When we woke in Carleton-sur-Mer it was another gorgeous day, but things were a little different now because we knew we were about to end our trip in Canada. After 9 days of touring Quebec I could easily have stayed another week to continue to explore, perhaps down into the maritime provinces of New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia.

I bet if I had really tried to twist the arms of Steve and Eric I could have convinced them to go further south into the maritimes, but I was the guy who had a deadline. An important business transaction needed to be done, and I had to be in the United States to do it. People were waiting for me to get off my bike and sign papers, and my first chance to do that would be in Maine. So instead of dreaming up grand tours from the map, we headed east back toward home.

But first we took one last quick tour around Carleton-sur-Mer, stopping at a cafe in town for a leisurely breakfast and coffee, and then up into the mountains above town to a church set on the peak 555 meters above our campsite, near yet another wind turbine farm.

We lingered for a few minutes, taking in the view, and then turned the bikes downhill back to the coastal road and east to New Brunswick.

The road through New Brunswick is not very exciting. Basically it cuts the corner of the top of the province in the shortest possible way, directly from the last stretch of coastline on Gaspé to Limestone, ME. We had received an offer via an Internet forum from a guy in New Brunswick who would take us on a more “interesting” path through the province, but with my looming deadline to get back into the USA, we had to pass on that. Our only stops in New Brunswick were to get gas (and a bunch of Canadian candy bars as treats for my ladies back home), and lunch.

Crossing the border in Limestone ME would have been a non-event if I hadn’t gotten selected for a random search. This added a few minutes to the crossing, just filling out an I-9 form and having an agent take a perfunctory peek at the contents of my panniers. Nope, no alcohol, tobacco, firearms, merchandise, or contraband in there—unless you count a stash of 7 Canadian candy bars. Eric had a tough moment when the agent asked him where he was going. He didn’t know, so he just said, “I’m following those guys.”

Not far down the road we found the former Loring Air Force Base. Like other abandoned bases in the northeast (Plattsburgh, Pease, Brunswick), there’s an attempt to convert it to a “business park,” but in this case not much is happening. Most of the buildings, including this massive hangar (of which only about 1/3 is shown in the picture) are slowly deteriorating. If you need indoor space to store a really huge RV, or perhaps 200 or 300 of them, I can recommend a spot in far northeast Maine.

We rode the motorcycles down the long taxiways to see everything. It’s not every day you can ride your motorcycle down the taxiways of a formerly secure military facility. The runways are so long that even at 60 MPH it takes a couple of minutes to get to the other end.

We ended up, as planned, in Presque Isle, ME. The weather was threatening again, so we holed up in a local motel—not a nice place, but cheap—and I started in on my business tasks. Now here’s an example of “working from the road,” for those of you who want to see the real gore involved. I had researched copy shop, UPS Store, and office supply locations previously while in Canada, so I knew there was a Staples in town. I rode over there, and using the store’s wifi I emailed my documents (seven of them) to the store’s print shop. They printed them out for me (about $2), and then I rode over to the nearest FedEx drop box (also previously researched) to get an overnight envelope. I put all of that in a plastic zip bag because the rain was starting up again, and rode back to the motel.

At the motel I wrestled for about an hour with Bank of America, trying to arrange a wire transfer. They wouldn’t do it over the phone, and there are no branches in Maine. I couldn’t do it on the mobile app, either. So I got onto the website and immediately ran afoul of security protocols, which required me to verify my identity with username, password, my business credit card number, and then a 6-digit security code sent to my phone. Then I had to set up the wire transfer recipient, which required another security code. With various website SNAFUs and re-tries, this took quite a while. Eventually I was able to break through the security cordon and order my wire transfer. I wasn’t done, but it was a good start.  Tomorrow I have to find a Notary Public.

After that ordeal, we decided that a walk to town for dinner would be good idea, and we scored by finding Governor’s restaurant. After many days of mediocre meals, this was a real treat. It turned out that we’d arrived on a special day when they were discounting lobster rolls to $5.55. If you’re not familiar with lobster rolls, suffice to say that they are awesome and normally run about $13-15. So Steve and I, being lobster fans, ordered two each.

