September 15 PEI and Hurricane Ike

The wind blew and blew and blew during the night. We woke up to lots of gray clouds and wind, and debated what we should do for the day. Stay or go east to Red Point Prov. Park. It took us a while, but we decided to pack up and move, and if we didn’t make it to Red Point, oh well.

We also needed isobutane for our camp store, some more cans of soup, and some cash, so that was on our list of things to do first today. After driving through a number of small towns and battling the wind, we decided to turn into Summerside since it was a larger town, and might have a sporting goods store. Meanwhile, it had cleared off, and the wind stopped a little. Summerside had a Wal-mart, but we couldn’t find anything we were looking for in it (Stuffy Steve should be happy). So we went to the super Atlantic store and got the food items. They directed us to Canadian Tire for the isobutane, and downtown to the CIBC ATM. Canadian Tire is NOT a tire store, it is like a Lowe’s hardware store (if you are imaginative!), I’m not sure they even sell tires there. Leave it to our neighbors to the North! While in Summerside at the ATM, Steve was approached by a couple of missionaries from Salt Lake City. They were very happy to see a Utah license plate and were so enthusiastic they forgot to proselytize him. I guess they thought a biker was not too conducive to conversion!

After taking care of these pressing matters, we headed east again, with Steve battling the wind all the way. We had lunch at the New London Seafood Restaurant, and had oysters on the half shell, steamed mussels, fried clams and baked sole with lobster sauce. Ummmmm, good! After lunch, we planned a route to Red Point and gave up on seeing the National Park because of the wind. After several hours of fighting the wind, we decided to cut short our attempt at getting to a campsite at Red Point, and tried to find a campsite on the way to Woods Island, the ferry location.
We ended up at the Murray River campground, a private campground but without internet. We got directions to the library that had internet service and sent a message to our kids letting them know where we were.

So far we are 4,060 miles into our trip, and the motorcycle tires are holding up pretty well. . . but it’s doubtful they would hold out for the remaining 6,000 miles of our trip. Jon has ordered us some new ones that we will have put on when we get to his house next week (Thanks, Jon!).

September 14 PEI and lobster

The mosquitos came out quickly this morning, so they pushed us to get moving away from them. So we took down camp, called Jamie to wish her a happy birthday and left a message on her cellphone, packed up, and headed south to Shediac. New Brunswick is just lovely, and most of the roads we took were great. We arrived in Shediac about 11:30 and stopped at the giant lobster statue for a photo opportunity. We also checked in with the visitor’s bureau (a very unlively sort of guy). We got directions to the lobster boat tours, and headed downtown to the quay.

After a false turn that took us to the public quay, we got back on the main road and took the next road to the commercial quays. We found the boat tour people, but they didn’t have any opening for a tour until today at 4:15 p.m. Sounded like a good little tour, you got to go out with the lobster boat, pull up lobster crates, learn about the Shediac Bay and how lobsters grow, with the finale being learning how to crack a lobster and then a eat lobster dinner. But since we would have to wait for more than a day, we decided to ask about a place to have lobster at.
She recommended Terry’s Fish Market two doors down, so we went over there for lunch. Terry was an older gentleman who had run the fish market his whole life with his wife. They are the only two working there. He had a pile of cooked lobsters, and picked out a couple for us, cracked them, and gave us some potato salad, a roll, and coleslaw, for a total price of $26 Canadian. We took our trays upstairs, (see the picture) and gorged on lobster.

Then we headed over to PEI and crossed the Confederation Bridge (the longest span of bridge in the Western Hemisphere). We headed to the west coast, going through Summerside first. The tall ships were at anchor there, we missed them sailing in, but they were good to see.

Then we drove up the west coast for a while before heading across the northern tip of the island for Jacques Cartier Provincial Park. The word to describe this area is wild. The wind sweeps across it from the west and keeps it fairly deserted. The Prov. Park was on the lee side, and pretty empty. Another couple was there for several days from Ontario with their two standard poodles, and a third couple pulled in from BC later in the evening. They all came over to check our our rig, no one had ever seen anything like it before. This has been a common reaction at just about everywhere that we stop.

We had nice chats, and then retired to our nest for some soup and to watch a couple episodes of Heroes, the first season. Life is very tough!

September 13 New Brunswick

Tonight we are camped at the Kounchamajigee (this is not the correct spelling) National Park in New Brunswick. We arrived fairly early (4:30 p.m.) which was great since we had time to set up the tent and then go for a walk out to the sand dunes. Quite extraordinary! The park is at the mouth of a river flowing into the Atlantic Ocean, so the waters mix here to create a wonderful bird flyway. Lots and lots of different birds, cormorants, plovers, cranes, gulls, snakebirds. On the way out to the dunes we passed a couple who had two seven month old brown golden doodles, so we had to say hello. They were SOOooo cute! We also passed several piles of bear scat, chock full of berry seeds. The park attendant told us to store our food in the car.......then she looked up, saw the bike and said, just be careful, because there were several black bears in the vicinity. We met some folks from Sacramento who have been here for several days hiking, and they had actually seen a bear several days ago. Sooo.....we’ll be careful!

