Today was all about fleeing Earl’s wrath.  We wanted to put as much distance between ourselves and the projected path of Hurricane Earl.  We had lined ourselves up last night in Shediac to make a short 200 KM run for Fredericton along Highway 2.

The ride this morning started out cooler with a little bit of rain.  It was actually a refreshing change.  We thought the ride would be fairly boring but the scenery between Moncton and Fredericton on Highway 2 is actually quite interesting.  New Brunswick has some pretty big hills/mountains!  The closer we got to Fredericton, the hotter and sunnier it got, though.  By the time we reached the 105 along the Saint John River the temperature had risen to the customary 30 degrees Celsius and the humidity was insane.  If we did not know where we were, we might have said we were down South somewhere with the slow-moving Saint John River flowing along to our left and the old, drooping trees along the water and the odd cow taking a sip from the river (well, first I thought it was a horse, then a deer, and then I realized it was a cow).

Despite the heat, it was definitely a very nice drive into Oromocto (Camp Gagetown), where we stopped for lunch and air conditioning.  We read a little more about the potential impact of Earl on Fredericton in a complimentary newspaper, and decided to put another buffer of 100 KM between us and the storm by heading to Woodstock, New Brunswick.  The GPS took us on some very interesting back roads into Woodstock that we cannot even find in our back road atlas.  Very interesting in a good way, not a bad way this time.  We realized when we got to the hotel that we had not taken any pictures today.  We will try to make up for it tomorrow.