Unless there is a typhoon in the morning, tomorrow will find me on my bike heading north. Until two months ago, I had probably considered Newfoundland only as a bit of random trivia or useful in 6th grade geography bees. For the last two months, every single day, the word “Newfoundland” has found its way to my tongue.
This is what I now know about Newfoundland:
1. It is not a second-rate Iceland
2. It is about as large as Virginia
3. We will be closer to Rome than Seattle
4. It used to be the center of Pangaea, the oldest continent
5. There are many puffins, but no penguins
6. Icebergs fizz as they melt
The rough plan will be to get a train out of Boston tomorrow morning, ideally to Portland, Maine. I’ll then bike up the coast with stops at as many lobster shacks as feasible, Acadia National Park, and enter Canada in New Brunswick. While in this mysterious province, I will spend a night or two watching the tides at the Bay of Fundy, before heading to Halifax. There, I’ll meet a new internet pal and his wife for a day of sight seeing before continuing up the coast to the tip of Nova Scotia to meet Vic.
He’ll be flying up with his new bike and we’ll take the 14 hour ferry over to Newfoundland. We’ve got just under three weeks there, making a big loop of the place and plan on looking at birds, fjords, whales, and if we’re lucky icebergs.
Once he flies out of Sydney to return to Boston, I’ll likely continue around the Cabot Trail in Cape Breton, and then follow the coastline up to the St. Lawrence Seaway in Quebec and to Montreal. But that will be a nearly two months from now, so I’m not sure exactly. But then that is one of the lovely things about bike touring.
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