After a fairly late night of campfire tending, we were a bit slow getting ready to go in the morning. The bicycle tourists in the site next to us were up at 8:00 and gone by 9:00, while we weren’t ready to hit the road until nearly 10:00.
The plan for the day was to ride northeastward across the island’s West Cape to the most northerly provincial park. The ride wasn’t too long, at about 55km (35mi). For details on the route, checkout our Komoot tracking of the trip:
West Point to Jacques Cartier Provincial Park
https://www.komoot.com/tour/t75487090?ref=atd
It was a cool, cloudy day, but it made conditions ideal along the West side of the island. We rode North out of the Provincial Park and along the wind turbines lining the coastline.
Eventually, we arrived at our turnoff from the coast road, and headed along the O’Leary (or O’Larry, as the locals pronounce it) Road across the island toward the town of O’Leary.
When we made it into town, we decided to stop in at the Canadian Potato Museum. This museum was amazingly large and informative about the humble potato, and before too long, we were starting to get hungry for some potato-powered lunch!
After a tasty lunch of baked potato with a side of chips, we arrived back to the Confederation Trail, and once again, jumped on heading north.
The cooler weather made the exertion better, but the bugs worse. With nearly 30km to do on the trail, we weren’t quite as tired as the previous day, but still were happy to be done when we arrived in the town of Alberton.
A quick stop for some supplies, including some salad and watermelon, and we were good to head to camp another 10km (6mi) up the road.
We exited out of town and rode the quiet highway north toward the provincial park. As we went, the scenery became quite nice, with a pretty crossing over another of PEI’s rivers, the Killdare. It wasn’t long before we arrived at the park.
We once again picked the most wind-swept campsite we could find, hoping to keep the mosquitoes away. We had camp setup and mowed down the watermelon in no time.
We settled in to an amazingly calm evening. The water was nearly as smooth as a lake, not at all what I’d been expecting the open Gulf of St Lawrence to be.
Tomorrow, the plan is to leave camp setup and do an out-and-back up to the North Point lighthouse via the most-northerly town on PEI, Tignish! Riding without all the gear was something I’d been looking forward to. Having learned our lesson about campfires, we skipped having one, and made an early night to be ready to head out early.