We woke rather early for sleeping in the comfort of a hotel room. Well, maybe not entirely in comfort, since I had to sleep on the floor with my camping gear and woke Chris up in turn. Not having any sort of dining facilities within a few kilometers meant it was time to use our camp cooking equipment to prepare our favourite breakfast — oatmeal!
After our heaping bowls were done, we loaded up the bicycles and departed to the North. Our un-modified route would have taken us South down toward the edge of Charlottetown and put us on the Confederation Trail nearly the entire way to St. Peters. We decided the day before that we’d rather take a route through PEI National Park on the North shore and past the campground that we missed staying in due to the bad weather forcing us to hotel.
Our first stop was not too long afterwards, at an art gallery and cafe along Brackley Point road. Our main concern was getting a hot coffee to wake and warm us up, but boy was the artwork in the gallery incredible. We must have spent over an hour going through the whole gallery looking at incredibly intricate wood carvings, paintings, glasswork, furniture and all sorts of other art. Most of it carried a very heavy nature theme, which I really enjoyed. I wished I lived in a much larger apartment in San Francisco, so I might have been able to enjoy some of the pieces, but between that and the very limited cargo capacity of my bicycle, are reasons I can’t have nice things.
On our way out of the gallery we met up with another bicycle tourist who had been all over Europe and Canada, and gave us some advice on travelling light and places to see in PEI National Park. Most of his advice was to simply not camp, and to not take the gear to do it, which with all our hotels we were staying in, the thought had crossed my mind why we were hauling all this camping stuff around the island with us!
We moved on and continued North, and not long afterwards were into the National Park. Right along the main parkway road was a beautiful paved bicycle path to ride. Even with the pretty miserable weather, it was about 14 C (57 F) with misty drizzle (again!), there were several other cyclists out for a spin. The parkway had nice views of the coastal bluffs and dunes, and despite the cold, dampness, Chris and I were having a great time rolling along without worry of traffic, and not digging into the gravel we were used to on the Confederation Trail.
We went by a coastal fishing village, and then eventually the parkway went by a hotel known as Dalvay-by-the-Sea. The parkway rounded a corner around a nearby lake, and when we found a nice viewing platform, we decided to stop for a snack. While stopped, we had an American bicycle tourist from Boston stop by to talk about life, politics and family. It turned out he had a son who also lived in the Bay Area as well. After we finished, the parkway turned further to the South, away from the coast and we knew our time in the park was coming to an end.
We took several secondary highways and eventually connected to Confederation Trail. We jumped on the trail, and things were going okay until I decided I wanted to put some air into my rear tire. Right as we got off the bikes, the mosquitoes were absolutely nuts. You could cut a block out of the air, it was so thick with the things! As I screwed my pump’s connector to my valve I was going crazy trying to keep them off me, and ended up breaking my valve core and getting my pump stuck in the process. Thankfully, we had stopped at a driveway off the highway that crossed the trail, so we were able to push our bikes up the driveway and onto the shoulder of highway 2 for some relief from the bugs while we sorted my tire out.
A bunch of monkeying with the tire and tube later, we were able to release the pump from it, and swap in my spare tube without too much of a hassle. With our nerves a bit frayed, we decided to continue on on the highway instead of dealing with the bugs every time we stopped and slogging through the wet gravel.
We made it as far as Mt. Stewart before we really started to get hungry for some lunch. We went into town and found and awesome restaurant in Laurie’s Country Kitchen. They had amazing hamburgers. Chris and I each had one, and of course overate and had desert too!
When we finally got back on the bikes, we were feeling a little bloated, and decided to get back on the trail leading right through the middle of town. It ended up being quite a slog, but with only 20km (13mi) to go, we figured we could handle it.
As the trail opened up onto St. Peters Bay, Chris really entered a sufferfest. He was cold, wet and super-tired of struggling through the gravel. I was really enjoying seeing some nice waterfront scenes from the trail, but Chris just really wanted the day to end. When the town came into view at the end of the bay, Chris sped off to get off his bike as soon as he could.
Our accommodations for the night was another hotel room, this time at the St. Peters Bayside Inn. We’d originally planned to camp at the St. Peters campground, but yadda-yadda the weather was bad… The hotel had a nice restaurant on the ground floor, and Chris and I sat to eat and drink for over an hour, resting our weary bones.
The plan for tomorrow was to complete our journey East by reaching the East Point Lighthouse, about 2/3 of the way through our route, and then continuing on to camp at Red Point Provincial Park. Checking the weather forecast gave us a sense of dread. It was due to be even colder, very rainy, and with a consistent headwind of 30-40km/h (20-25mph). We went ahead and booked our next day’s hotel in the town of Souris and went to bed really concerned about the bike ride that was to come the next morning.