Day 10: New River Beach Provincial Park to Rockwood Park, Saint John

Our second-last riding day (for most) was the shortest of all, reaching Saint John by lunchtime and only riding on to the municipal campground after lunch. It was also the last day for Steve F, Derek and Sean, who all had to return to Ottawa early for various reasons (Sean's reason being playing at BluesFest on July 19th.)

Here's the route:



We got up a little less well-rested than usual at the New River Beach Provincial Park. In the middle of the night, a group of mid-twenties hooligans had been yelling and smashing things in public areas of the campground, waking everyone up and apparently terrifying the elderly couple in the trailer next to their tent site. The RCMP was called, but did nothing more than jot down their details, and the park staff the next morning was "demanding" their speedy departure, also with little effect. We were a bit relieved that they'd been too drunk at night to notice our bikes as a good target for trashing.

We had another breakfast of bacon and pancakes before departing - with rationed coffee due to depleted stores.

The kids and ladies opted not to ride at all, due to a stretch on a 4-lane divided highway being almost unavoidable coming in to Saint John. Instead, they visited the Lepreau Falls in the morning.

All of the men rode out along route 175, then 790 working our way as far as we could before getting on the main highway.

Highway 1 itself proved pretty uneventful. It's not pretty, but traffic was light, and the shoulder was mostly pretty wide. The speed limit is 110 km/h, definitely the highest of any road I've biked on.

We exited the highway on route 100, then riding along a ridge with a good view of the refinery and other less-than-pretty sights in Saint-John. I didn't take any further pictures until we reached the Reversing Falls Bridge, then when we reached the city centre and found a buskers festival running. We saw a unicyclist playing "Sweet Child Of Mine" on an electric guitar...

Steve T had booked brunch at the Big Tide Brewery on Princess Street, where we met the kids and ladies. A couple of tasty IPAs complemented my breakfast poutine nicely.

After lunch, it was a short (albeit uphill) ride to the Rockwood Park campground. Sean, Steve F and Derek got ready to go, and I drove off to the Fredericton Airport with them.

The airport check-in was mostly smooth, with Steve charming the (male) Air Canada agent into marking him down as a member of the military to avoid the baggage claim charge - a feat Derek couldn't repeat. Surprisingly, the agent didn't ask for any ID from any of the 3 travellers.

Derek's attempt to bring CO2 cartridges in his checked bag got no further than the baggage scanner, and they came back with me in the van.

It sounds like the rest of their journey was trouble-free, and we got messages that they were safely home when expected.

Back at the campground, the others had continued setting up tents in the rain, and Mike hung up two pairs of bike shorts in the shared shelter area by the washrooms (apparently discussing with Laura whether that was safe - no foreshadowing here...) They all walked back downtown and booked dinner at Billy's Seafood Company, where I arranged to meet them (the airport was about an 80 minute drive each way.)

At Billy's, the server managed to pour Rachel's pint of chocolate milk all over her, including her brand new scarf just bought an hour earlier. She was fairly upset, but a quick shopping trip to Giant Tiger produced a new outfit for less than the cost of an appetizer. In general, the service was poor, but the food was excellent, especially the seafood charcuterie starter we shared.

After dinner, we all returned to the campground, and Mike found his shorts gone... That confirmed that we shouldn't leave any phones to charge overnight, something we'd felt comfortable doing at every prior campground at which we didn't have power by the tents.

We had a little wine and tried composing a few more verses of the "Fundy Fondo Song" at the scene of the crime, before we retired to the tents.