(the barrens)
daily stats
weather: sunshine, 22˚
total riding time: 6 hrs 35 mins 39 secs
avg speed: 12.7 (m) / 12.5 (b)
max speed: 56 (m) / 54 (b)
total distance: 83.72 kms
# of moose seen: 0
# of caribou seen: 2
# of whale seen: 3
# of flat tires: 1
and the winner for best downhill ever goes to (drum roll please): Rte 10 into Trepassey.
i'm pretty sure that max speed of 56 kms/hr lasted for a good 10-15 mins...it was wonderful (albeit a little wobbly).
and well worth it because we climbed about twenty times as long to hit the top.
it started with a hearty, home cooked breakfast at the Claddagh Inn (delicious and warm homemade bread with partridgeberry jam...mmm). little did we know at the time how much we needed the eggs and toast.
we set out and started the first climb.
but the payoffs are always worth it.
coming down brought us to the tip of the world!
(okay, maybe not the world, but the southern tip of the avalon).
it was so sunny and lovely that we hung out in St. Vincent's for a little while, taking in the ocean, the ocean air, and the rotting fish guts on the rock from the couple fishing for cod in Holyrood pond (note: not even close to the Holyrood we knew from our first day)
(coming into St. Vincent's; the southern tip of the Avalon)
(St. Vincent's; fishing for cod in Holyrood pond)
(fish guts)
we met some other cyclists for the first time on our trip.
they were headed in the opposite direction. and their gear was being transported for them. they warned us of the upcoming climb and the following 20 kms or so of barren wasteland.
i longed to ride free, sans gear, on a skinny little road bike....but what kind of adventure would that be?
the barrens were definitely...well...barren.
but wild blueberries thrive there. and wow, were they delicious. patches and patches of them!
i couldn't help but think "if we were in a car, would we have had the chance to pick these wild blueberries?"
(wild blueberries)
and we saw caribou. we thought this little guy was a statue for tourists at first.
he finally moved, only to turn and face the other way, in the same frozen image kinda way.
(caribou)
you could see miles and miles (kms and kms) of road and sky in the barrens...and yet, it still wasn't flat.
actually, it was a continual uphill the whole 20 kms or so into Trepassey.
hence the winner of the best downhill award (although I think the record may have been broken later on in the trip...)
we had decided that we would ride out to Chance Cove provincial park to camp for the night (since there seemed to be no where else to camp that we could see on our maps).
we really wanted to take a day to explore Mistaken Point ecological reserve on one of the tips of the Avalon, but it was already getting late.
this would mean backtracking in order to come back tomorrow.
so we popped into the newly built visitor's centre in Portugal Cove South, which is the last town on the southern point before the off-shoot road down to Mistaken Point and Cape Race.
the wonderful women in the centre told us that it was silly for us to go all the way to Chance Cove only to return in the morning. they gave us bottled water and told us to head down into the reserve and pitch a tent on any grassy patch that we saw fit (!!).
deciding that we would take a tour of the fossils and archeological site on Mistaken Point in the morning, one woman suggested Long Beach as a wonderful place to pitch a tent, and be right next to the trailhead to meet our guide in the morning.
although they did warn us about the freshly graded gravel road...and they did warn us about the "bit of a hill" at Drook's Point, we did not expect the worst road ever.
if it wasn't for the sunshine, the ocean on our right, and the whales we could see off the point, i probably would have cried.
we never did make it all the way to lighthouse at Cape Race. we just couldn't imagine another 7 kms of the awful gravel road.
but we did make it the 14 kms to the re-settled community at Long Beach (good thing too: first flat tire).
we fell asleep listening to ocean water crashing onto the rocks and the whales spouting in the distance.
(crazy hill in and out of Drook's Cove)
(best campsite ever).
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