Since it was apparently gluttony night for the motorcycle boys, I also got a real American milkshake to make up for the disappointing one I’d had in Quebec. The waitress comped it because they didn’t have the flavor I wanted. Two thumbs up for Governor’s! We waddled back up the hill to our hotel, stuffed with lobster. Maybe it wasn’t so bad to be back in the USA after all…

By this point in the trip it was obvious to me that when you’re on a motorcycle, a change in weather can make an amazing difference.  The weather prediction right on target when we woke up in Carleton-sur-Mer: dry, clear, pleasant temps in the 60s and low 70s, perfect for riding.  So it was a no-brainer to stay here another day and do some inland riding back to the Chic Choc Mountains.

Since we were going to be out all day and probably far out of range of restaurants, we made our first stopped the local Subway, to grab some sandwiches.  The ride first backtracked east along the coast to New Richmond, before heading up Rt 299.

It’s funny how the ride gets better in the sunshine.  The road to New Richmond was the same one we came in on, but now I noticed sparkling blue water to my right, round green hills to my left, quaint farmhouses, and attractive beaches covered with colorful stones.  Where was all this stuff yesterday?

Our route up Rt 299 followed the Cascapedia River as we wound up the road into the interior of the Gaspé Peninsula, eventually rising to about 660 meters elevation.  At that point we reached a sort of “continental divide” and the waters started to run north instead of south.

You can cross the peninsula on this road in about 2.5 – 3 hours.  We didn’t go quite all the way, but turned around at Gîte Mont-Albert, an inn/resort up in the mountains.  Just a couple of miles back I noticed a sign for “Chutes” (waterfall) and called the guys on the intercom.  A short walk into the forest put at the ideal lunch stop, and amazingly, up here in the mountains in June, there we absolutely no biting insects to be found.  Guess they were on vacation.

Although Steve caught my in this photo without a smile, trust me, I loved this spot.  We picked out a nice spot on the rocks and soaked up a bit of sun while eating lunch.  I could have chilled out there for hours.  This was one of those peak “vacation moments” when everything was exactly right: perfect air, no bugs, great scenery, the sound of the water falling, nobody else around, and no schedule.

Now here’s where it gets weird.  We had some extra time to kill on the way back, and Steve wanted to take a side trip down a dirt road (of course) which led east and eventually (44 km later) ended up in Murdochville.  Remembering my promise to agree to ride wherever he suggested, I followed along.  But I was thinking that this was a pointless trip, since there wasn’t anything to see in Murdochville.  We were just there three days ago, in pouring rain.

Well, I was sort of right but mostly wrong. The dirt road wasn’t anything exciting, just another dirt road. But at the end, we found several interesting diversions in Murdochville.  First, Steve & Eric had to go explore a giant tailings pile leftover from the copper mining operations.

Then, we easily found the access road that led up to some of the local wind turbines.  They were spectacular.  Even though you can see that the blades come nowhere near the ground, when you stand beneath them and the huge blade comes swooping down with a giant whoosh, it’s hard not to involuntarily flinch or duck.

So it was strange to be back here.  One tourist visit would normally be enough to this town, but we went twice.  And I’m glad we did.

All that dirt road (88 km round-trip) meant all the cleaning we got from the rain was undone.  I hung about 1/4 mile back from the other guys because I got tired of breathing dust from their bikes.  But when when a logging truck passed there was no hope at all of avoiding the dust.  At one point two of them passed us and it was a virtual white-out.  We had to just pull over and wait a couple of minutes for visibility to return.

Once we reached Rt 299 again, we were on pavement, and conditions couldn’t be better.  I led the group all the way down, winding through the turns along the river at about 55 MPH, for two hours.  There was little traffic on Rt 299, so most of the time we owned the road.  I know that last stretch of road made me feel like staying in the area for another week.

Tonight we are back to camping.  Carleton has a nice public campground on the bay, located far out on a narrow spit of land.  It’s so low in elevation that a tide of four feet would probably flood the place, but I gather there’s not much tide here.  The campground has nice sites, good wifi, good shower houses, and was $25 for a tent site.  We grabbed two sites, and I had one of them to myself.

