Thursday, July 25, 2024 Sunrise, Jacque Cartier Provincial Park, Prince Edward Island
Today is my sixth day in Canada. I took two days to drive from Connecticut to the border, stopping overnight at Bradbury Mountain State Park and Cobscook State Park, each in Maine. I entered Canada at the Ferry Point Bridge, one of three border crossings available between Calais, Maine and St. Stephen, New Brunswick. There were two cars ahead of me at the crossing, and they passed through quickly. The border agent in the booth was a big guy, muscular with an arm full of colorful tattoos. I would say he was in his late 20s-early 30s. I handed him my passport card and motor vehicle documentation. He asked me my intentions and where was I going in Canada. I responded with details about my plans. He asked several questions I expected based on what I read online, confirming I had no drugs, no weapons (including no pepper spray, which is illegal in Canada, no wood, no articles that I planned to give to someone in Canada, etc. After a few minutes, he directed me to pull over at a marked place ahead and go into a building. There were three agents there. I was directed to one, a guy with a body type similar to mine, wavy hair and a beard, also probably in his late 20s, and he asked me several of the same questions again. He also had me empty my pockets. Next, he asked me for my keys, then he and another agent, a woman with long brown hair, went out to my van to inspect it. She told me I was welcome to have a seat, there in the office, while they did this. They were out there going through the van for about fifteen minutes. I looked out the window occasionally and noted all the doors open and several of my plastic cargo containers taken out and placed on the ground. When they came back in, the guy said I was all set, have a nice trip, and handed me the keys. All three agents were low key, professional, and spoke in a mildly friendly manner. And off I drive, down Main Street in St. Stephen.
Right away, I felt somewhat different driving in Canada. I do not know why, but it felt more distant and disconnected to some kind of safety net, some familiarity, than the most out of the way places I have been, such as Death Valley and Big Bend National Parks. I thought there would be a border Welcome to Canada visitor center, but I did not see one. I did not have a Canada map, having figured I would get one at said visitor center. But my phone was working. I received a Welcome to Canada text message from T-Mobile, and Google maps was working, too. It was now utilizing kilometers instead of miles, of course. It took me awhile to figure out how to switch my speedometer readout to kilometers. At first, I was having to convert in my head. I knew 10km was 6.2 miles and 10 miles was 16km, so they were easy to use as conversion factors, then I found how to simply hit a button to switch the dashboard reading to KM!
My first destination was Murray Beach Provincial Park, which was on the northeast side of New Brunswick, not far from the Confederation Bridge, which leads into Prince Edward Island. It was about 330 km away (around 200 miles). Canada Highways 1 and 2 are interstate highways, and they took me most of the way. They were good roads with the exception of travel through St. John’s, where the road winds in a curvy manner through the city and is hampered with construction. About 40 miles from Murray Beach, I exited Highway 2 and took single lane roads to the campground. Most of the area I traveled was sparsely populated. There was a good deal of forest and farmland. The final ten miles was on RT 955, which was dotted with occasional homes and/or small farms. I would ride this road on my bike the next two days, and a couple things that became apparent are that people here have large, meticulously mowed lawns. Also, most homes have a grass driveway, meaning there were few paved or dirt driveways. It seems the grass grows so well here that most homeowners just leave it be. “Well maintained, golf-course lawn,” is the phrase that came to mind.
The campground is large. It has about 160 sites. My site, #119, was in a section where the sites are packed tight. It is part of the original campground, and it was done to efficiently provide electric, water, and sewer to RVs and trailers. The majority of sites, many of which were added as expansions of the campground, are spaced out extensively, the size of three or four of the sites in my area. I was reserving my sites late in the game, so to speak, having made my reservations only a few days prior, so I was happy to have what I could have. Some people like campsites close together like this, such as the extended family situation that was present. There were five adjacent sites occupied by one group, and they moved about site to site visiting each other. There were lots of kids with bicycles, and they had a campfire each of the two nights I was there at one site with numerous attendees. I did not speak with them too much as they spoke mostly French. They seemed to have some basic English. At least that is what it seemed like. Directly next to me was a couple from about 100 miles away in another part of New Brunswick. We talked a few times about travel, careers, and life, covering some of their experiences in the oil industry and mine as a librarian. We talked about bicycling, art, and health, as one of them had cancer and was undergoing treatment, using painting as a recently discovered, enjoyable creative activity. It was a talk that had meandered around laughter and sadness, fun and frustrations, hopes tempered with realities.
