Day 77- ...and Back

Day 77 Saturday, July 24, 2010 Distance 47.29 km. Time 2 hr. 56 min. Total so far 5346.59 km. This is the second day in a row that we can sleep in a little. We are getting spoiled! It was a beautiful day outside and we set up the tent as well as our bicycle covers behind the motel to dry. I spent most of the morning trying to fix the order of my blogs and landed up having to redo them both. Although, I can transfer words from Microsoft Word Processor to the Blog, I can’t go backwards from the blogs to the Word program. This will be an all day process. We packed our bicycles a little different this morning to be able to access easily the items we would need on the ferry. We left the motel at 11 am and although the wind was pretty strong in our faces, it was a totally enjoyable ride today. The sun was shining, the edge of the road was about 5 ft. wide with no rumble strip, and I could take lots of photos because we didn’t have to be at the ferry terminal until about 7 pm. A lot of vehicles passed us and we wondered if they were lining up already. Mother nature’s flowers beside the road were beautiful today. We had several hills to go over especially in Argentia. As I was going up one hill, I looked off to the water in a bay on my left and saw a moose come out of the bush and enter the water and start swimming across. I rode across to that side of the road, took one picture and then decided a video would be better. It was quite a distance off and my camera doesn’t have strong lens capacity. As it exited the water, it turned and looked at me until I waved my hand at it and then it lumbered off into the bush again. Dave missed it all. Finally we reached the ferry terminal and were allowed in and we didn’t see any cars (they must have all been touring this peninsula). In fact we were the first ones to arrive and had to wait until they did a security drill before they opened the gates and let us in. That’s when we found out the ferry would be even an hour and a half later that night-10:30 pm. We had along wait ahead. Anyone in a car could go off and do more touring. I found three seats together and tried to have a little nap. Later, I finished correcting the order of Blog 71 and 72 by redoing them on their respective correct pages. We started talking to Clara and Craig and then the time and the work seemed to fly by. They are both teachers and have had their motorcycle trip interrupted by engine troubles on Craig’s bike. They seemed to be taking it in stride. They are very seasoned traveller’s and have been practically all over the world. This breakdown helped them to become intimately involved with a NFL couple in a small town and the generosity of the couple toward them by picking up their motorcycle on a trailer over an hour away and lending them a car to do some touring . She said that way was the best to really get to know NFL. At present, Clara lives in PEI. and has given us her address if we go by her way. Craig is from Maine and both will teach there come September. Finally, the ferry, the Joseph and Clara Smallwood, arrived and after waiting out in the cold and wind for over half an hour, Dave and I got to go on behind a big tour bus full of French speaking folks from New Brunswick that we have run into several times the last few days. We found out where our bunks were, changed from our bicycle clothes and went to Deck 5 for awhile. We bought supper. Dave tried cod and chips and I stuck with a hamburger. The boat pulled away and to us it sounded much louder than our first trip on it. Dave was hoping to watch a movie but it was almost 11:30 so there were none playing and we headed for bed. We were in a smaller room of bunks and the 2 people below us were sleeping already. Many others were empty due to all the rerouting of ferry passengers the last few days, many that were originally booked on this boat had driven back to Port Aux Basques and left from there. We went to sleep to the gentle swaying of the ferry.