You Were Saying?

The last two days have been kinda interesting.

Monday morning, we left Saint John, headed for Prince Edward Island, with a ride through the only substantial city along the way. There, TD Bank was kind enough to give me $1.32 CAD for my US dollars, and I successfully navigated my way out of town through the traffic circles and whatnot and out to the highway.

The route sheet was a full page for the day, but only 220 easy miles and some photo ops. We'd have time for a little ride on the island, and still be in nice and early.

Until...

We were heading north up route 11, with a town I can't pronounce about 90 km away. We sat thru 2 construction delays, and as we rode, we went from 4-lane expressway, to 4-lane rural highway, to 2-lane highway, to potholed mess in the middle of nowhere.  Started to seem rather odd to me for a route that leads to the only bridge to an entire province. I started to get nervous. I assumed the town was at the foot of the bridge, but now I was just anxious to get there and look at a map.

Sure enough, we pull into the forlorn gas station/(closed) kitchen/bait shop/general store and I promptly confirm that we have just ridden 70 miles of monotonous bad road AND the only way to correct the error is to turn a 180 and retrace every one of them and both construction zones. I was pretty sure I was going to get taken out.

So what have we learned here today, kids?

In the end, everyone was gracious, and we even had a bit of a pleasant surprise to follow. We had punched the hotel into Jim's GPS at the stop, and it confirmed our arrival in like 280 miles at around 8 pm. But along the way, I corrected the GPS and we arrived around 6:30 in time to get cleaned up, get some dinner and wander around Canada's version of Independence Hall and its environs.

And I will no longer talk up my orienteering skills.