There may be some rain…

Day 2
The morning started off as well as the evening ended yesterday.
A hot shower followed by homemade waffles with fresh strawberries, some orange juice and nice strong coffee was the way today started.
Have I mentioned that our hosts for night #1 were amazing

The fact that a steady rain was falling by 0800 was almost insignificant.

We got underway at 0915, and Claude-Olivier decided to hop on his VFR and ride with us for the first hour or so. He led us along highway 289 through Pohenegamook to Riviere Blue – and at one point we were less than a stones-throw from being in the USA. Highway 289 runs right on top of the border for a few hundred meters….I made a mental note of that for future reference, lol.

By the time that we got to Edmunston, NB the rain had stopped, and within 20 minutes the warm air had all but dried us out completely.

We stopped at the Tourist information centre just inside the New Brunswick line and I picked up my first Provincial sticker to place on my Pelican Case. Ya, I know…technically I should have picked up a Quebec Provincial sticker, but really – I am in Quebec all the time, so it just didn’t seem to count.

We stopped in Grand Falls New Brunswick to get gas, have a coffee and visit – yes – the Falls.

Actually a very scenic spot, we snapped a couple of pics and then got back underway. We got on highway 108 and proceeded to make our way clear across the province to Shediac. Some incredible scenery and a couple of deer were the highlights of the journey – that is, until the skies opened up on us. We rode through an absolute torrential downpour for 15 minutes or so, just long enough to get soaked again, before the sun came back out and proceeded to dry us off. Well, almost, anyway.

When we were an hour or so out of Shediac the skies dropped on us once again, and this time there was no quarter given by Mother Nature. The water fell in sheets and collected on the highway in what felt like 2” deep puddles, washing up over our boots and soaking our feet in a near constant assault. At one point we pulled over under an overpass, hoping to wait it out, only to discover that we were travelling in the same direction as the rain. There was nothing to do but grin and bare it, so that is exactly what we did.

How did my $100.00 one-piece BMWMotorrad rain suit fare in the onslaught, you ask?
I cannot say. Because I did not put it on in time to try it out. By the time that we stopped under the overpass to take a minute to gear up we were already so soaked that it would have been nearly impossible to get into my new rain gear.

Oh well,…I will try to be better prepared for the next downpour.

One would think that the rain would have been the low-point of the day, but no,…not today. We arrived at the address of our host for the evening only to discover that ‘Bob’ was not home. Soaking wet, camping was, for me at least, out of the question. There will be ample opportunity to camp in the wet and the rain while on the Tran-Labrador highway, I am sure – so while the option to sleep in warm dry bed exists, I am going to take advantage of it. As an aside, my travelling partners did not loudly object to staying in a motel, and that is where we sit now, chowing on pizza, chatting about the day, and planning for tomorrow.

Here are a couple of pictures from today – one of the first ‘Fail’ of the adventure – Michael lost one of his auxiliary driving lamps on a really bumpy stretch of road.
The other is self-explanatory – trying to wait out the rain, unsuccessfully of course…


Tomorrow is a bit of a ‘FREE-DAY’ and we plan on heading down to the Bay of Fundy to check out the tides. Other than that, well, I guess we will find out tomorrow.
I hope that you are enjoying the adventure so far…God knows we are
Joe