Hello again from the wild hog and wild hogette...:)
Realized that yesterday's post was pretty dull. Think it was because when I wrote it I was very tired after walking a lot around Quebec City...at any rate, hope it gave you a taste for that day and a thirst to see that interesting city if you haven't already been there.
We awoke this morning to an overcast sky and light drizzle. Decided to hit the road about 9:15 and see how far we could get. Surprisingly we managed to make it to Fredericton - with an overcast sky all day and the occasional sprinkle but amazingly no real rain, though the dark clouds threatened all day.
Stopped in Rivieres du Loup for coffee and a pannini at Tim's. Decided to book our hotel in Fredericton and keep our fingers crossed we wouldn't be held up by rain. We didn't spend much time in the town, despite knowing there was a waterfall there and I'm a sucker for waterfalls, as we wanted to try to stay ahead of the rain if at all possible.
The countryside, particularly eastward from Rivieres du Loup, is some of the prettiest we have seen on our journey thus far...rolling hills with small farms dotting the countryside, stands of all sorts of different coniferous and deciduous trees (some of which we hadn't seen before), lots of fields of potatoes which were blooming, vistas with lakes in the background....you get the idea. I think what struck me the most was how far one could see and it was just wave upon wave of fields and pretty houses and lush crops. I can only imagine how glorious it would have looked if the sun had shone. I tried to take some photos from the bike but most turned out to be just rather grey....darn! Here are a couple of examples though just to give you a feel for the place...
We have been enjoying having headsets on our helmets so we can talk to one another and Harry's gps girlfriend could talk to both of us. Unfortunately, some wires in Harry's helmet have been on the fritz since Dreyden and despite his best efforts each night to repair it, it hasn't been working well. We are hoping to find some replacement parts along the way but it's usually a special order item so we are not entirely optimistic. I'm telling you this as a prelude to the next item...i.e. usually when I see something along the road that is a mystery to me I'll ask Harry if he knows what it is and most often he does. However, with our failing headsets I had a puzzle on my mind for many, many kilometres today...I had been noticing a high mesh type wire fence that stretched for many, many miles....with the occasional 'gate' in it. I asked Harry if he knew what it was and of course he couldn't answer me (did I mention that my headset still works so I can talk to him whenever I want and share my ideas and theories about things and he can't say a darn thing! :) - so for the next little while I tried to come up with possibilities....part of the trans Canada trail system, something to hold in about 10,000 buffalo, something to discourage animals from going in, a grow op the government was protecting in order to pay all the Senators bonuses...the ideas just kept coming. :) At the end of it all I was informed by my driver that it was likely something erected to keep the moose away from the highway...a much more plausible idea than any I came up with that's for sure! :)
Our next stop for gas was in Edmunston...after we filled up it started to shower so I took the opportunity to plug my mp3 player into an outlet to recharge it...for some reason had forgotten to do that the night before and I do love listening to CBC radio and my music when wheeling along on the bike. :) A snack helped to pass the time until the skies quit dripping.
There is a lot of road construction in the area...they are twinning the highway and it must have gone on for 30 or more kilometres...lots of different road crews all along the way. Looks like they had to do a fair bit of blasting. We were surprised in this area to see more of the Canadian Shield....for some reason thought we'd left it behind in Ontario. It is a big construction project and we were surprised how well the traffic moved despite all the machines every which where...:)
At Grand Falls we took a trip into the town to check out their falls...there were only two of the 6 or 8 gates open on the dam and even with that the falls were pretty impressive...though there was some foamy looking stuff at the bottom that had me wondering a bit about what it was composed of...probably doesn't bear too much thinking about with all the pulp mills in the area :).
Just kidding! :) Mind you, both of us have done zip lines...me in Costa Rica and Harry in the Mayan so we do know the rush one gets from the experience.
Here is the "real" pic of us at the falls...pretty tame, eh?
We had almost 600 km. to put on the bike so after a brief stop it was up and over the seat again and winging our way east. We passed by Florenceville-Bristol...Canada's French fry capital! We saw the McCain plant off the road and could even smell French fries...true story! Here is a photo of a potato field...
The next photo is for my kids - proof to them that yes - I WAS at Woodstock!!! :)
And it was here that Harry got the happy news that his condo has been sold - so another photo of him doing the happy dance! :)
We gained another hour so when we hit Fredericton and our hotel it was 7:30 p.m....but only 6:30 to us. No restaurant in the hotel so we walked about 35 minutes down to the mall to have a stir fry and stretch our legs. Sitting on a bike all day is tiring work it turns out so it felt good to move...and a 70 minute walk brought me here to this computer to sit down and tell you a bit about how our journey is going.
A heavy rain is forecast in the area for the next two days so we may be making the Fredericton Best Western our home for another night...time will tell. One option in the morning is for us to travel about an hour from here and take the ferry across to Nova Scotia...will just have to play it by ear and you'll all have to sit on the edges of your seats to hear tomorrow where we end up!
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