Day 2 – Off the island to the mainland

From Kellys Cross, Prince Edward Island to Murray Beach, New Brunswick

We left Angelina’s parents’ house and headed towards the bridge. We (or should we say our GPS) took the back roads at first which were not always paved but it was a nice quiet route. We stopped at the visitor information center for lunch and to call for the shuttle to cross the bridge (only motorized vehicles are allowed on the bridge). Ended up being a 2 hours stop in the end (had to wait 45 min for the shuttle since the supervisor had gone to lunch), but we weren’t complaining since we like our rest (especially when there is free internet so we can catch up on stuff we should had done before we left). We met a tourist who was interested in our trip so we had a little chat with him. He mentioned that he had met a family with 3 kids in Iowa who were biking to Alaska. That would definitely be a character building trip for both the kids and the parents. Just as we were taking off to go call for the shuttle Katherine ended up meeting a friend all the way back from elementary school! I would say it’s a small world, but again the island actually is small so I guess it is not too surprising.

As we and our bikes rode the pick up truck across the bridge we had a nice chat with the lady driving it (I need to start getting people’s names). She said she gets a group of 30 cyclists every once in a while. The guys who work with the bridge operator apparently built a custom 13 bike trailer so that it can make the crossing a little faster. They now charge for the shuttle because too many people were using it to avoid paying for the tolls by having a car on either side of the bridge. It’s $4 per person or $8 per person with a bike. Still much cheaper than the $42 it costs to drive across it (they only charge you when you leave the island. For the shuttle I am actually not sure if they charge both ways).

Once we crossed the bridge we took some pictures with the bridge and headed on towards Murray Beach Provincial Park along the old highway along the coast. It was again a really nice quiet ride. We thought we might get rained on but it stayed dry the whole way through.

We arrived at the Murray campground around 3:30pm, and decided to call it a day to prepare for the evening. We had biked about 42km (slightly more than the 30km compared to the day before), plus the 15 km or so across the bridge.

Murray campground is a beautiful spot, especially since there was hardly anyone there. We tried out our new stove and cooked an awesome pork chop and couscous dinner. Afterwards we walked around the beach. The mosquitoes were quite bad so retreated to the tent around 10pm to call it a night.