More of Nova Scotia

I'd spent the last day in my tent camped out in a field somewhere, hoping that I could wait out a large rain storm that parked itself over me.  But the second day dawned and the rain was still coming down; if anything, it was even harder, and the ground was too saturated to absorb any more water.  I soon found myself to be camped in the middle of a sizable puddle.

Even the best "water-proof" fabric isn't REALLY waterproof unless it's a solid sheet of rubber; when faced with constant submersion, almost all of them will begin to absorb water and slowly seep through, as the bottom of my tent started to..  Even worse was my riding suit; it had been sitting in the standing water and even with the waterproofing treatments I'd given it, it was completely waterlogged.

I finally caught a small break around 1pm, after nearly 36 hours of consistent, unending rain.  The sun even made a fleeting attempt to come out, and I took advantage of this narrow window to pack up.  It was clear enough that I was even able to let a few things dry out, but on my way out of the campsite, the roads were still soaked.  This time when I went down, I went down hard.

The front end slid out and I didn't have the traction at the rear wheel to fix it; I went down at about 15-20mph and the saddlebag dug into the mud, hard.  So hard that it ripped itself off it's mountings.

 

I got back out to the main road before taking it off to inspect the damage.  It was quite deformed, although the steel frame still seemed straight.

By taking off the lid and stomping on it, I was able to get it sort-of back into shape; close enough that I was able to close the lid with some reasonable hopes that it would still be weather tight.  I could also re-mount it with some sort of security, but it's still tweaked badly.  My plan is to find an auto-body shop at some point and see if I can give the guys a few bucks to hammer it back into shape.

With the saddlebag slightly better attached now, I kept heading south and found the first town big enough to have a shop with internet access, so I could check the weather.  It didn't look good; more big bands of rainstorms were heading at me from the south, making any prospect of exploring the southern area of Nova Scotia for the next week pointless.  Facing the prospect of many more days of solid rain, I elected to instead head east to Halifax, and perhaps from there I'd move north and catch the ferry to Newfoundland.  I made reservations on the ferry for three days out; I figured it would give me enough time to either hide from more rain, or see some sights.  Nova Scotia isn't a big place; driving it end to end doesn't take more than half a day if you burn miles.

I avoided the storms for a bit, but as I got into Halifax, they caught up with me again.

After resupplying at a supermarket in Halifax, I headed north up the east coast for an hour, and began to try and find somewhere to camp.  No luck; every little side trail or path I could find ended up being someone's driveway, and the few old rail trails had absolutely nothing in the way of clearings on the side to pitch a tent in.  For someplace as desolate as it was, stealth camping in the area was quite difficult, especially in the rain and with the ground as soft as it was.

I gave up; it was almost 9pm and quite dark.  This wasn't going to be a night I could camp, I had to find a hotel.  Unfortunately, being this out in the boonies there simply wasn't anything around; I had to ride an hour BACK into Halifax and checked in at the first roach motel I came across; $90 later, at least I was dry for the night.  I brought my sleeping back and pad inside as well, to let them dry out as much as they could.

Checking the weather the next morning at least gave me some options; almost all the rain storms seemed stuck on the eastern edge of Nova Scotia.  I decided to forgo the east shore, and instead crossed the peninsula to the western edge, heading northwest on the Trans-Canada Highway through New Glasgow and Antigonish.  The weather was mostly cloudy, but blessedly dry and not unreasonably cool.

Passing through one of the little towns just south Cape Breton National Park, I spotted this on the side of the road, and immediately slammed on my brakes and turned around for a look.  Was that a . . . Honda CBR1100XX . . . with a sidecar?

And a hub-steered front wheel!?

WHAT WAS THIS MADNESS.

I think the owner of the rig loves the attention; that must be why he parked it out close to the road, and as I was gawking, he came out to chat about it.

Apparently, the whole sidecar setup is sold as a kit from a French company; runs about $18,000, plus the cost of the bike that you have to supply.  The wheels are from a Honda Civic and the front shock is actually the rear shock from a Kawasaki ZX-10 sport bike.  Utter madness, I say!  (Also, WOW that looks like fun!)


I made it to Cape Brenton National Park just as the sun was setting; no sense in entering the park that late in the evening, so I turned around and headed down a gravel road until I found a bit of a clearing, and set up camp for the night, and enjoyed a beautiful sunset.

 After packing up the next morning I headed into the park itself, happily, today was July 1st; Canada Day!  Meaning free park admission!  :)

Cape Breton National Park composes the majority of the northern tip of Nova Scotia, and a road known as the Cabot Trail circumnavigates it.  At the entrance to the park, near the town of  Cheticamp, there's a fairly standard Visitor Center, with free Internet and a number of displays on the wildlife of the area, and it's history as a park.