After setting up camp, we rode back to town to grab dinner at a restaurant overlooking the bay.  (Everything overlooks the bay here, so that’s not as unique as it might seem.)  Next door was a dairy bar with an ad for poutine ice cream, but even Steve wouldn’t dare try that.  I had a disappointing “milkshake,” because I forgot that in Quebec milkshakes are mostly milk.  I also got a bad-news phone call from my business partner about contractual dispute with a vendor who was being a major PITA.  But nothing was going to ruin this day … and I slept in my tent that night with the satisfaction of having had a wonderful adventure.

We woke up hoping for a break in the weather, but found the same steady rain we’d seen the night before.  That was depressing.  There wasn’t really any point in jumping on the bikes under those conditions, so we hung back in motel for a couple of hours to see if a change was coming.  Eventually we had to concede that no improvement could be expected and so we donned the gear once again and resolved press on in the grim conditions.  Steve even put on his matching yellow rainsuit, which he had resisted before.  At least now we had learned a few tricks to stay drier than before.  In my case: remember to put the overboots on before you go out in the rain.

It was the same story as the day before: gusty winds again, cold rain, fog … Steve led us around a tour of Perce (trying to find an interesting road he saw on the map) but all we ended up doing was going in circles.  We drove up the 17% grade again to get a photo of Perce rock, and then started down the coast in search of better weather.  Now we were heading southwest, driving toward the approaching sunshine.

The front tire on the Dakar was fairly worn when we started this trip, but usable.  In the rain and gusty winds, it was a different story.  I didn’t like the way the bike was handling.  Steve offered to swap bikes with me, because he has more experience, but I hate to pass off my problems on someone else, so I said I’d stick with it.  The bike felt so squirrely that I eventually didn’t feel safe going over 45 MPH, which was going to make a long and unpleasant ride even longer, so Steve asked again, and then on the third suggetion I finally agreed to try his bike instead.  The difference was surprising.   The Dakar has a taller suspension, larger front wheel, is slower at turning, and constantly felt like it was going to be blown over in the gusts.  The GS, which is otherwise identical, felt much more secure and I had no trouble going 55-60 MPH with it.

I’m sure we passed a lot of great scenery on that ride.  We certainly covered a lot of the peninsula.  But as with the day prior, we didn’t really appreciate it much under the conditions.

We eventually stopped in St-Godefroi at a tiny roadside restaurant, really just to dry off a little.  My shoulder was hurting, my right foot was soaked (the overboot had a small leak somewhere), and gloves were saturated with water.  I squeezed out about a cup of water from them.  (The heated handgrips were the only reason my hands weren’t freezing.)

Once again we got the pitying look from the restaurant staff. Good thing they  were empty when we arrived, otherwise I wouldn’t blame them for throwing us out.  We were damp even inside the yellow rainsuits, and we squinched and dripped water with every step.  I dropped my gloves on the electric heater in a vain attempt to dry them out, and we left puddles on the vinyl chairs and table.  Steve had poutine again, which I think was his third or fourth of the trip.  I don’t know how a human being can survive on that stuff.

Since the winds had died down, after lunch Steve and I switched back to our regular bikes.  We continued onward without much hope of further improvement.  This ride was becoming an endurance run, just something to be survived.  As we got along the south shore of the peninsula, I noticed that the towns were getting more populous and interesting, with occasional “grand” houses and buildings with intriguing architecture, but it still wasn’t touring weather and we pressed on in the drizzle. We passed on some potential side trips because they’d take us up slick dirt roads and in the fog and rain we couldn’t see much anyway.

Finally around 2:30 pm the rain tapered off. Half an hour later the skies had lifted enough that we felt safe to stop and peel off the rainsuits. This felt wonderful, even with the gray scudded skies above that threatened to soak us again.  I didn’t care—I just wanted to unburden myself.  After wearing all the layers and rainsuit, riding in just motorcycle pants, jacket, and long underwear felt like riding naked. Eric unfortunately discovered a leak in his suit which wet his pants so much that he thought he’d be colder allowing it to dry in the breeze, so he kept his suit on.

At at 3:00 pm, we pulled into Carleton-sur-Mer just as a new shower was getting started.  We stopped at what was probably the most expensive place in town but also a great choice, the Motel Baie-Bleu. It was my turn to sleep on the floor.

