Day 58 Monday, July 5, 2010 Distance 82.39 km. Time 4 hr. 26 min. Total so far 4111.79 km. Hooray! It wasn't raining this morning as expected. It has been light early so I wrote a blog in my journal at 5 am as I couldn't sleep. We were back on busy Hwy 104 again and will go through Comquet Forks, Monastery and Auld Cove. While we were stopped for a break, we saw two tourers approaching on the other side. We crossed over and had a long visit with Judy, 66 and Chris, 70 from New Hampshire. They have James touring bicycles with Jandd panniers. They have done a lot of touring in the past in Canada and the USA.. This time they flew to Halifax and are doing Nova Scotia. They just finished doing the Cabot Trail on Cape Breton Island. We were originally going to skip that but now Dave is enthused and wants to do it in the clockwise direction that they did. After we parted, it got pretty windy and as we finished coming up one hill, a young lady caught up to us on her bicycle. Later, her mother, on a loaded bicycle like ours came along. Jacynthe, 18 and Sylvie, 57 are from Longueuil, Quebec which is near Montreal. They are on their way to Newfoundland where they are renting a car to tour. Then they will return and bicycle to Moncton where Sylvie's husband will pick them up. We bicycled together for a while and arrived at the Canso Causeway which joins Cape Breton Island to mainland Nova Scotia. We took photos at the welcome sign and exchanged addresses at the visitor centre. Dave and I then proceeded on Hwy. 19 through Port Hastings, Troy, Creignish, Craigmore, and Campbell. All the signs are also in Gaelic. We had beautiful views of the St. Georges Bay. Finally, we arrived in Judique and decided to call it a day when we got permission from Marie to set up in the Tartan garden gazebo for the night. Marie is the volunteer who took over after the original person that started the park died. The flower in the beds are arranged in one as the Celtic cross and the other this year will be the Wallace clan tartan of black, red and yellow. Marie works here every day all day. Her husband works in the North West Territories as a truck driver for a diamond mind. He works 3 weeks on and 2 weeks off. Her helper, Ambrose, told me that Alexander Graham Bell always said that Cape Breton Island was the most beautiful "breah" place because of the proximity of the mountains to the ocean. We were shining in the dark in the evening with all their lights. Thank you Lord for a beautiful place.
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