As much as I could have spent quite a while poking around here, I had a schedule to keep; my reservation for the ferry to Newfoundland was at 5pm today, so if I wanted to have any time in the park I had to get a move on.

Mostly overcast, with the occasional splotch of sun but thankfully, no rain.  Although when the road turned inland to go over the highlands, it did get up into the clouds and turned into Subarctic Tundra pretty quickly.

Most of the time the road hugged the coast, and plenty of pull-offs gave great views and picture opportunities.

I had to leave the park sooner than I would have liked, heading for the departure point of North Sydney, making use of the occasional local river ferry along the way to shave a few minutes off the journey.

I made it to the docks at North Sydney almost right on time; within just a few minutes of queuing up outside, we were waved on board. 

 
Motorcycles got to go first, because we're just that much cooler than cars.  :D

And I'm sure letting us go first had nothing to do with the fact that we needed extra time to strap down our bikes.

After we'd all made sure our bikes were secure for the crossing, I took what I'd need out of my luggage and headed up to the lounges.  I was too cheap to pay for a cabin; just myself and the bike was $220, and a cabin would have been another $130 on top of that.  Too rich for me; I'd make do with finding a couch somewhere.

The crossing was uneventful; comfortable enough, although the Internet was cripplingly slow to the point of near uselessness.  I spent most of the 18 hours watching movies and listening to podcasts.  The food was okay, and I did make use of the buffet, as expensive as it was (and gorged myself into oblivion, because dammit I'm going to make as much use of my $26 that I could).

Once the lounge area settled down some (they had live music playing for most of the evening), I stretch out on one of the couches (under a "No sleeping" sign) and napped away the rest of the crossing to Newfoundland.

Maine and Nova Scotia

I left the comfort of my friend's house in Vermont, and headed northwest and over the border into New Hampshire, and then Maine.  It was hot, pushing 90f, and I was REALLY regretting turning in my vented mesh gear for this yellow onesie.  But the sky was clear and the views beautiful.

Man, other kids always have cooler toys than I do.

I was getting close to the coast and planned to head up Rt 1 the next day, but stealth camping this night didn't go well.  I'd been dodging storms for most of the day, occasionally looking at the radar and making detours as needed, and come 7pm was looking nervously at the black clouds approaching. 

I couldn't for the life of me find a good place to camp; everyplace I tried had signs to this effect; I'm not against ignoring an occasional "Authorized personel only" sign, but these were a bit more than I wanted to gamble with.

I finally settled on making an attempt down a power line service road that I could barely make out cut into the grass; I'd have to go quite a distance before I could hide behind a hill, and maybe a third of the way there:

I got the bike high-centered on a rut, and bogged down in mud.  I shoved the bike over onto it's side so I could pack some more grass under the rear wheel and managed to get it out, turned around to head back and:

Got it stuck again.  Yay!  :(

I decided this one wasn't going to work, and I had to keep looking.  But before I could find someplace suitable, the sky opened.

This sucked.  I hurridley tossed the rain cover onto the luggage and put on my over-gloves, and relied on just the outer suit to keep me dry while I kept looking.

Eventually, with it getting quite dark and still raining, I found a barely-noticeable trail leading off the road.

Taken the next morning, it was far too dark when I came in

It was a power line service path, and while I was closer to the road than I would have liked, I was wet and desperate.  Setting up the tent tonight was one of the most miserable experiences so far on this trip; it was pouring rain, very dark, and the bugs were epic.  I couldn't even wear my bug-hat because then I couldn't see what I was doing, and my little flashlight decided it didn't like having batteries anymore.

By the time I got set up and in the tent, I was soaking wet and had 6 mosquito bites on my face/neck, and three on my hands.  And not a drop of after-bite in site.

Again, the next morning

 Packing up was okay; it had mostly stopped raining overnight and gave things a chance to dry a little, although the slugs were everywhere.

Getting back out didn't go too well; my front wheel hit a slimy tree root at a 45 degree angle, and the bike decided it didn't want to be upright anymore.

I headed west on Rt 1 for most of the day, dealing with the occasional shower but mostly just a lot of fog and clouds.  It wasn't too bad, and it cooled off enough that I was actually thankful for this yellow suit.

Very . . . unique choice of color.  And by unique, I mean FAAAAA-BULOUS.

Fallout shelter?  Huh.