During the routine unpacking that afternoon, I found dampness inside one of my dry bags, which I think was condensation, and a leak in another plastic bag that was in the pannier.  No serious damage, but everything had to come out and be aired out.  We’ve discovered that in serious extended rain, nothing is truly waterproof.  Also, one of my two drybags has started to show signs of wearing through at a few points, mostly where the iPad case rubs against it.  I had purchased lightweight drybags and that has turned out to be a mistake.  They don’t have the durability or abrasion resistance needed for a long trip like this.  Also, the plastic hooks on my bungee cargo net are slowly melting from proximity with the muffler.

That evening we took a walk around town, visited the tiny harbor, and had a glamorous dinner at Subway.  It wasn’t high concept entertainment, but at this point it was about what we expected and it was all fine.  We see blue skies on the horizon and the low pressure system that has been responsible for this rain is moved off the coast of New Brunswick.  That means we should be in fine weather tomorrow, so we are considering staying here another night to do a large inland run back to the Chic Choc Mountains (on paved roads).  This will be about 200 miles roundtrip, with camping—finally!—at the end of the day.  We’ll make a decision in the morning.

We woke to find terrible weather.  Fog, rain, wind, chilly temperatures—it was everything I’d expected from the weather forecast but was hoping wouldn’t happen.

Back at home in Vermont we weren’t getting any sympathy.  They’d been having rain for days, and what we were getting was just the fringe of a much larger storm.  But on the other hand, the folks back at home weren’t facing a motorcycle ride around the tip of a peninsula and the edge of the North Atlantic.

It was also a shame to leave the comfy Motel Adams.  It had free wifi, free breakfast, free “buy one get one free” drink coupons (which we used the previous night in the bar) and nice rooms.  But after breakfast we suited up in full gear (rainsuits again) for an attempt at touring Forillon National Park.  The road follows the coast north and around in a loop back to Gaspé, about 70 miles or so in total, and on a nice day I’m sure it’s a great ride.

It wasn’t a nice day.

Probably the less said about that ride, the better.  We survived, and I think we saw a lighthouse or something through our fogged visors, but overall the best part was coming back to Gaspé, opening up the motel room, and drying off.  I had made a serious mistake in forgetting to put on my waterproof overboots for the first five miles of the ride, and by the time I felt the moisture wicking into my socks it was too late.  So even with the overboots on I had soaking wet feet.

Since it was time for a conference, we headed to the Tim Horton’s (next door, of course) and in there we decided to continue forward to Perce.  There was really nothing else to be done about it.  The weather was going to last at least another day.

By the way, a blog comment came in yesterday asking about how we were doing with French.  I mentioned a couple of times in earlier entries that our combined French was pathetic.  However, I kept trying.  In the Tim Horton’s I asked one of the counter staff (using my college-trained Parisian accent) for “sucre s’il vous plaît” and I got the same response that I got every time I spoke French in Quebec: a blank look.  So I said in my best Amerricun accent “SUGAR” and she said to me, “Oh, sucre.”  I swear her pronunciation sounded exactly like mine, at least to my ears.

This happened so often that I was tempted to give up on French entirely, but I didn’t, and toward the end of our time in French-speaking Canada, I actually managed to have a pidgin-French conversation with a woman at a campground who spoke no English.  This, to me, was a major success.

Back to the ride:  it sucked.  Gusty winds, constant rain, very chilly.  Even with rainsuits, condensation and small drips eventually dampen everything.  The visibility was poor, the gusts of wind nearly blew me off the road at one point, and to top it off, the last down grade to Perce was 17% with curves and broken pavement, in fog.  In short, it was terrifying.  I was glad to get into Perce after a couple of hours of riding, and find a motel.  When I stomped into the motel office with my dripping suit, matted hair, and clunky (leaking) overboots, I got a pitying look from the desk clerk.

After hanging everything to dry and turning up the heat in the room, we went out for a walk to find dinner.  We got seafood in honor of being at the “turnaround point” of our Gaspé tour.  After traveling northeast for so long, we will now begin to head back southwest.  At this point there was not much between us and Europe except the fierce grey ocean, which was covered in stormy waves cresting on the rocks offshore.  We walked to the small town dock in the light rain, and saw a seal looking back at us—our second large mammal sighting of the trip.  Perce Rock, the iconic attraction of this town, was magnificent but forbidding when it was shrouded in fog.

We came back to our room to find it like a sauna.  All the wet clothes had released their moisture into the room, to the point that it frosted my glasses with fog.  We had to leave the door open for an hour to vent out all the humidity.

