June 30, 1989
Steubenacadie to Five Islands
(Rachael) I woke up feeling better than I thought I would after sleeping on a not very level site. The ground was soft because of the long grass and made for comfortable sleeping. Scott seemed to be feeling somewhat better although he still had a sore throat. We quickly packed up and headed off to Truro for breakfast, about 12 miles away. It was an easy ride although somewhat chilly. There were lots of farms and at one we started a very small scale cattle stampede.
After arriving in Truro we were directed to Murphy's as a good place to have breakfast. We had one of the specials, which included eggs, home fries, toast, bake beans an coffee; and I had sausage while Scott had a huge ham steak. The food was great and we left stuffed. We sat in the restaurant catching up on our writing until the bank opened and then headed off to Highway 2 with the campground at Five Islands as our final destination. (An important missing detail from Rachael's narrative - we biked out of town missing one of my front panniers. I set it on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant when we were packing up to leave, and rode off leaving it there. As I remember now, we were already about a mile or more out of town when I noticed it was missing. We went back, of course, and were relieved to find it still there waiting for us).
We immediately encountered strong headwinds and knew progress would be slow. We stopped about every ten miles for a break. In Bass River we stopped for lunch, and Scott had to try a local delicacy called dulse. It looked like seaweed and tasted very salty with a fishy taste. Scott said it was like eating a salty balloon. We ended up giving most of it back to the store.
We started up again, and found that the winds were even stronger. And then when we were totally exhausted from the winds we had to climb over Economy Mountain. It seemed to be the steepest long climb we've made on this trip but it's hard to say because we were tired from fighting headwinds (not all that bad - 400’ in less than a mile, about a 8% grade; must’ve been the wind). At the top there was a beautiful view of the valley and the ocean.
The descent was nearly as hard as the climb because we had to fight for control against strong gusts of wind. When we got to the bottom we only had four miles more to the campground but the wind was ferocious. It took every ounce of energy to make it to the campground.
At the campground, before setting anything up we sat down to recuperate and broke out the food. After resting awhile we set up the tent and I headed off to the showers. After I finished, Scott took his turn. When he returned to the tent, a man in a neighboring campsite started up a conversation with us. Apparently Scott had helped him with an answer to a crossword puzzle clue. The question related to the Willamette Valley, and the answer was Salem (our home town), which Scott had to provide the correct pronunciation for.
Ivan was very friendly, and introduced me to several other We all stood around their campfire watching the tide come in - it moved in about a quarter mile while we stood there visiting. Ivan, from Concord, Massachusetts, gave us a lot of information about the area and gave us some maps and tour guides for New Brunswick. Scott visited with Ivan for a long time, and Ivan even brought out a sketch pad containing dozens of watercolors he had painted. They were very good. One woman in the group brought out some homemade fudge, which was great. She also gave me a piece of agate from Moose Island, one of the five islands we could see from the campground. It was a very good ending to a tough day.
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