (Of course there are exceptions but our theory seems to hold true. So if you're from Quebec and are offended, no apologies from me!)