Day 72-A Civic Holiday?

Day 72 Monday, July, 19, 2010 Distance 94. 58 km. Time 4 hr. 38 min. Total so far 5000.29 km. Dave woke up first for a change. I was awake a lot listening to one neighbour emptying rain out of his overhead tarp and another group making noise until about 2 am. We were the only early birds as everyone in these parks sleeps in. The day cleared up as we went along. The wind was on our back for a while so we made good time. At one spot, I took photos of a huge pipeline that was leading to some building in the distance. Dave wasn't going as far ahead as yesterday and I seemed to be feeling better today. He had given me some cough drops to suck on and I had a hot cup of tea for my throat. We were out of food and looking forward to a grocery store. We had a surprise when we reached Grand Falls- Windsor and found all the stores closed due to a local civic holiday. OUCH! We thought then that we would go to MacDonald's and have a hamburger BUT they were still serving breakfast. So we moved next door to Subway and ate a 6 inch sub there and we both ordered a 12 inch one to take with us. Later on the road, usually along a railing to park the bicycles, we enjoyed our subs -6 inches every hour. We stopped at another visitor center which also had 3 employees who were all very helpful. When we were going up one hill, Dave stopped and went in the ditch a little ways and I wondered what he was doing. He had spotted a NFL flag so now for the rest of the province (or trip) we are flying the flag from Dave's bicycle. Just past there, we decided to stop at Notre Dame Provincial Park. We could hear rumbling in the distance but it didn't seem to disturb all the swimmers in the lake. I guess hot weather doesn't happen here that often so they take every opportunity to enjoy it. We asked the lady if we could have a spot with some grass and not too far in. WELL, we went to number 9 and it had 12 steps to go up followed by more incline, and there was not a blade of grass to be seen-just dirt and stones. That is why we prefer stealth camping to parks. In most of the parks, you need a foot high mattress to be comfortable and you need a jack hammer to drive in the stakes for the tent. You should have seen us unpack our bicycles down on the road and run back and forth with our items as the rumbling and dark clouds got closer. Finally, we pushed up our bicycles, covered them up and jumped into the tent which was still damp from the previous day. Guess what-we had just a few sprinkles then, had time to have supper and then had another bit of rain later. We are still having parts of the floor of the tent that get wet, and we can't find where even though we sprayed the whole bottom again in Maine.