Road to Nowhere

Had a nice easy 20k in to Alma this morning.  Unfortunately at 7:30 in the morning the only thing open was the bakery.  No worries: coffee, egg salad sandwiches and a muffin.  Breakfast sorted.  We missed a morning rain shower too.  Nice!

After dropping 350m into Alma we now had to climb 350m back into the highland.  After a bit of a slog and some bike pushing too, we worked our way into the high rolling boreal Forrest.  We had decided to build our own route to Moncton.  Lots of logging roads and quad tracks in the area so why not, right.  Well the first sign of trouble was a road on google maps that did not exist in real life.  Remember what I said about google maps.  Maybe I should take my own advice. 🤔.  After a bit of discussion we decided on a workaround that should work 🤞.    Success, a bit of a detour sure, but we solved the case of the missing road.

We should have known more was on its way.  There was one section called Dobson trail that had me a bit worried.  I convinced myself that local mountain bikers must have created it.  It would be awesome.  Well, no, not so awesome.  First off I could not find the start of the trail.  After a bit of back and forth I found a side road that would intersect with the trail.  So off we went.  Dave is so trusting.  Well the trail degraded, then degraded a bit more, then the bushes and trees were so overgrown we could not ride any more.  We’re almost there!  A bit more and this great trail will appear.

I was there, the GPS said so.  I looked around, bush, ahh some blue panted rock.  Success we found the trail. Unfortunately not very rideable, a hiking trail more like it, and not very well used.  It was a minimum of 8k on this suspect trail or go back and detour.  Smarter heads prevailed, we backtracked out and detoured around.  It would mean 10+ extra k and a mean ass hill.  Ahh well, we were in it, weren’t we.

After 7 hours in the saddle and another 100+ k day we were cooked.  Some ice cream to recover and no campsites in Moncton.  What to do?  The gods are with us, a great deal at the Hilton.  Perfect end to the day.