Day 24: Cabot Trail Wed 3 Jul 2024 Miles ridden today: 288
Up early on a cloudless warm day to ride the Cabot Trail counterclockwise. Wonderful day.
Packed up and left Grandma's hotel early early early at 5:15am, I checked out the previous night at sunset just to make sure. You'd think that it'd be dark then, but nope, just cool yet bright.
I rode north from Baddeck to that northeast end of the Cabot Trail, nearly running over a coyote crossing the road (!!! and it was a darker brown than I've ever seen) and kinda got goosebumps again. No one was around, the air was fresh, and I wasn't even too concerned about deer though I likely should've been. The road swooped in a regular rhythm and felt good, then a very new bit of road steeply ascended to a lookout and wow, this is a wonderful day to be out and about and adventuring.
And then the modern engineering ran out and the road around to Ingohish was the absolute worst I've had in the 5000+ miles so far--on my side of the road, deep fissures had fractured the road, leaving three inch deep ruts and tall ridges for hundreds of feet in the right part of my lane. The centerline was the only real safe spot, but the lanes were as wide as a parking space and there was quite a bit of oncoming traffic and yeeikes is the rest of the Cabot Trail like this?
Nope, it wasn't--the road suddenly got better when it crossed the national park boundary, imagine that, and I puttered along, deciding whether I'd want to take a couple of hours on the partially dirt road to Meat Cove. I finally decided "yeah, I'll head down, it's only 30km". The first kms were great and paved. The last 5 (or was it 8?) were not to my liking: after a few hundred meters, I got caught behind a car towing a trailer and crawling along at walking speed. Pass? There were enough camper vans and cars-with-trailers and even a small RV to make me say no. It didn't help that the trailer in front of me was kicking up quite a lot of dust, so it didn't take me too long to weigh the value vs hassle of going all the way to Meat Cove, so I u-turned.
Back on the main Cabot trail road was wonderful, going up and down and not much traffic at all--and the traffic I'd catch up to was always super-nice and pulled over. Yay. A few more viewpoints and a great long crossing of some high boreal forest or taiga, and back into Baddeck.
Stopped at a musuem/park around Alexander Graham Bell's summer residence, repacked for the overnight ferry crossing to Newfoundland, and then headed down to the ferry for boarding at 7pm.
Got my own private cabin and enjoyed a nice shower... should be a quick crossing, docking time is 4:15am on 4 July... which is in the dark, so I'll wait at the ferry terminal and coffee up and hang out until it gets light. A couple of other riders also crossing said "moose are out at night, and aren't the best things to run into at night" so yeah, I'll wait until I can see them. Sunrise is around 5:15am... so that'll be two cups of coffee please.