epic adventure part deux

The biking was easier and harder than I thought it would be. I thought I'd have a hard time biking 70+ km a day but that wasn't too bad. I was used to biking in the city where you have to start and stop at all the stupid lights. We took lots of breaks and broke it up so that it didn't really seem that bad. There weren't even any sore spots. My legs felt great at the beginning of each day. However... there was one hill, or shall I say mountain that really kicked my butt. It was North mountain. There was a 5 km ascent with no flat spots, 13% grade in fact. If you don't remember how that's calculated, its rise over run. That means the average was a rise of 13 m, for every 100m of distance. That is really, really steep.  All the other climbs were slow and steady, with some places where it would flatten out, or pull offs on the side of the road. This one had none of that. I admit that this hill got the better of me mentally. I think that's really what it came down to. Because I was clipped into my pedals, and I was going so slow, I was scared of falling over into traffic. This would lead me to try to go faster, too fast, and then I'd end up getting kind of panicky and stop.  Chris was great though, he was encouraging from behind and at one point even loaded up my stuff into his panniers. What a guy. (too bad he didn't think of that at the bottom of the hill, we were almost to the top when he did)

This isn't even the big hill, this is a smaller one. I believe this is climbing up French mountain. You can see Jen and Brendan at the top. They were the fast train, I was the slow train, and Chris stayed with me at the back.

Chris' bags loaded up with my gear. See where the top is? He didn't carry them very far... but I was still really grateful.

The next day was more relaxing. We had some really sweet downhill with this fresh tarmac. I think this is when I clocked my top speed of 70.3 km/h. So fun.

 We went for a swim in Black Brook, where fresh water met salt water.

You can see there's a lot of iron in the water that gives it that brown colour.

Next stop, lobster lunch. So delicious.

That night we stayed at J. Kerr's B and B. It was glorious. She had such a wonderful home and it was such a treat to stay in a house rather than a motel. She had this lovely walk you could take out to the cliffs that are on the East side of Cape Breton. Gorgeous view.

Outside J. Kerr's, heading to Baddeck, the end of our journey. 

The last day was a short one. We got a ferry ride (it was short, its on a chain) and cruised into Baddeck for a pizza lunch.

The next day we headed to Newfoundland. The ferry was very uneventful, which is good because the week previous there was a fire on one of the boats. 

We had a few days in between hiking and biking that we spent at Blow me Down Provincial Park. It was great. We went to Newfoundland to hike the Long Range Traverse, a four day hike through the back country along the Long Range Mountain range. There is no trail, so you have to navigate with map and compass.

We went to Gros Morne and met with the park warden to prove to him that we knew how to use a map and compass. They gave us our back country camping permit, which you need so that when you take the boat tour, they'll let you off. They also gave us a transponder. We had to sign something saying that they wouldn't come look for us until we were two days past when they expected us and that the transponder "may" help in locating us. How comforting.

Here's the view from the tour boat and then it leaving us behind. 

Chris taking a bearing. He and Brendan took the lead on the navigating. We only went off course on the first day, when there was really no navigating to be done. Our directions were, stay to the right of the waterfall. We took these a little too literally as we ended up on the side of the cliff. We could see where we needed to go, but had no way of getting there.

When we finally got to the top we had taken quite the detour. The view was everything I imagined. We didn't get to spend as much time as I wanted taking it in as it was still another hour hike to our first campsite. 

The morning dip at campsite 1.

We had a great time the rest of the trip. The pace was quite slow as we didn't want to get any injuries. We had already seen one guy get taken off the mountain in a helicopter and we didn't want the same fate to happen to us.  The landscapes were spectacular. I couldn't recommend this hike highly enough. It was the first time I had taken a long hike. I don't know how another one could beat it. 

Much fun was had traversing the traverse. We saw many moose, scaled mountains, swam in cool water, got beat by Brendan at Wizard, and defied the odds. 

We summited Gros Morne on the end of day four and hiked out on day five. This is the descent down to Ferry Gulch, the last campsite.

The end.