Cabot Trail - May 20
This morning Bob and I spent most of our time getting things together so we could both leave. After a some shuffling around, a little bit of internet searching for how to get to Sydney and The Cabot Trail we were both fully packed and heading out the door. I gave Bob a hand shake and a hug in the elevator and we parted ways. It was manly, unemotional, respectful, and cool I assure you. After I dropped my bags off with Ivy, I got directions to the nearest place to buy fabric for the privacy curtains that I hope to install in the car. I went into Fabricville and got some advice, fabric, needles, and thread from one of the women working there. She taught me how I could fold the fabric over a string/rope and sew it together like a real curtain. I feel like a real now.
Then I got a donair as instructed by Bob. Good stuff. After that I started the actual roadtrip! Ther wasn’t much to see until I actually got on the right road for the trail so let’s just skip a few hours. I found the first beach and the sand was actual sand, not rocks or loarge pebbles. It was just like Mexico except it was still cold and there were no people. Stil beautiful. Still a nice stop. I then stopped at a grocery store for directions to the nearest camp spot/place where I could sleep and was directed down the road a little further and down to a beach. I had to go past a house that is fairly close to the beach so I’m a bit worried I’m going to be kicked out but let’s hope for the best.
Good news! I can lay flat out in the back of Ivy (maybe I shouldn’t always use the car’s name in place of the word “car”) if I do some adjustments including moving the front seats forward, using my bakcpacks as space fillers so there is no drop off where my head rests and voila! A bed. I’m having trouble containing the excitement I’ve got for this roadtrip. I’m sitting in a warm cozy bed looking at the sunset on the ocean on a fairly quiet night. I will admit, there are some drunk people down the beach making noise but it is nothing I haven’t dealt with before. Tomorrow I’ll rise with the sun or wake up when it’s too hot in the car and continue on. Here we go!
Here’s a video explaining the setup and showing off my frist car camping location.
Wildlife and Tent Setup - May 21
I woke, as expected, nice and early from my slumber in the car at about 6:00am. I managed to get back to sleep for a extra needed hour and went about having breakfast, yogurt from the day before that was left outside of the car to keep it refrigerated, oats, and a banana. It never tasted so good. After breakfast I made my way to the Cabot Trail information center where I waited with a fellow traveler, originally from Toronto that now lives in Halifax, for the the center to open so I could purchase my park pass. $7.60, that’s under budget for the day, cool. After learning that most campsites charge around $20 for a night I realized that I would have to get a little bit clever with my where I stayed, especially because they said they don’t allow camping anywhere else. Sure, if you find me.
First thing was first, the Skyline trail. I conquered that in record time with no issues. The only wildlife I saw were fresh moose droppings and a rabbit. I did run into people from Florida and the guy I was waiting at the center with, but that’s it.
The next stop was Macintosh Brook which is a short walk along a creek up to a fairly decent waterfall. A waterfall that tempted me to get into the freezing water, just to wash off last nights whatever-you-want-to-call it and be fresh for the next big hike down the road. I decided against it as it was too cold and I wasn’t sure if it was frownded upon. Maybe I should just go ahead a break the rules a few times on the Canada portion of the trip though, right? After the waterfall I went through a 10 minute walk of a sugar maple tree area that also had a replica Sottish crofter hut. It was meh.
Last on the list was trail called Aspy, named after the river it runs adjacent to. I started by going up to see the waterfall and headed back to the real trailhead and started up. Along the way I managed to pass two groups of people who were walking in the same direction and one group that was sitting on the red chair near the top. The trail is a bit strange because it ends rather abruptly with no signage to tell you whether you’ve made it or not. I decided I wanted to get higher to see more things so I went right and up. The German couple I passed followed and caught up with me where I stopped and I let them know I didn’t know what I was doing but I was going to continue. As I continued I got to finally see my first good look at a moose. Check it out!
It ran away as expected and I figured that was a good enough sign to turn around and head back down. I said goodbye to the Germans and off I went. I rested for an apple at the base and got on the road, off to find a place to stay for the night. I drove to three different areas before finding the beach where I’m writing this post from. Well, I’m in the beach parking right now but the beach below is sweet. There are even fire pits if I care to try my hand. Though I have no lighter or flint so that probably won’t happen. Anyway, I’m excited to see the sunrise from the beach tomorrow morning. Hopefully I can wake up on time and get a nice picture. Sunrises are always good for pictures.
