After a great sleep on the grassy plains of the Gaspe Peninsula, we were up early, packed and ready for another day.  We spent a few minutes on the beach checking out the driftwood, snapped a few pictures and made for the hills.  It was an easy morning since there was nothing to repair.  Yet.

Just a few minutes from Cap Chat is Ste-Anne-Des-Monts which is the gateway to the Chic-Chocs.  The highway through this mountainous (“hilly” for the BC folk) area is really nice and the rivers that meander through here are crystal clear (“average” for the BC folk).  The traffic was pretty light at 9:00 in the morning so we had the roads pretty much all to ourselves.

We also had the construction zones to ourselves.  Most sections were not too bad – only a couple hundred meters of gravel or grooved pavement, but there were a few with some pretty good potholes and trenches… Turns out one of these was too much for my amateur welding job on my luggage rack and I noticed the tent bobbing up and down on the back of my bike after a while.  We found a nice long straight stretch to pull off and assess the situation and I decided that like many things, it was nothing a little aircraft wire couldn’t fix.  The hardest part was fending off the bugs while I mended the rack.

Once that little chore was taken care of, we made our way to the south side of the park, which is the town of New Richmond.  We caught up with the 132 again here, and poked along through the scenic and touristy Chaleur Bay area.  Our GPS’s had a bit of a disagreement about the best way to get to the other side of the bay, but I still say we should have taken the ferry.  The bridge was fun too though.  Not quite as high and long as the Canada/US bridge at Gananoque, but still quite nice.

On the south side of Chaleur Bay is the Acadia trail, which I imagine is interesting if you already know all about it, but the only thing it offers to tourists who don’t know where they’re going is their route marker signs which look like a graphic of a radiator fan.  I didn’t know the Acadians were known for their mechanical history…  Jenny thinks it’s a starfish.

It’s 4:00 – must be lunch time!  We’re getting close to Miramichi and it looks like a big dot on the map, so there must be something there, right?  After 2 or 3 passes down main street, we picked Tyra’s Seafood and Dairy Bar.  They turned out to have an excellent lobster roll, and very cool painting in the dining room.  And bathrooms.  And ceiling.

After lunch, it was time to think about somewhere to be for the night.  A look at the map told us that Kouchibouguac was the closest good-looking campground so we took the 117/Acadian Trail east to Baie-Ste-Anne then east some more to Pointe Sapin where we had our first full-on view of the Atlantic Ocean.  After a short drive south of Pointe Sapin on the 117 into Kouchibouguac Park, at feeding time dusk on the way to the visitor center, Jenny saw her first black bear up close as we passed it on the parkway, and later saw a good sized rabbit looking for handouts in the campground.  Or maybe it was just hiding out from Yogi…