We had everything ready to go ahead of time so we could race into Truro and attend the 11:00 AA meeting at the Douglas community center in the middle of town. Neil told us where to go and graciously extended our check out time so we could make the visit. They seemed almost shocked that outsiders had found their group. It was a speaker meeting but the speaker didn’t show so PJ got tapped to share her experience, strength and hope. It was good to get a meeting in and we talked a while after with members of the group. As we were pulling out of the parking lot, an urban ungulate ran across the road in front of us. We were surprised to see a deer in such a built up area.
Kind of looks like Cali
Back at Elm River, we thanked Neil again for his hospitality, filled the propane tank and hit the road back into New Brunswick. Time to start moving west and making our way towards Wyoming, Montana and Vancouver. We have a date to meet up with our good friends from Bucerias, Mexico in their home base of White Rock, B.C. on October 17. As slow as we go, it’s time to point our prow somewhere along a course in that direction.
It was an easy drive to Kouchibouguac National Park (say that three times real fast) mostly on the two lane Trans Canada 2. Decent pavement the majority of the ride with a few potholed and bumpy stretches. We hit more rural, who am I kidding everything is rural in eastern Canada, one lane back road for the last hour or so to Kouchibouguac. I got us a little lost trying to sneak in a back way that I found on the Google map, but I ended up at the sister campground at the other end of the park. It worked out, though, the smaller campground had no one around and the girl checked us in there. When we got around the lagoon to our campground, there was a line at the kiosk four deep that we got to drive right past.
We have a gorgeous campsite nestled in the spruce, fir and maples. There is lots of room between camps and the people all seem to be hiker, biker, kayak type folks. You know, the pants that zip off at the knee into shorts style people. No hordes of beer drinking rowdies sponsoring cornhole tournaments here. They have a network of bike trails all over the park and a lagoon that spans two river outlets running inside a set of barrier islands with the Northumbrian Sea just on the other side. Eastern Canada does not disappoint. I seem to use the words beautiful, gorgeous and amazing a lot to describe places and things that we see on our travels and they are. But, this entire area is magical. Visit here if you can.
Cali’s been waking us up a lot at night lately, so we were a bit tired when we got set up so we had a nice nap in the quiet forested camp. At six, I woke us up and got the bikes ready and we went a big loop around the Source by the Bog Le Tourbiere where we got on the bike trail that runs down the Kouchibouguac River to the sea. We followed it past the campground and stopped to check out the kayak launch area at Ryans. I didn’t realize how French New Brunswick is, lots of Acadian influence.
From there we rounded the point and followed along the internal waterway to Plage Kellys where a long wooden boardwalk spans the narrowest point to get out to the Northumbrian beach on the other side. We walked over as the sun was starting to set. People were walking the shore, flying kites and enjoying the cool evening. We moseyed around a bit but still had a few kilometers of biking to get home and the sun was rapidly dropping.
Heeere’s Johnny!
We raced for camp, stopping again at Ryans to watch the final sunset and talk to the Acadian guy that works the concession there. His family had owned land in the park years ago when the government moved them off and took their land for the park. There are some interesting stories here and I’m eager to learn more. I took another wrong turn and made the ride back a little longer than it had to be but made at last and we were soon snug in our little nest.
Heart on the Wing 