Day 6 - The Extra at the End

Woodstock, NB to North Sydney, Nova Scotia

555 Miles

We've been extremely lucky on our Great Motorcycle Adventure over the years. No accidents, no major (or really minor) breakdowns. We've always found a place to sleep at night. We usually run into rain, but we've always left ourselves enough time to sit out major rain storms, or throw on our rain gear if the rain isn't too bad.

Yeah... Well... It had to happen sometime, and why not on the last ride of our adventure?

Day 6 started out fine. We left Woodstock, NB with everything intact. Several towns down the highway, there was suddenly a void where one of our saddle bags used to be. We looked back just in time to see the hard-sided bag bouncing down the road behind us.

Luckily, it was very early, and there weren't a lot of vehicles that could have been hit, or could have run over the bag, which held our rain gear and tools.

Sean was able to run back and grab the bag from the median and found everything intact and in good shape. He spent the next several minutes figuring out how/why it fell off the first place.

Apparently, two nuts that were supposed to secure the bag to the side of the bike had vibrated off...and the bag went with them. Upon closer inspection, we found the nuts in the bottom of the bag, safe and sound, so we were able to get them back in their proper places and head on down the road.

We had a very lofty goal for the day. Buzz up to Prince Edward Island for a picture and lunch, then leisurely head across to the very tip of Nova Scotia where we would have dinner before taking an over-night ferry to Newfoundland and Labrador. The ferry didn't leave until midnight, so even though we'd lost some time with the saddle bag, we figured we had plenty of time to meander around.

We crossed the Prince Edward Island bridge just before noon and took our PEI provincial picture.

We then found a great little restaurant for a quick bite to eat...

and had more fresher-than-fresh fish and chips, which fast became our favorite.

Within an hour, we were crossing the PEI bridge the other way,

and warily eyeing the storm clouds gathering above us. We had one more stop to make, at the Nova Scotia provincial line, before making our way up to the ferry launch a couple hundred miles away.

So, we don't have any more pictures from that day because it started to rain, and pour, and flood the back roads that Google Maps was sending us on.
Finally, at about 10 pm we stopped. We were lost, soaked, cold, hungry, miserable and about to give up - but none of the little tiny towns we were traveling through had gas stations, let alone a motel where we could stay for the night. So we had to press on in the downpour. Then somehow, miraculously, we found ourselves pulling into the ferry landing, about 30 minutes before the ferry set sail.

Just to give you a visual, we pulled up to the ticket booth just outside the parking lot where you wait to get on the ferry and the wonderful attendant took one look at us and said,

"Oh my god, you poor things".

We had reserved a berth months ago for the over-night trip,

so we were able to quickly change into semi-dry clothes and find the lounge where we could warm our chilled blood before we exhaustedly called it a night.