Day 30. A day in the wall…

Digby, Nova Scotia

Hurricane Lee… tropical storm… Cat 1 winds

Distances to date:

194 miles Week 4. (5 days – 3 riding, 1 layover, 1 transportation)

218 miles week 3. (5 days)

291 miles week 2. (7 days)

222 miles week 1 (6 days)

TOTAL: 925 miles, 22 riding days. Avg. 42 miles per day

Indoors “ riding the storm out”. Blustery, 24 mph sustained winds, about 1.5” of rain at this point. No loss of power but at least 5 trucks staged up the street… ready to go to work. Lots of car traffic driving by to see the waves in the bay at high tide. Not threatening at this point anyway. Digby has weathered the worst of the storm. Not so much New Brunswick! Power is out along the Bay of Fundy towns and also the Atlantic Ocean side of Nova Scotia.

We have provisions for today and possibly tomorrow. The town is definitely shutdown today. Helps to be a camper in situations like this. If the power should go out, we’ve got the JetBoil! Leftover bottle of wine, veggie snacks, cup of noodles and the best…. Dill Pickle hummus!

When you have a weather day like today, Jim (the route planner), takes these idle hours to plan the details for the final 3 weeks. As usual it’s logistics, like another rainy day on Tuesday, places to camp, cabin and/or hotel for a day. We are hoping we can camp most of the week coming up since the weather will improve (except Tuesday)!

My assignment is to plan the Halifax departure hotel (A)… find a bike shop in Halifax to get bike boxes (B) and getting from B to A to C (the airport). It doesn’t help that the airport is 28km out of the city (17 miles). Our hope/plan is to have one full day in Halifax to accomplish the boxing logistics. It also looks like we will bus-bag our bikes one more time after we complete the Cabot Trail loop, to get back to Halifax. About a 5 hr bus trip! Details, details… We have not booked our return flight yet… we will know that better as we advance east toward Cape Breton.

The Cabot Trail…

It is about 2 weeks away before we get to Baddeck, NS. This is the starting point of “the loop”. The loop is 185 miles of spectacular cliff side scenery plunging into the ocean. It has several extremely STEEP climbs and descents and coastal wind. I’m not going to lie…it will be really hard and I will be pushing my bike up those climbs I’m certain! Intimidates me for sure. But…. everyone says it stunning. So it’s a “must do”!

If you are worried about the “wild coyotes” in the area of the Cape Bretons National Park… I am resting a little easier… the Park Service killed 3 last week that attacked a bicyclist on the highway!!!! Seriously true… Aimee (from QC) first warned us this was a thing… then about 10 days ago, a coyote bit a cyclists arm while he was trying to defend himself with his bicycle. These coyotes had become habituated to people and were not afraid. Sounds a bit like bears..doesn’t it?!😱. I am following the National Parks Facebook posts regarding the problem.

So we have our perils… road construction, hurricanes and possibly coyotes! And there’s always the biggest peril… vehicles!