Day 50. Hold your horses… not so fast…the bus is SOLD OUT!!

Nyanza Trailsman Lodge to Wagmatcook Gas Station/Maritime Bus Stop and back to Baddeck Cabot Trail Campground

10/6/23. 9km.

What we thought was going to be a transit day turned very quickly into a logistical nightmare! Woulda,shoulda,coulda….buy the bus ticket in advance. We knew what day we were leaving. We asked the “kid” (key word here) last Friday at the gas/bus station and he said it’s a big bus… it’s never full. We believed him. What we didn’t know and he didn’t think of either was that this weekend is Canada Thanksgiving…3 day weekend. All the college kids are taking the bus home for the weekend! It’s not like the USA where you get plastered with Thanksgiving ads and merch etc. It’s just a 3 day holiday. All week we’ve been here and had no clue that anything other than the Celtic Colour Festival was going on. Jim blew a gasket at the gas/bus stop when he waltz’s in and gets that news! Now what the hell are we going to do??? We sat at the gas/bus shop on the curb for over an hour waiting to check if the bus was really full. Yep… sold out all the way to Halifax!

We tried UHaul but they didn’t have any oneway trucks available. The shuttles are all full too. So we bought 2 tickets for 9:30am Saturday. The bus will drop us at the airport. But… we need to get the bike boxes from the cycle shop to the airport hotel! And the mechanic timeline for the bike shop to pack our bikes is long gone. Now Jim and I will have to do it ourselves at the hotel. We can do it but just did not plan on that. Ugh!

We spent about 2 hours trying different taxi services in Halifax to shuttle the boxes from the Cycle shop to the Alt Airport hotel. It was a pretty discouraging process. In the meantime I had reached out to Mike our Warm Showers host to tell him A…We were not staying there tonight and B… Did he have any idea about our bike box/hotel situation?

Luckily for us, Mike gets it! He’s a bicycle tourer too. He doesn’t have a big car but he’s going to pickup the boxes and packing material at the Halifax Cycles shop. They know he’s coming. AND… he’s going to take the drive to the Alt airport Hotel and drop them at the desk for us. It’s a 24 mile drive to the airport… roundtrip 48! Mike is a saint! There are some really nice people in Halifax.

So here we are at a campground. It is the most beautiful warm, sunny October day. The leaves are beautiful and I should be savoring the moment. That is very difficult when your plans are wrecked. We still have some food so we are good for tonight’s meal. It will all come together… I hope.

Now I have caught Jim’s cold. No surprise really. It started two nights ago… yesterday was not too bad but today my sinuses are full and my head is pounding. So I’ve taken some cold medication and am spending this beautiful day napping in my tent cocoon. Just adds to the misery of everything.

To add insult to misery Nova Scotia is expecting Cyclone Phillipe:

The National Hurricane Center advisory said the storm was likely to pick up speed through Saturday night and, taking “a turn toward the north-northwest” after passing near Bermuda on Friday, Philippe was forecast to “reach the coast of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, or eastern Maine Saturday night into Sunday.”

I hope our plane can leave Halifax Sunday morning!! Aaagh.

So as you can see our bicycle adventure is not over technically… just the pedaling is over. Stay tuned for how tomorrow goes…