Refreshing Travel - May 22
I woke up to the sound of waves…and went back to sleep because I had left my phone up in the car and was unsure of the hour of the day. When I woke up to the waves the second time I felt a little more confident that it wasn’t earlier than 6am. So, I packed up camp and went back up to the car. I had a breakast of leftover chips and salsa, a piece of fruit, and a granola bar. Good stuff. The first stop was Green Cove, which was cool but didn’t include a hike so I walked out there and took some photos. As seen here:
Then I went up to Warren Lake, but, on the dirt road on the way to the lake I saw a hike. That’s the great part of driving yourself around, you can make impulsive stops wherever and whenever you want. So I did. The hike was OK and the view was pretty average but I enjoyed it all the same. The best part was that, at the top, my camera started taking black photos for no reason. I had accidentally left the camera in manual mode for some reason so I switched it back to my regular aperature mode and as soon as I did that it started messing up. I haven’t been able to fix it. Total bummer. One thing that is kind of a neat forced experiment is that the video on the camera still works without a hitch so now I’m going to try and take short videos instead of photos. The plus side is that you might get some commentary and if I want to, I can just take some freeze frames of the video as pictures. They won’t be quality photos but they’ll be better than taking photos on my flip phone. That’s for sure.
I arrived at the lake and since no one was around I decided to go for a quick dip to wash myself off. It was so cold. That’s all. So cold. I hung around to do a little reading and left. I got to the other entrance of the park and went up the Freshwater Lake Lookoff point, took my video and then got on the road. I stopped off at a Walmart in Sydney in order to pick up some better supplies for my car curtains. I tried with velcro but the Krazy Glue and velcro didn’t work. I then decided to glue the clips I bought to the inside of my car. Success! Then I left for Charlottetown, PEI.
It took a good amount of time to get to PEI but I eventually made it to the Charlottetown Walmart and put up my curtains to get some sleep in their parking lot. The curtains don’t work as well as I had hoped but they did the trick, only falling off their clips six or so times during setup and the night itself. Whatever, should do for the trip. I don’t want to spend more money on on these curtains.
Decisoins, Decisions - May 23
I got out of car at 8:30am, bought some food from Walmart, had breakfast and now I’m sitting in Starbucks figuring out where to go from here. I think I want to circumnavigate the island like Bob told me to. Then I can sleep in the Walmart parking lot one more time and head to Shediac, New Brunswick. The only thing I have to start thinking about is timing. I have to be back in Vancouver before Pemberton music festival because I’m volunterring in it so I figure I should be in Calgary by July 1st, give or take. That means I’ve got 37 days to get my ass across the country. Though I could just panic drive through almost everything if I run out of time, I think I’ll do a little planning.
Skip forward from Starbucks. I’ve almost circumnavigated the entire island which is something Bob suggested. Although I didn’t stopp at every suggested spot, I did choose a few that looked interesting and, to my surprise, some of them actually were interesting. Highlights include a lot of gas stations, definitely didn’t budget for this portion of my trip, oops, a beach I found that was completely desolate for about fifteen minutes before a group of three girls and a dog ruined it, and also the red sand beaches at Cavendish.
Quick note on the desolate beach. I took a bit of a walk down that beach and sat down and realized a few things. One, this is the most alone I think I’ve ever been in my life, just me and the car and a poorly sketched out plan on Google Drive. It’s not necessarily a bad thing but I am looking forward to my first friend sighting which should be Doug in Ottawa. Two, I’ve been away for a long time. I took a moment to think about how I’ve changed, if at all, and it think I’m pretty much OK with any changes that have taken place in the last four and a half months or so. I think I’ve become more outgoing, more sure of myself, more confident, in my case those count for two, and also I think I’ve stopped worrying as much as I used to about things. Three, I still don’t know what I want to do with my life and that’s OK. I’ve come to accept and laugh at what I thought I would be doing with myself at this age. Especially the age part of the equation. I used to think about my age and my timeline a lot. When to get a career, when or where I would want to move to, girlfriends, a wife, kids, house, the whole lot. But now I’m kind just content and happy with where I am. I’ve been travelling for four and a half months, how is that not as cool as a house?
Anyway, that was a bit of a unloading because I’ve lying in the car, watching the last few minutes of the sunset at the north-western tip of PEI feeling philosophical. Don’t expect too much more of this stuff. Good night.
