Day 64 – The Big Red Mud (Murray Beach, NB – Cornwall, PEI)

Posted Aug 31 from Lake Ainslie NS
We got to sleep in this morning (‘til 6:45) because 10 miles into today’s ride we had to take a shuttle across the7 mile long Confederation Bridgeto PEI. Shuttle service began at 8AM and took 15 cyclists at a time. We figured about 45 minutes round trip, so if you weren’t first in line, you were in for a long wait anyway. We arrived around 9:30 and were queued up on the shuttle (which could only take 7 bikes at a time for 11:30. One of the riders has a recumbent which required a special truck to take it across, so we managed to hitch a ride with that, and got to the other side early (11ish). The bridge is privately owned, cost $1B to build 13 years ago, and the company owning the rights has to turn it over to the Canadian Government after 35 years. I did a quick mental math calculation, anc cannot for the life of me figure out how the investors will get their money back.

PEI is the 8th Province of our trip so far so here is the compulsory shot (actually we missed the "Welcome to PEI" sign at the end of the bridge, so this is a shot from the next day, just before leaving on the ferry!)

Once on PEI, we (Pierre-Alain and I) opened up the map and decided to head up to the north shore to check things out. After looking at the map of Ontario which took us 3 weeks to cross, it was a bit daunting to look at the map of PEI and think we could go across it in a little over an hour, but that is what we managed to do. We then looped back into Charlottetown (or Charlatan as the locals pronounce it) to tour the Confederation Hall where Canada was officially formed as a country in 1867. After a great ice cream, it was then off to the campsite for an end to a long day.

For those of you wondering about the title of today’s blog, PEI is famous for its potatoes which grow in a muddy red soil (both immortalized in a Stomping Tom Connor’s Song “Bud the Spud”).