I kept riding most of the day, stopping to do the occasional errand, and then by complete accident stumbled across something WONDERFUL.  It seems that an old rail line was torn up and decomissioned, and in it's place they turned it into an all-useage trail.  Frequently enough these are limited to being used for bike or horse paths, but not in Maine!

YAY motorcycles were allowed!  A sign a few stops down gave all the details.

 Screw you, pavement!

As it was a former rail line, it wasn't particularly twisty or technical, but it was much nicer than the pavement.  Honestly, after so many days of slab, I'd been getting quite bored with all the tarmac; there's nothing to do while riding.  This gave me something to pay attention to, and felt like I was actually doing something rather than just sitting there.

Most of the trail was good solid gravel or hard-packed double track; most of it gave me no issues.

It seems they didn't remove the rails, and just dumped a load of gravel on top of them.

Some of it DID get quite messy and technical; this required much closer attention and I almost lost it a couple of times.  Something this freshly torn up couldn't have been more than a day old; the rain hadn't even had a chance to compact it down again.  A few hundred yards up the trail, and my suspicions were proved correct.

Many of the bridges they hadn't done much to besides pulling up the rails and putting on some fencing; be careful where you put your kickstand down on these.

As the trail pushed farther east, it did get a bit rougher; nothing that made me reconsider, but enough to slow me down a good deal.  The rains had really softened everything up.

Before too long it was over, and it spit me out just a few miles from the crossing at Saint Stephen.

It was getting late by the time I crossed the border, and I kept going east with an eye for someplace to camp for the night.

I came across what looked to be a dis-used open pit mine of some kind, but recent tracks showed that it's primary useage these days was for dirt bikes and ATVs to practice their hill-climbing skills.  As much as it sounded tempting, I didn't feel like finding out how far a 500lb+ bike can tumble end over end.  I set up for the night in the middle of the clearing, where there would hopefully be enough breeze to keep the bugs at bay.

The next day saw me continuing East, with a stop in St John to mend an odd electrical issue on the bike. 

I think I've spent more time working on this thing in parking lots than I have in garages.

Most of the electronic accessories on the bike (heated grips, various power outlets, etc) are controlled via a relay that I wired into the tail light circuit before I left, so that they shut off when I turn off the bike.  But now that it had gotten cooler, I found that some of them weren't working; specifically, my heated grips were decidedly not heated.  I traced the problem to having tapped into the brake light, instead of the tail light; the heated grips would only work when I was on the brakes.  A quick re-wire later, and I was back on the road.

One of the oddest things about Canada that I noticed almost instantly is the prevalence of ATV and 4x4 trails that run along the highway.  It seems they're almost constant, and there's little unofficial pull-offs into it every so often.  It was PERFECT for alleviating any boredom I had from spending too much time on the slab.

Weeeeeee!

These would change quite suddenly from good wide graded gravel, to narrow two-track almost without warning.

Usefully, you can also jump on them just long enough to dodge the occasional $4 toll.  :D

Yes, I'm a bad person.

The golden rule when dealing with any sort of off-pavement riding is that the throttle is your friend; in almost every sketchy situation, you gas it to solve whatever problem you're in.  Because the second you get scared and back off the throttle . . .

You go derp.

Eventually the weather turned nasty, so I got back on the pavement.  I'm not quite hardcore enough to ride in the mud when it's actively raining.

I got rained on for a couple hours solid, riding out from the storm just a few minutes before I crossed out of New Brunswick, and into Nova Scotia.

Brilliant me stopped at their visitor center to use their wi-fi, and in that time the storm followed me.  Riding for another half hour got me out from under it again, and I took and as I saw some signs that indicated there was going t

I got to the town of Truro, and headed south along the Bay of Fundy.

The Bay of Fundy is famous for it's insane tides; in some places the differences between the highest and lowest tides can be 30 feet.  I was looking forward to seeing this, but it was late and I took some gravel roads inland and found someplace pretty to camp for the night.  I figured I'd find someplace nice to take pictures of it the next day.

But mother nature had other plans.  The storm that I'd delt with the day before moved in around 4am, but instead of blowing through it parked on top of me and kept raining.  There's very little I hate more than packing up in the rain, but I had a laptop full of movies and an iPhone full of podcasts; I spend the whole day in the tent, thinking I could wait out the rain.  I didn't even have to leave to get water; some strategicly placed pots and cups collected the run-off from the tent very efficiently.

I'm nowhere near done catching up; in fact, I've still got another week's worth of photos to sort.  But it's getting late here and I want to try and make another 100 miles tonight; I've got to get back on the road.  I'll try and post more soon; writing these updates takes a LOT more time than you'd think.