Day 88: French Village, NB to Florenceville, NB

July 24, 2017

We had a good day - 63 miles, 3110 feet of climbing!,and met a bunch of nice people.

Immediately after leaving French Village, we crossed the Mactaquac Dam and had our first big climb of the day. It was a hard climb, made harder by the fact that we hadn't yet really got our legs warmed up.

The Mactaquac Dam on the St. John River. It generates 20% of New Brunswick's electric power.

I think this was the most elevation gain since we left Connecticut. To make it even more fun, we had some really bad road surface today. Potholes and patches on top of patches - I guess the good thing is that it keeps the traffic speed down. Kerry spent a lot of time riding down the middle of the road, trying to find the least bumpy line.

Taking a bridge break. The open air at bridges seems to have fewer bugs than the shoulder next to the trees.

We had a long stretch with no services and were looking forward to a country store in Millville 24 miles into our ride. We pulled in and the place looked dark. There was a "For Sale" sign in the window. We were not happy. The next place to stop was another 25 miles. Kerry needed to check the brakes, so he parked the bike in front of one of the old gas pumps. A minute later, a man comes out of the store and asks Kerry to move the bike so customers could pull up to get gas. We were so happy to see him! He seemed a little annoyed at first when we said we thought the place was closed, but warmed up to us after we got our Diet Coke and started talking to him. We learned all about Millville and the economic problems of small farming villages in New Brunswick. His store had been in the family for 80 years and he has been trying to sell it for several years without success.

After not seeing any other cyclists for days, we met several cycle tourists this afternoon, two couples and a single man. A few miles after we left Millville, we met Jeremy and Julia, a young couple from Montreal. They were headed to Iles de la Madeleine, off PEI. They were also looking for Millville and very happy to learn that they were almost there.

The next person we met was Mark, from Riviere-du-Loup, where we will be in a few days.

Our next stop was in Hartland, home of the world's longest covered bridge. We had planned to ride across it, but there were three huge tours buses there and people lined up to walk across on the pedestrian path. The traffic moves in a single lane. There is a stop sign at each end, and cars don't enter when traffic is coming in the other direction. It didn't look very bicycle friendly and we decided not to try it. We had a wonderful time there anyway. One of the buses was carrying a tour group of senior citizens from St. Cloud, MN. I think we ended up with half of the passengers looking over the bike, wanting to know all about the bike and us and our trip. They were the friendliest, warmest bunch pf people you can imagine. I think that bus trip must be a hoot!

All those people are waiting to walk across the bridge. We decided not to join the throngs.

The Harrtland Covered Bridge - it's the longest covered bridge in the world.

The last leg of the ride was an almost flat road from Hartland to Florenceville. On the way, we met another cycling couple. Wendy and Charlie Hunter flew from their home in Calgary to Vancouver, BC to begin their ride across Canada. They left Vancouver 64 days ago and are headed to Newfoundland. It was fun to meet someone else on a really long distance trip.

Wendy and Charlie Hunter - 64 days into their trip from Vancouver to Newfoundland.

We finally got to Florenceville, stopped for take-out for the room and got checked in to our hotel after 5:30PM. It was a long day and we were looking forward to enjoying our dinner and catching up on our email and blogging and other online stuff. It was a big disappointment to find the Internet connection to be so slow we couldn't do any of the above.

Tomorrow should be shorter and easier and, we hope, good WIFI!

Today's ride: 63 miles (101 km)
Total: 3,642 miles (5,861 km)

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