Jeremy had a birthday sleep in today (8:00am – woohoo!).  Happy Birthday, Jeremy!  All he asked for was to not tip over today.  The sleep-in is just an added bonus.

We set off with full bellies from the Super 8 complimentary breakfast.  The temperature on my bike registered 37 degrees Celsius while we packed up our bikes to set out this morning.  The temperature gauge corrected itself after we got out on the highway.  We rode in 30 degree Celsius weather until we got closer to the water.  We found ourselves on Nova Scotia’s Glooscap Trail without really trying.  What a nice “hidden” gem of a scenic drive.  Almost everyone has heard of the Cabot Trail and rightly so, but the Glooscap Trail is perfect for motorcycling as well.  The roads were in very good condition (probably better than the Cabot Trail overall) and the trail takes you through amazing rolling farmland and around the Bay of Fundy area of Nova Scotia.  As an added bonus, we found Five Islands Provincial Park.  Not only can you walk around the ocean floor at low-tide and see the Bay of Fundy islands, it’s free for day visitors.  A great find and highly recommended.

After spending some time wandering the ocean floor (Minas Basin) at Five Islands, we set our sights on Joggins, Nova Scotia, home to the Joggins Fossil Centre (a world heritage site).  Once again, we found an amazing place to wander the ocean floor at low-tide and, if you do not want to see the indoor fossil exhibit, it’s free!  We tried to find some fossils to take pictures of but all we found was just an old chunk of coal . . . but it’s going to be a diamond some day!

Oddly enough, there is plenty of information on how fossil fuels are created from fossils at the outdoor exhibit at Joggins, but there is not one gas station in Joggins serving up those fossil fuels!  They could easily add it on to the exhibit, don’t you think?  It would blend right in beside the environmentally friendly solar panels and wind turbine powering the fossil centre!  We checked our GPSs and the closest gas station to Nova Scotia’s fossil centre is 23 kilometres away in Amherst, Nova Scotia.  I was almost empty.  I might have made it but we decided to use Little Red’s supply to get me to Amherst without another “incident.”

In Amherst, Jeremy finally got to have his McLobster meal.  And on his birthday too!  Another bonus gift!  We had been seeing signs advertising the McLobster everywhere, but we did not seem to be hitting the towns with McDonald’s restaurants in our travels.  Amherst is actually the biggest town we have been in for days.  It had a Walmart and a Superstore as well!  We filled up on gas and bought some groceries to cook supper at our campground for the evening.  But we still had to get there.  It would be a hot 60 KM ride to Shediac, New Brunswick – the temperature was reading 34 degrees Celsius on our bikes and the air was very humid.

Talk about wind!  I can’t imagine what Hurricane Earl’s wind would be like to drive through, as the wind whipping across Highway 2 between Amherst, Nova Scotia and Sackville, New Brunswick was extremely intense.  This wind had nothing to do with Earl.  It was just regular wind for the area!  Maybe the strongest winds we have ever encountered in our travels.  Even stronger than the Columbia River Valley gorge area.  As Jeremy said, it almost blew us out of our britches!

We made it to Shediac despite the wind doing everything it could to push us into the ditch and end our adventure.  Our campground for the night is a new development – Oceanic Camping.  The name is a little misleading as it is not on the ocean.  It is quite close to Parlee Beach Provincial Park, though, so I think that is why they can get away with using “ocean” in the name.  It is “Oceanesque” but not quite “Oceanview.”  They do have a fantastic salt-water swimming pool that we got to use this evening, though.  We certainly needed something to cool us down after the crazy heat today and then setting up our site.  I must say that the facilities here are excellent even though the tent site is very new and the sod is not even established yet.  I have never been to a campground with ceramic tile floors and showers.  Pretty good deal for $30 per night.

Tomorrow, we are going to boot it to Fredericton, New Brunswick to wait out the storm.  It is about 200 KM away, so we should get there in decent enough time to find a hotel room and “batten down the hatches” so to speak and see what Earl does along our planned path through the United States.  North Carolina was on our list and it looks like they might get hit pretty hard today.

Number of Days Without a Tipover: 1