Overnight, it had rained quite a lot, and my brand new MSR tent did not keep the water out, so not only was the tent and rainfly wet, but so were our sleeping pads and sleeping bags. I’ll be giving MSR a call about this tent when I get home!
With the weather forecast coming into the day had all-day rain and temperatures around 13 C (54 F) and a ride originally planned to be almost 100km (65mi) we were pretty leery to start our day. A lucky coincidence that the West Point lighthouse restaurant was owned and operated by the same owner as Moth Lane brewery allowed us to sample some of their beers there. Having already sampled their beers allowed us to cut-out the roughly 20km (13mi) diversion we’d planned to visit the brewery itself. We also decided to stick to main highways as much as possible. the scenery would be worse, but it’d be the easiest riding we could get for the journey. Finally, we decided to get ourselves a hotel room in Summerside as well so we could dry out ourselves and our gear. You can find our Komoot tracking of our ride here:
Jacques Cartier Provincial Park to Summerside
https://www.komoot.com/tour/t75816785?ref=atd
Having simplified our plan, we packed up our wet camping gear and made our way over to the cooking shelter for breakfast.
After breakfast, we jumped on our bikes heading South toward the town of Alberton. When we arrived about 20 minutes later, we stopped in at the local café for some hot coffee and muffins. The all-day rain hadn’t yet started, and there was only a bit of misty drizzle to deal with.
While eating at the café, some other campers from the Provincial Park saw us and gave us credit for camping and hiking through the weather. They had called camping in their RV quits and were heading back to Charlottetown.
After coffees, we got back on the highway heading South on highway 12. The scenery was nice, and we were making great time, averaging almost 20km/h (13mph). To make it even nicer, the rain was nowhere to be seen! It actually was almost lovely biking in the cool air.
We took a few opportunities to setup the GoPro for some roll-by shots, and met a few runners who were also taking advantage of the lack of rain.
Eventually, we met up with the even-more-major highway 2. While this highway had even more traffic and worse scenery than 12, it did have a wide paved shoulder that allowed Chris and me to ride side-by-side in most places.
Several miles later, we came to a PEI provincial tourism info centre in Mt. Pleasant right along the highway with a huge field in behind. Seeing picnic tables out, we decided to stop for lunch. As we rolled through the parking lot, we noticed a war cenotaph.
After lunch, we saw that the cenotaph was marking the deaths of bomber pilot trainees who had been trained at the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan airfield that had been in the field we were standing in. Chris and I were shocked, since our grandfather had been a Lancaster bomber radio operator, and we had heard stories about him having been stationed on PEI at one point before heading to Europe. Maybe our grandfather had been trained here!
We went back into the info centre, and asked if they had any information on the training airfield, and sure enough, they had a few books on the airfield. Chris and I spent nearly an hour pouring over the books. We learned that Mt. Pleasant was the third BCATP airfield setup on PEI, and that it was chosen since it could be clearly seen on its ride when flying all around the island. It was also opened in 1943, making it one of the later training airfields to open, but still in time for our grandfather to have been trained there.
With our history lesson over, we jumped back on the bikes and continued to Summerside. The rain held off the rest of the day, and by the time we arrived, at nearly 5:00, there were peeks of sun coming through.
We unpacked our gear to dry it all out, and before long, found ourselves at our favourite pub in Summerside, Deckhouse, enjoying some good food and some pints by the water.
It had been a nice day of riding, especially considering the forecast we had been given. Tomorrow’s weather forecast was looking pretty similar, and we had planned to ride about 70km (45mi) to Stanhope Campground in the Prince Edward Island National Park.