We would all rather be camping tonight, but there’s little chance of that for a while. The weather report suggested a slight chance of improvement tomorrow, but as long as there is rain we are going to stick with motels so we can dry out our stuff at the end of the day.

Steve was “floor man” tonight.  Eric laid down on his bed to do something with his phone and fell asleep fully dressed at 8:00 pm. I guess all this rainy riding took it out of us today.  But hopefully this is the low point, and tomorrow the weather will be better.

We packed up the bikes this morning under a rapidly-graying sky.  We knew the rain was coming, but decided to go for  an inland sortie on dirt roads anyway.  Rain was always an inevitability on this trip, and we were prepared for it.  There was no point in sitting around in hotels or avoiding the interesting mountain roads, waiting for sunny skies.

The plan was to try a long dirt road that meandered to the approximate center of the peninsula, a small town called Murdochville.  Steve had identified a some points of possible interest, including copper mines, a ski area with lots of rideable trails around it, and a wind farm.  As we had already discovered at several points on this trip, there’s never a guarantee of what you’ll actually find.

As we turned inland I was hoping for the same warm-up we got the day before, but instead the temperatures dipped a little, and we had to stop to put on more layers after a few miles.  Around that time Steve called me on the intercom to ask about fuel status.  Since I was tracking miles on my bike’s odometer, and these bikes don’t have fuel gauges, I was the unofficial fuel gauge.  I figured we had used up about half of our typical 200-mile fuel range at that point, so although it would have been a good idea to get fuel before heading into the boonies, we should have had enough to go to about 80 miles round-trip to Murdochville and back.

But I had forgotten about all the dirt trails we rode the day before.  That sort of high-RPM mountain riding really cuts the fuel economy. After perhaps 30 miles of fairly dull dirt road travel, my bike’s yellow “low fuel” indicator lit up.  That’s the only warning you get on these machines that you’re now into the reserve fuel range and have about 50-60 miles of range left.

This was worrisome but we were fairly sure there was fuel in Murdochville.  If there weren’t, we might have to take emergency measures, perhaps consolidating the remaining fuel from the three bikes into two that could go get a gallon back at the coast.  That would be really boring and kill half our day.  When planning this trip, Eric and I both suggested that we might carry 1-liter emergency fuel bottles but Steve pointed out that at no time on the trip would we be out of range of fuel stations, so we dropped the idea.  Now, rattling forward on this uninteresting road with lots of time to think, I was wondering if that was a mistake.

Fortunately we weren’t far from Murdochville.  Less than 10 miles later we hit paved road, leading just a short distance to town.  We were literally “out of the woods,” —and the rain started.  Steve called a halt so that Eric and I could struggle into our one-piece rainsuits for the first time on this trip. (Steve’s regular suit was rainproof enough to handle a light shower like this one.)

I was actually kind of excited to try out the rainsuits on the road for real.  Up to now I had only test-fitted the suit in my house in dry Arizona. The first thing I learned is that it’s not easy getting into the suit by the side of the road, at least without having had much practice.  Fortunately they are designed with large zippers on the legs and body so that you can slip it over your boots and jacket without taking anything off.

We had put Rain-X on the visors earlier, which worked great at keeping the rain drops out of our vision as long as we were traveling above 40 MPH.  It was still was hard to see below 40 MPH, which presents a conundrum when cycling, because in the rain slower would be safer if you could actually see.

The first thing we saw in Murdochville, other than gloomy low clouds and mist, was the gas station. This alone made the town a success for us.  We pulled in under the gas station canopy, filled up, and then sat down inside at a small table to confer.  This gas station had a nice little corner with a coffee & hot chocolate maker, some maps, and chairs.

It might be hard to appreciate how awkward all this was with four layers of clothing, boots, and a rainsuit.  Not only did I feel like a kid who is overbundled in clothing in winter, but every step and movement left drips of water in my wake.  I won’t even get into the contortions required to use the bathroom.  At this point I was less excited by my rainsuit. Now it was starting to feel like a combination of a scuba drysuit and a suit of armor. But at least I was dry on the inside, until I started sweating while sitting in the gas station.

