Day 23 - Downhill to the most infamously famous tidal bore of the BAY OF FUNDY!

miles today: 77 total miles: 1,500 km today: 124 total km: 2,414

It is hard to believe that today is the penultimate day of this amazing trip, but day by day, kilometer by kilometer, we have crossed through four provinces and approach our terminal point. Wow. This also means we start the transition from the trip to the return home, which is the strange yet familiar mirror image of the transition in the early days of our trips.

This morning, we woke early as we wanted time to walk to the beach and bid the Atlantic farewell.

We also wanted to take a moment and say fare thee well to Noel Robinson, Mike’s sort-of-adopted uncle whose influence on Mike and his best friend Brady Robinson (Noel’s nephew) can not be overstated. Noel was truly a free spirit and an avid biker.

I met Noel for the first time on our cross-country trip from San Francisco to Madison in 2006 when he waited patiently sans cell phone or email at the bottom of a hill for several hours for us to pedal into town to meet him. He knew that we would arrive eventually, the timing did not matter a whit. He would have waited all night for us. Since then, we met up with Noel almost every May for the Lake Pepin 3-Speed Tour, which he and a few other gentlemen founded nearly two decades ago.

Noel loved biking in Canada, especially in PEI, which is just across the bay from where we are this morning. Noel passed away this past spring, going the way he would have planned it if he were a planner . . . during his sleep in his tent on a bike trip with friends. We had carried a small vial of Noel’s ashes along with us on this trip so that we could leave a bit of Noel on the shores of Nova Scotia. Fare Thee Well, Noel Robinson.

For anyone who has followed alongside us on this journey via our writings, you know that we quickly returned to our morning routine of packing up, caffeinating and oatmealing, squatting at mosquitos, bike-fiddling, and stretching, before pulling out of our home for a night and onto the road ahead.

This morning, we hadn’t gone more than an hour or so, when we rolled into Pugwash, which Mike had informed me was the Blueberry Capital of the World. We’d been planning on stopping in Pugwash to partake (of course) when we crossed signs for locally crafted pewter things. For obvious reasons, we rarely stop to shop for anything other than consumables or tubes (which are, in reality, a consumable) on these trips, however, maybe it was because we are near the end that we stopped at a small shop called Basic Spirit. While we had to refrain from its stone and pewter wine dispenser, we did find a small salt (or mignon) dish shaped like an oyster shell with a small starfish spoon. This seemed an appropriate keepsake for the trip – especially given the oyster bonanza we had with the Hayes Family see Day 7 and that we’ve been following the starfish route since Day 20 . . . and because it is very light and very wee.

Unfortunately, we learned from the proprietor of the shop that Pubwash is not the Blueberry Capital of the World – Oxford is, which at 30k to the southwest is NOT on our route. So keepsake in my jersey pocket but sans blueberries in our stomachs, we pushed on through downtown Pugwash with Mike wishing for a cafe.

Not 2 minutes later, we turned a corner and found Pugwash’s morning gathering spot . . . with homemade cranberry scones and blueberry muffins.

The day then progressed uphill to lunch . . .

uphill some more to ice cream . . .

until finally a screaming 35km-long downhill stretch into Truro . . .

. . . home of the Bay of Fundy, which has the infamously famous tidal bore (where the valley narrows and the tide is supposed to surge magnificently). There’s a Fundy Discovery Center at the edge of the bay with an observation stage and everything . . .

For a hydrologist, this was a must-see. . .

. . . except not really, as basically all you see is a large bay, reminiscent of a rust-colored bathtub filling up and then draining over the course of an hour.

Luckily, while this was happening, this also was happening . . .

So, while the tidal bore was underwhelming, we feasted on seafood linguine in butter and white wine sauce with charred onions and chiffonade brussel sprouts for dinner, paired with a crisp New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc.

And now, we are prepared for the final day biking into Halifax. There’s a storm approaching, so we plan an early start and anticipate headwinds and possible rain, but hopefully, we will beat the heart of the storm.