Shediac - May 24
I woke up, early as usual because the air in th ecar was cold enough and then sun was out, though it was foggy. I didn’t bother rearranging the car after my sleep in because I had properly set it up so that the driver side chair was not affected. I then drove my way into Summerside, found myself a community pool and splurged the $7.50 to gain access to the pool, hot tub, and showers. What a treat, a proper shower from the last four or so days. I stayed in the community pool cafe area for hours after that, catching up on Facebook stuff, calling my dad for his birthday, and organizing my next living place. Turns out my friend Tyler has a cousin in Shediac so that was arranged quite quickly.
After my brain started melting a little, I headed out to Shediac. The drive was pretty short and I met Alana, Daniel, and their 15 month old son Sebastien. They’re cool people but I had caught Alana in the middle of a acupuncture session so I left to go check out a beach that Daniel had told me about. I went WAY too far past the beach and ended up at another that I managed to find. It was OK. I then made a few wrong turns and had to go back to said beach in order to find my way back to Shediac Cape where they live. On the way back I managed to find the original beach. It was much nicer and included quite a surprising amount of people as well.
I got back to Alana and Daniel’s house and chatted with Daniel over some work he was doing to his car. We spent a good portion of the night chatting. They seem like great parents and all around decent people for sure. I’m happy to be able to stay on their lawn, avoiding a crying baby in the night but also being able to use their laundry appliances and their shower.
High Tides and Tidal Bores - May 25
I woke a little after the sun today because I felt a little bit more tired than usual. Solution, sleep more. It’s a simple life I live right now. I spent the mornig with the my hosts and then headed out to Hopewell Rocks to check out the rock formation and such during low tide. It was pretty cool but I’m still quite a bit frustrated that my DSLR has decided to stop taking photos for me. I then realized that I have a flip phone with a camera on it and that gave birth to this masterpiece video a little later in the day during high tide.
Afterwards, I had myself some food and went into Moncton to check out the Tidal Bore which is a small wave that passes through the river, caused by the huge tide change that occurs. It is the biggest tidal difference in the world so it is not surprising that something like this would happen. As I parked, however, the weather took a huge turn. All of a sudden there was a torrential downpour including thunder and lightning. I found a small bit of shelter where I met a man who looked like he dressed for a warm walk around town in a sleevless shirt and shorts. Tough luck. We chatted about, you guessed it, the weather. Weather here, weather in Victoria, weather in Mexico. All kinds of weather. Eventually the wave showed up. It was not impressive but it was kind of a cool thing to see regardless. The wave passed and so I decided to start my way back to Hopewell Rocks to wait for the high tide.
After about five minutes in the car and a merge onto the main road up to Hopewell, I realized I was uncomfortable with the amount of water and the driving conditions so I pulled over and read my Harry Potter book. After a reasonable amount of time I got back on the road, still dealing with a lot of standing water but managed to get into a dry patch. I arrived at Hopewell again and everything that I was walking on ie the ocean floor, was now submerged in merky water. Pretty neat. I walked around and then went back to my car. I then went back to the house to hang out. We went and got some brown food and I spent the night chatting with Alana and Daniel about pretty much everything. Alana is willing to talk about a lot of topics and it’s great. I thoroughly enjoyed the chats we had about life and he take on everything as a new parent and an explorer of Asia culture. Back to the tent for bed, but not before enduring some more amazing amounts of rain, thunder, and lightning. Crazy night weather-wise.
Reading the Dunes - May 26
Since I had not found a host in Quebec City through couchsurfing.com at this point, I spent a good portion of my time this morning finding trying to find one. I eventually found a guy that would take me and has free parking infront of his house. Nice! Then Daniel and Alana shared that the Bouctouche Dunes were a nice site so I planned to go see them during my day. I headed out after breakfast and found the dunes with no issue.
It was cold and windy today and after walking about one kilometer out onto that dunes, I decided I would head back and figure something else out. Alana had said that there were some great seafood restaurants I could try if need be. What I decided to do, however, was a bit more solemn. Instead of going to a social place and eating some good food, I resolved to finish The Chamber of Secrets in my car, alone, eating peanut putter and jam sandwiches, chips and salsa, and carrots and celery. So shall it be written so shall it be done. I finished the book and another podcast from Tim Ferriss around 7pm and decided it was time to head back. I spent the night with Alana as Daniel put together his new barbecue talking about all manner of things. She’s a great conversatoinalist. We even managed to tackle all of the days dishes as we chatted, making it seem like no time had passed.
I decided to pack up the tent after Daniel had offered their couch for the night. I didn’t want to pack up a wet tent in the morning in case it rained during the night so I took them up on their offer. I packed up the tent and moved my sleeping bag onto the couch. ‘Twas a good day.