We considered several off-road routes around the area, and finally wandered off behind Steve to “try to find some things.”  I wasn’t exactly sure where we were heading but at this point in the trip both Eric and I were accustomed to just following.  This time we were mostly stymied: all the dirt tracks we tried got overly technical (imagine riding down a steep slope over loose rocks and dirt in the rain), or they just didn’t go anywhere.  This meant several “exciting” U-turns on single-track trails.  Add in the slope, the uneven ground, and you’ve got a formula for another bike drop, so we were very careful.

We took a tour around the paved downtown and over by the mothballed open-pit copper mines, but didn’t see much of interest.  Honestly, sometimes it was hard to see anything at all.  An attempt to find the road up to the wind turbines (which were barely visible in the cloud layer) failed as well.  Finally, we headed out of town to try to find an abandoned airport, and somehow we missed that too.  This was turning out to be a big bust.

We finally tried a dirt route around a small lake, which was marked as a “1 km” loop by signs. What the heck, let’s try the lake loop, it’s short.  Well, no, it wasn’t.  I don’t know what the “1 km” signs referred to, but this loop was easily several miles of very rough road with deep ruts and occasional water crossings and big puddles.  That actually made it fun.

I was in the lead, toward the end of this loop, when we encountered the last mud puddle.  All seemed well, I was riding through the puddle on a little ridge of mud, when suddenly I found myself lying on the ground.  BAM! It was that fast. I jumped up from the bike (which was still running), trying to figure out what had just happened, while the other two guys rolled up to help.

This time it wasn’t just a drop.  I had crashed.  The front right turn signal of the bike was snapped off and smashed to bits, the brake pedal was pretzeled, and of course everything on the bike was re-smeared with mud.  While Steve and Eric were lifting the bike and assessing the damage, I realized my left shoulder was hurting.  Apparently when the bike went down, I kept my grip on the handlebars for a moment and the left one was yanked hard.  I was probably lucky not to have a more serious shoulder injury.  A separated shoulder might have left me unable to ride out, and would have put us in a difficult position to recover the bike.

Protective gear.  I have to say, the stuff works.  My head bumped the ground but I didn’t even feel it thanks to my helmet.  My right hip hit hard, but there’s a strategically-placed piece of foam padding there in my motorcycle pants, which took up the shock and left me with nothing more than a slight soreness for a few minutes.  My right shoulder also hit hard, but the rainsuit is made of tough stuff and didn’t even scuff on the ground.

I think this is the moment Steve was waiting for.  He broke out his toolkit and, with Eric, commenced our first “field repair.”  The turn signal was trash, so it got removed entirely.  The brake pedal took some careful bending, but eventually ended up looking almost like new.   There wasn’t anything to be done about the “beauty marks” I’d added to some of the plastic parts.

After that episode we decided we’d done enough off-road.  It was only a few hundred feet to the asphalt highway that led 50 miles to Gaspé.  There wasn’t much rain but it was cold and damp, and my shoulder was still painful.  Between those things, I didn’t really notice the ride much.  I was just sort of gritting my teeth and getting through it, but I remember that it was a nice winding road that crossed many streams.  Around here salmon is an important industry, and most of the rivers have signs indicating that they are “Riviere Saumon,” meaning that salmon spawn in them.  All of the rivers are clear, wild, and beautiful.

In Gaspé I was still feeling a bit off.  All I wanted was to find a warm dry place to get out of the gear.  The town was smaller than I expected and our options for a hot drink and a motel were few, but with a little searching we discovered the Motel Adams, which turned out to be a great choice, and settled in.

A check of the weather at this point showed things were going to get worse. But it was just great to settle be somewhere indoors and change into normal clothes for a while.  Overall, our spirits were still high.   Nobody was moaning about the weather; we were just having a good time regardless.

I had noticed a small car wash around the corner, so we rode there and rinsed the mud off all three bikes.

The rest of the evening was unremarkable.  We had a forgettable dinner (pizza) at a nearby place, and I made some calls while pacing around the parking lot (the rain had stopped for a while).  Otherwise there was not much to do but wait and see what the next morning’s weather report had to say.

Eric was “floor man” this evening, so I had the comfort of a hotel mattress to look forward to, rather than my Thermarest camping mattress. My thought as I went to sleep was that I hoped my shoulder wouldn’t stiffen up overnight.