Day 16

Fog developed overnight and hung over Perth-Andover until just after breakfast. The rest of the day was beautiful and sunny with some wind, but not enough to bring us to tears from pushing against it.

 

Our unusual B&B last night included a breakfast at the local Bistro.  Charlie, our chef, and Shirley the sister of our B&B host (I know … it gets complicated..) cooked up a delicious egg soufflé to get us on our way. 

 

After discussion with some locals we decided to take the old TransCanada Highway out of Perth-Andover on our way to Woodstock.  While it had a great shoulder and the traffic was not crazy the experience was somewhat static compared to riding along and encountering small villages and life in action.

 

 

 

Florenceville-Bristol, the home of McCain’s International was our next stop where we hoped to get a coffee and take a break. We could see the factory on the horizon but had an uneasy feeling that not all potatoes were willing participants.  A few kilometers before Florenceville-Bristol we started to see the presence of escaped potatoes on the side of the road,  heading for freedom.

 

 

We stopped in Hartland for a photo op at the longest covered bridge in the world.  Someone in our travels had suggested we ride through the bridge for the experience. This seemed like a really bad idea once we realized there was lots of car traffic with lights on and no suitable place for us to ride.

 

 

Shortly after leaving Hartland we noticed a Trans Canada Trail sign and decent trail. We decided to swing our bikes onto the trail and really enjoyed our ride along the St. John River.  The color was beautiful but not as vibrant as we had seen around Sherbrooke. In addition many of the leaves had fallen as the season has progressed.

 

 

 

This will be our last full day of riding our bikes.  The road from here on has little shoulder and becomes quite busy.  Upon entering Woodstock we pulled into an Enterprise Rental store and picked up a rental car.  Our plan for the next week is to carry our bikes in a van as we explore the Maritimes.  We had an overwhelming flush of emotions as we traded in our bike wheels for car wheels.  We shed a tear realizing that we had finished about 1000 km. and also celebrated the chance to see some other parts of the Maritimes. 

Ignore the huge smile on Trent’s face and the small one on Cathy’s!!