Today: 90 km
To date: 7,198 km
To go: 602 km
Well you know you were tired at the end of the day when you have no idea where you ended up. I know it was a very small town – a cluster of houses and a couple of beach-front vacation rentals. There was one small grocery store that provided dinner, and a series of covered picnic tables and a washroom along the beach where we camped for the night.
It wasn’t the hills that got me today – even though there were a few tough ones, but it was the wind! My greatest fear is that now since we have turned the corner around the Peninsula, we will face headwind all the way to New Brunswick. Today supported that fear. Ugh.
Despite the depressing wind, there was one section today that was probably the best yet of the trip… well that’s really hard to say, but it was pretty awesome. The lead-up was short steep winding hills up through a small mountainous area and then a 17% drop into Perce. Read that again 17% drop – thats insane!! I have never seen a hill like this in my life. I of course held onto the brakes for dear life. The view during this descent was superb. The town of Perce is adorable. It is surrounded by dramatic cliffs ascending up out of the ocean – there is Rocher Perce (“Pierced Rock” – one of the world’s largest natural arches located in the water!!!!!) and the Ile Bonaventure – housing thousands of Northern Gannets (a type of bird).
I got into town first and was nervous about Alex getting down that hill. I know he doesn’t love his brakes nearly as much as me, so I could just imagine him zooming down at break-neck speeds. Yikes. I waited around for a bit hoping to see him in one piece, but no luck. Time to get going. About 5km out of town Alex passed me – all limbs attached.
Another spectacular sight today – probably about 100 birds (gannets maybe) dropping like swords into the ocean. They appeared to be circling fish (I would guess) and when they had their target set, they would drop out of the sky, straight down as if they had just been shot. Then they would come up a little while later and rejoin their companions in the sky. It looked like a continuous circle of birds dropping and rejoining, enough birds that there is never a lapse in the movement. We both took many videos of this and I will post one soon.
It was a lovely dinner with far too much food (I think we got like 6 different salads from the deli) and then a beautiful sunset over the bay.
Categories: Across Canada, Biking, Quebec
Caplan – Campbellton 
?? – Caplan 
Riviere au Renaud – Gaspe 
Mont Louis – Riviere au Renaud 
Just Ambling 
Hahaha… That would be Alex. I was driving the support vehicle for our Vancouver trip, and was going 80km down hill and Alex was right beside me most of the way. Crazy :-)