Steve’s taken some great photos from our walk this evening. I’ll try to pick up some of the best ones and upload them when I have a good internet connection.

This morning we got up and were going to go to the farmer’s market in Caraquet for breakfast but we couldn’t find it. After wandering around for a while downtown towing the trailer, we gave up and headed down the road towards the Acadian Village just outside of Caraquet. This was very interesting, similar to Williamsburg, VA, where they have tried to replicate how the typical Acadian families lived during the 1800’s. Every building had a person in period dress, and who talked about what it was like to live then. We found a cauldron of corn on the cob they were cooking and handing out today, their last day open for the season, so we each had an ear of corn and a molasses cake, ummmm yummy!

We headed out from the Acadian village in search of lunch, and finally stopped at the first open restaurant we found. Much to our delight, they had plenty of lobster choices on the menu, so Steve had a lobster omelet, and I had a lobster roll. Umm, just what we had been waiting for. We topped lunch off with a piece of warmed up sugar pie and ice cream and coffee. Way more than we needed, but it was just great!

This morning when we left the Berry Patch campground it was 60 degrees and misty, overcast. It was cloudy, rainy, and misty for much of the day, finally clearing right before we got to the national park. The mosquitos have been bad at both campsites, and our Deet doesn’t seem to phase them much. Tonight we got campfire wood when we checked in, and had a nice fire, a light meal, and great showers. We are tucked in our little tent with the heater on low, just keeping the chill off of us.

Tomorrow we are headed to Shediac, the lobster capital of New Brunswick. I want to go out on a lobster boat, so we’ll see if that happens. We may just stop for lobster, and head over to PEI. We are definitely behind on our schedule, so we may be at Jon and Lori’s by next Sunday (not tomorrow). Maybe Monday, we’ll see how it goes.

The Maritimes

Yesterday was a traveling day. We left our little B&B, and headed east. We bypassed Quebec City and Montreal, finally stopping at the first provincial park we came to in New Brunswick, just outside Edmundson. It was the next to the last day the park would be open this season, so we lucked out. We talked to Jon and Jamie before we went to bed, and found out that Sophie was pretty sick from eating a variety of refuse around the site. Jamie took her to the vet and got her some flagel, so hopefully she is better today. We made a dinner out of cheese, crackers, several different kinds of beer, and chocolates and called it a day.

Last night was the first night I was really cold in the tent. I had to get up during the night and turn up the heater after I found myself shivering in my sleeping bag. But the heater did the trick, and I slept in until 7:30 a.m. This morning when we finally got on the road at 11 a.m, the temperature was 48 degrees, so you know I had my heated clothes cranked up to high for most of the day!

We had breakfast, packed up, and then went over to the New Brunswick Botanical Gardens, and then to the NB Classic Auto Museum. The gardens were lovely even though it was at the end of their season. I’ll upload pictures tomorrow from Steve’s camera.

We finally got on the road about 11 a.m. and headed to Grand Falls to see the visitor center there. In the spring the falls are supposed to be 9/10’s the size of Niagara Falls. Today, they were quite lovely even at low water levels.

Some NB conservation officers stopped us in the parking lot of the Grand Falls and chatted about motorcycles and travel and their jobs. They said there was a lot of poaching going on in NB and Quebec. People were killing deer and moose to trade for drugs. Apparently a very heavy, mob based drug traffic scene goes on out of Montreal. They cautioned us to be on the lookout for moose on the route we were taking, and that they had seen a monster one two days ago. There were certainly lots of highway signs warning of moose traffic today but we didn’t see any, thank goodness.

Tonight we are staying at the Berrypatch Campground just outside of Bathurst. We are the only campers, so we have the place to ourselves. We’ve done laundry, caught up on the internet, and had a nice dinner of salad, baquette, and a nice Australian shiraz. Right now there are fireworks going on in town, but we haven’t figured out the occasion yet.

Tomorrow we will stop in town at the Farmer’s market for breakfast, and then head south along the east NB coast.

Ontario and Quebec

So this morning we woke up to a beautiful sunny day. Steve had gotten up earlier and turned our new heater up to high, and it was toasty warm in the tent, but very chilly (not quite frost) outside. Our campsite was next to a small lake, and the steam was rising off the lake, making it all very magical. We had a breakfast of cereal, coffee, and strawberry muffins, and headed off after getting the tent packed up. We are getting pretty efficient at packing up the tent by now.

We passed Ottawa and stopped at a tourist info center and decided to alter our route a little, and go off the beaten path for the night. We stopped at a cheese/chocolate/apple store along the way, and have some wonderful cheeses stinking up our ice chest. We are working on eating the chocolate caramels.

Tonight we are staying at Le Cite de la St. Lawrence B&B in St. Alexis-des-Monts. It is definitely off the beaten track. We are the only guests and the place is in a quiet small rural French Quebec town. I actually miss my little trailer tent nest, which is compact and cozy.

