Beaver fever and a bear scare: 100% Canada

July 17, 2016

I started cycling at seven. Meghan and Julien were slower than me packing up and I went on ahead, before waiting for them to catch up at a rest area. We never looked like getting to a hundred kilometres today, but this was our last full day cycling together and so I decided to just relax and enjoy it. There would be the chance for me to put in some longer days once I was alone again to make up the distance. So when my companions arrived at the rest area instead of insisting we cycle on, I insisted we play some ball games.

Eventually we found the collective motivation to cycle onwards, to the big town of Riviere-du-Loup, which I was interested to learn translates as Wolf River. We went shopping and stocked up, before sitting at the information centre and eating. This was the point at which our association with the now-very-wide Saint Lawrence River would end and we would begin heading east. This unfortunately meant we started with a very, very steep climb out of town.

Given Meghan's love of wild fruits I very kindly bought some of these 'Red Berries' in Walmart. They were full of sugar and e-numbers, and she was very pleased.

On the way through Riviere-du-Loup we cycled past a baseball field. As I cycled I watched to see how well the hitter would do as a ball was tossed towards him. He swung his bat and there was a sweet sound as he connected perfectly with the ball. It went high up in the air. At first I wasn't sure where it had gone, but judging from the shouts coming from the field it was going to come down somewhere near me. 'Crap,' I thought, 'I wish I had my helmet on!' as I feebly put one hand over my head and prayed it wouldn't come down on top of me. Luckily it crashed down a few feet away, and I, pleased to have a second chance at life, resolved to start wearing my helmet near baseball fields.

The hill was a real killer, but once we were over the hump we connected to another fantastic rail-trail that was much more kindly graded. Now we had a fantastic time, cycling along, chatting and laughing together through the forests on this traffic-free route. Once again we saw the summer camp several times throughout the day, and once again Meghan stopped to pick nature's edibles. The longest stop was for her and Julien to collect wild mushrooms for dinner. I preferred to swim in a most refreshing lake. For all of us the forest was a blessing.

Meghan was extremely happy to find wild strawberries, even though they were the size of peas

A rest area where we once again reconvened with the summer camp

Ah, one of the best swimming lakes in Canada I think

Our final encounter with the summer camp occurred when I noticed that they had stopped early at a little rest area. I paused to ask them why and the leader, Phil, who by the way was a cool guy with a fair bit of cycle touring experience, explained that one of the girl's tyres had split. I leaned my bike up and went over to see if I could be of any assistance, but as it turned out he seemed to have the situation very much under control. He was doing a very impressive job of sewing up the tyre, using a combination of thread and superglue.

I left him to it and caught up to Meghan and Julien, although I was still a little behind them as we approached a lake on our left hand side. Meghan spotted a beaver in the water, and, thinking that I had never seen a beaver before (because my blog was not up to date) she excitedly cried out "Chris! A beaver! You've never seen a beaver before!!!!" which, perhaps unsurprisingly, quickly made the beaver disappear under the water before I could see it.

But it didn't matter too much, because I had seen a beaver before, and because this beaver reappeared before too long. The lake was incredibly beautiful and there was a picnic table next to it, so we decided that this would be a good spot to sit and make dinner. It was a great decision. There was actually more than one beaver in the lake and we watched them going about their business, swimming around, diving down, and doing beaver-like things. It was kind of spell-binding to see, especially as the surroundings were also so beautiful. This was absolutely the real 100% Canada.

Preparing dinner. I stuck with my pasta because 1) I don't really like mushrooms and 2) I thought they might kill me

For some reason over dinner the conversation got onto making up jokes, and how difficult it is. I challenged Meghan to try and make up a joke about beavers, to prove the point. She responded quickly and smartly with the following:

"What's a beaver's favourite curse word?"

"Dam!"

This was impressive, if a little too easy. But she kept at it and continued to try and refine the gag, until she came up with a quite brilliant joke:

"What did the river say when a family of beavers moved in on its banks?"

I struggled to think of an answer, so Meghan excitedly revealed it:

"Well, I'll be dammed!"

The punchline was delivered with a smile and a swing of the arm, and we all laughed heartily, which was fair enough, because, let's be honest, it was a quality joke.

An idyllic, and truly Canadian, setting for our final evening together

It got late as we enjoyed watching the sunset behind the lake. We still had a few kilometres to cycle before we'd reach a nature campsite in the forest that we planned to sleep at. We'd so enjoyed our time at the lake that it was almost dark as we continued. Luckily we were on a trail, in the forest, with no one else using it, so it didn't seem to matter all that much that visibility was becoming limited. At least it didn't until Julien and Meghan screeched to a halt just in front of me, forcing me also into a sudden stop.

"Did you see that?!" Meghan asked. I had not seen anything, I had been too busy trying to think of a joke involving Justin Beaver. "That was a bear. A bear cub. It just ran across the trail right in front of us!"

Now we were in a potentially tight spot. Bears only really get aggressive towards humans when you get between them and their cubs. Trouble was, it was dark, we couldn't see any bears now, so we had no idea where we stood. The mother was around somewhere, we just didn't know where. We remained still for a moment, talking and banging things and dinging our bells to let everyone know we were there. Then we continued, cautiously, onwards. Meghan and Julien were still just ahead. Then I got a fly in my eye. Talk about bad timing. I stopped to try and remove it, crying out to my companions "Please, wait a minute, don't leave me with the bears!" to which Meghan shouted back "What?" without slowing down.

We all made it the two kilometres to the camping place. Then it dawned on us that we were going to be spending the night two kilometres from some bears, which didn't really seem far enough. Meghan was a little worried about being disturbed in the night, while I was more concerned about a bear making off with one of my food-containing brand new bright red Arkel panniers. For a moment I wasn't sure what to do with it. Then I noticed that the campsite had a wood-burning metal stove thing and I put my bag in there for the night, locking it tight. Good luck, getting that out, bears!

Today's ride: 73 km (45 miles)
Total: 54,801 km (34,031 miles)

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