I did two bike rides here, along RT 955 to RT 16 to a place called Port Jouriman. I had been told I could obtain a information and a map there, but that was not the case. It was not a town. It was a nature center of sorts, with a visitor center, souvenir shop, and wildlife refuge with some short trails. I looked around the visitor center briefly then rode back to the campground, doing thirty miles roundtrip. There was very little traffic, with the only noticeable signs of commerce two small grocery stores, cute Mom & Pop family run places offering basic supplies. Rural would characterize this area, again with the large well-maintained yards at homes often separated by fields of tall green grass and wildflowers. Much of the road borders on the Northumberland Strait, which is the body of water that separates New Brunswick from Prince Edward Island. I would have liked to ride my bike over the seven-mile Confederation Bridge, but bikes are not allowed.
There is a lengthy beach at the campground. At low tide sand and a little bit of rock is exposed for about one hundred yards out to the water, while at high tide the small waves hugged the shore. The sunset was beautiful over the water to the west of the campground. I met a retired couple on the beach who were spending the summer there with their camper on a private space, adjacent to the campground, rented for the season. They only lived about an hour away and would go home weekly for a day or two to take care of business and mow the lawn. “It is my happy place” the woman told me. They spend the winter at a camper community in western Florida, above Tampa Bay, and area I visited in 2006 (Manatee Springs State Park) and noticed as another sparsely populated area. There was a great bicycle trail nearby.
Murray Beach Photos ...
From Murray Beach I drove 125 km (about 80 miles) to Jacques Cartier Provincial Park on Prince Edward Island. I stopped at a visitor center and obtained a map of PEI, then stopped at a gas station to change some US dollars into Canadian. I later checked with a bank to see if they exchanged money, but the teller told me only if I had an account! She said the going rate was $1.00 US would give me $1.32 Canadian. The gas station, recommended at the visitor center, gave me $1.30 Canadian.
I stopped for groceries in Summerside, which is the second largest town on the island (population 15,000). They had a grocery store (Atlantic Superstore) that seemed similar to a Whole Foods or an upscale place like the Smith’s Grocery store I used in Henderson, NV. They also have a Walmart and a large store called Sobey’s. They have a Walmart, too. I went to Atlantic Superstore and Walmart. The Walmart did not remind me of the ones in the states. I'll stop at Sobey's today.
Like Murray Beach, Jacques Cartier is right on the beach. Actually, the campsites here are much closer to the beach, some being about ten yards away, with great views but protected by a slightly rising stone break. It’s beautiful.
I met a woman camped at one of those campsites (my site was a little farther off the beach, but still great). She was a high school math teacher, on a month-long vacation trip, having stopped here for a few days. We watched a beautiful sunrise yesterday morning. It was quite early, around 5:45AM, and I think we were the only people on the beach. I was half surprised, fully glad, to see her, as when we had talked the day before she had kind of smiled and indicated that was kind of early to rise. I was there at 5:30 with my chair, just enough room on the sand with an incoming tide, when she walked up, said good morning, and sat down on a large rock on the beach.
I sat and watched the clouds and listened to the waves for about an hour. Around 6AM, she went back to her campsite and packed, as she was leaving on a long drive (about 350 miles) to North Sydney, Nova Scotia, to catch a ferry for two weeks in Newfoundland. I was envious of her for that last part, as I had planned to go there, too, but I could not secure space for my van on the ferry. But get this, I just now checked again, and I found ferry space where I could have brought my van on a round trip and spent ten days there! Oh well …
I also met a couple, yesterday in the afternoon, who are heading to Newfoundland, too. They have a van and are from Boulder, CO. We talked at length about Boulder (I lived in Boulder 1989-1995 and have been back there several times since …) They met there in the early 1980s after moving there from opposite coasts, him from Massachusetts, her from California. They are cyclists and told me about riding they did this year on the Natchez Trace Parkway in Mississippi and Tennessee. They said it was great! Very little traffic most of the way. (The Natchez Trace is a north-south route running 444 miles. I had talked with some campers when I was in Mississippi last March, and they had told me the Parkway had a lot of traffic, had very little shoulder, and was dangerous.)
Bicycling here has been fantastic. I did a fifty miler on Tuesday and thirty-two yesterday. The roads have very little traffic and are in great shape. It is nearly flat. The roads are bordered by water (Gulf of St. Lawrence), forest, farmland, and those homes with large well-maintained lawns. It is beautiful country. I passed through little villages, as was indicated by signs, but rarely did I see any businesses in these places. They had names like Seacow Pond, Norway, Waterford, and Elmsdale. There were some places that had small harbors, which brings up the fact that many homes had large boats in the yard or driveway. Fishing and lobstering seem to prominent activities here. I do not know why so many homes have these large boats, but they do. They would need an oversized trailer to be transported to the water.
Today I am heading to Stanhope Campground in PEI National Park, only about an eighty mile drive. I am told it has wonderful beaches. It’s on the north side of the island, this being on The Gulf of St. Lawrence again. I am not sure, but it might be the same campground I stayed at in the early 1980s, when I did a bicycle tour to Nova Scotia and PEI. Maybe it will be familiar. Time will tell …
Jacques Cartier Photos ...
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