We had a pretty exciting day today. Steve is a great driver, he has maneuvered our rig down the highway amid the roaring semi’s, through pot holes, through construction gravel and traffic that was just insane, learned how to back the bike and trailer up, and has not yet dropped the bike! But the most masterful thing he did today was to get us on the ferry from Hudson to Oka. I have never seen a ferry like this one before. It is pulled by a power boat back and forth across the river. After the ferry is loaded, the power boat takes off and tugs it across and picks up speed as it gets near the other side, then steers to the side and gets out of the way as the ferry sort of rams into the other side. What an experience! But even better was getting the bike and trailer on and off the ferry. The approach has about a 10 inch drop, so the ferrymen put out some boards for the tires to go on. But the drop is not completely covered up, there are still gaping holes to drive into. So they directed Steve across the boards, and after the bike crossed, they quickly moved the boards so that the trailer wheels would also go across and not into the holes. I was screaming as I watched this happen getting on the ferry (I had insisted on getting off the bike before he tried this), and laughing on the other side as they did the same thing. These guys had obviously done this a lot and had their timing and moves down perfect!

I have a few pictures, but they don’t do justice to the event! Steve said at dinner if he had known what he was going to face as we took the turnoff to Oka, he wouldn’t have done it!

Well, I guess that is it for tonight. Tomorrow we head for New Brunswick.

Ontario, Canada

This is the slider swing from the Driftwood Campground we stayed at last night. I thought it was very cool, and reminded me of my childhood when these swings were all over the place.

Well, we have internet tonight at the Renfrew KOA, but it is V E R Y slow so I'll try to upload pictures tomorrow night at hopefully a faster connection.

The Spragge KOA was right off of busy highway 17, so we passed it by and went on to the Chutes Provincial Park. I guess the KOA's cater to the big rigs (I don't think we qualify) who have some soundproofing. The picture to the left is taken at Chutes Provincial Park as we were getting ready to leave.

We started out yesterday with a visit to Big Spring State Park in Michigan, Kitsi-itsy-bitchy- or something like that in Ojibiwa. We were the first to arrive at the park, and the ranger tasked us with feeding the fish while he went about his other morning chores. It was a very cool park, had a manually operated raft that took you out over the Big Spring that you could see 50+ feet under water with an artesian spring literally erupting from the bottom of the pond. It wa almost volcanic, except it was at 45 degrees fahrenheit.

After feeding the biggest trout I've seen for a while, we continued on our trip and crossed into Canada at Sault St. Marie. Northern Michigan was very windblown and bleak (Steve says it would have been nicer if the sun was shining), but by the time we got to Ontario, the sun was out but it was windy. We had a great lunch overlooking the Soo locks, and then traveled on east on Hwy 17.

Wow, the semi's own the road! They were all barreling down the highway at 10 or 20 klicks over the speed limit. One obviously missed a turn, and when we came by they had three tow trucks trying to get him out of the ditch on the opposite side of the road.

Chutes Provincial Park was about 1/2 mile out of Massey where we had located the local LCBO (local govt. liquor store) and restocked our cooler with yummy beers. After setting up the tent, we took a stroll around the campground and met a very nice couple with a beautiful wooden boat that they were taking to Lake Superior. They had a Ford Ranger like Jamie's only it was blue and had the niftiest pop-up camper in the truck bed! He had searched all over for a camper that would fit his truck, and found a manufacturer in Chicago. He had driven down to get it from upper Ontario, Canada.

It rained last night, but we stayed dry in our camper. Unfortunately the blower fan on our heater had died, so today we stopped at Home Depot in North Bay and got another. Boy does it generate the heat!!! That's good, because things were a little damp from yesterday.

Today we went past Sudbury and its nickel smelters. Steve said it looked a lot better than the last time he had seen it, but the trees and shrubs were still stunted from the acid rain from the smelters. I guess they have cleaned them up some.

We spent most of the morning in heavily wooded landscapes, and then suddenly....cows and pastures and farmland! I think I prefer the farmland! Certainly the smells.... reminds me of my childhood visits to my Uncle Adolph's farm in Minnesota.

We finished our day with a trip to a super Walmart to restock some supplied. We had a heck of a time finding any grocery stores today, so we finally gave up and got some directions from the KOA manager to the closest grocery store...Walmart. We finished our day with soup and salad.

Tomorrow we continue on our trek east, but we have decided to quit as close to 4 p.m. as we can, either in a motel or camping park.... so, we'll see what happens. We'll certainly try to post pictures tomorrow.

Upper Peninsula, Michigan

Tonight finds us in the small hamlet of Thompson (mile 1,917) on the North shore of the Upper Peninsula in Michigan. It was an uneventful ride up from Sturgeon Bay except for the flashing red lights of the Wisconsin Highway Patrol. The very nice officer informed me that I was speeding (in a construction zone, no less!) but he let me off with a warning. Cool!

We passed in and out of views of Lake Michigan and stopped to gander a closer look at a small but very pretty county park / campground filled with eccentric but kind people who just had to fill us in on the local color. Motorcycles just tend to get conversations started.

Tonight, we are in a beautiful campground right on the shoreline of Lake Michigan. It has been raining but we are snug in our little wheeled wonder with a campfire going between us and the beach. Truly a charming spot!

Tomorrow we will enter Ontario, Canada, and have plans to stay either at Chutes Provincial Park or Spragge KOA. We'll see what the day brings.