Day 91- Good-bye New Brunswick- Bonjour Quebec

Day 91 Saturday, August 7, 2010 Distance 63.33 km. Time 4 hr. 1 min. Total so far 6420.89 km. It was really cool last night and only 13 degrees this morning. What a change! It can’t be fall yet. I put on arm and leg warmers and a vest to start. Dave is hardy and went as normal just in his safety vest. We rode through this nice little, well kept town of Riviere Verte and noticed that there was a bigger park we could have also stayed at last night. Back on Hwy. 144 we also saw a campground in the next kilometer but it wasn’t marked on the map so we didn’t know about it. Only the provincial and national campgrounds seem to be acknowledged. St. Basil was on the outskirts of Edmundston. Once in the city of Edmundston, we stopped at Fortin de Petite Sault, an old fort built along with 6 others to defend the city from attack in it's first years. We then went to the old train station which has been made into a tourist information center. I took many photos in its little train museum. Our main goal here in this city was to find a bicycle store. We were told of Jessomes Source for Sports and Mark took care of Silver by changing the spoke that we had put in, truing the wheel and also putting on my new Armodilla anti flat tire that I had purchased in Cornerbrook. Silver looks really slim from the back because that tire is 23cc and I have always used 25 cc. Mark is good at saying what he is doing and teaching as he repairs. Afterwards we went to Canadian Tire and were able to find Heet, our cooking fuel, again so we bought 2 bottles. The Great Atlantic was the grocery store. It was very windy and cool outside the store but they had some bales of hay in a protected spot so that is where we had lunch. Even Dave put on arm and leg warmers after lunch. We headed to Saint Jacques, outside the city. We came to Hwy 21 and then to Hwy. 185. We have now finished the Scenic River Route of New Brunswick after 8 days. We have really enjoyed that route as it was fairly flat and the river is visible very often and the traffic on the roads was light. I almost forgot what a truck was! After about 15 minutes on Hwy 185, we entered Quebec and saw the beginning of La Route Verte 8 which is a bicycle path of fine gravel on an old railway bed. We would be on it for two days. At the start, we met Michel. He was camped further down and was doing a there and back long ride. We talked to him about the pathway and camping and said goodbye. We went off the path later for a quick visit to the Quebec welcome center where we picked up a bicycle map but could not get water as it was not safe to drink. The path went past the back of a furniture store later, so we stopped there and got water from their cooler system. We thought about camping behind there and should have in retrospect but instead continued to the little town of Degelis (means- does not freeze) where we stopped at the information area for a few minutes because it started to drizzle a little. We met Michel again on his return trip and he directed us to the road that we had to turn off to to get to the campground. After half a kilometer over a dirt road and then crossing a power dam and going through the woods on a trail, we finally came to Degelis Stationment, a park for camping, bicycling, swimming, picnics and boating. The dark sky cleared up although it remained cool. We set up the tent and I was going to do a load of laundry but the store did not have any detergent. So I walked up to a trailer where some folks were just setting the table for supper and asked if I could buy some detergent from them. A long conversation about our trip followed and the nice lady gave me some detergent. I should remember her name but apologize if they read this that I don`t remember. Even though we gained an hour from the time change we were tired and went to bed. We didn`t sleep much as the folks next door were noisy during the evening and the daughter coughed lot during the night and every site is so close to the next that you can hear people turning over on their mattresses.