Started out the day a bit late, after sleeping in at the campground, then using their wireless internet to update the site. Finally got on the road around 10am, braced for a very hilly ride to Grand Falls.
We had read many trip reports about Northern New Brunswick and expected it to be one hill after another, and steep ones too. Followed the 144 to Grand Falls and were surprised that it was remarkably flat, or what hills there were took the shape of lazy rolling climbs, nothing too strenuous.
Got tired towards the end of the day though, too much sunshine and amazinly hot weather for September. We have been getting highs of 25 degrees or so nearly every day. A long detour due to construction nearly finished us off but we learned the value of resting in the shade and, refreshed, we rolled into Grand Falls late in the afternoon.
Went to the tourist bureau to find a place to camp and ran into a guy on a recumbent, Carl. We started chatting and the next thing we knew we were having beers, talking about all his travels through places like Guatamala, Morocco and across Canada on a bike. He suggested we just camp on the grounds of the tourist bureau so we got brave and got our first taste of wild camping. Well, it wasn’t really wild camping as we weren’t the best hidden, but we found a flat little spot away from most of the traffic and set up the tent about 9:30pm. Not long afterwards some kids came along. “Oh, look, bicycles!” one shouted. “Oh boy, here we go,” we thought, anticipating trouble and laying very still in our tent. But nothing, they came and went a few minutes later. About two hours later the same thing but no one bothered us, amazingly.
We were encouraged to try this wild camping again.