Tuesday September 15, 2015

We left Riviere du Loup under cloudy skies, but warm weather. The downtown area of Riviere was very nice and if it hadn’t rained most of yesterday we would have spent some time wandering around.

Today\’s ride took us along the rail trail to Edmundston in New Brunswick. The trail was a hard-packed granular trail that was 135 kms long, Route Verte 8.

The trail was called Le Petit-Temis (the small one). Not very small at 135 kms long. Along the route there are a couple of restaurants, that are open in the summer and on week-ends.

There are also lots of rest areas with toilets and a couple of camping platforms with water. Excellent trail.

We met our first wildlife, birds and goats. At one point we had a stand-off with the goats. They all got together and stared at us, as we moved forward they turned around and ran down the path to their farm.

The route took us along wooded areas and lakes to Temiscouata-sur le-Lac where we had lunch. We also met Daniel another touring cyclist with so much stuff it was unbelievable. We thought he was out for a while, but no, only a month but he had packed for every eventuality!

We passed a covered bridge, which was on the golf course. One of the tees was above us and the green was below us. The golfer waited until we had passed before she took a swing at the ball.

We are beginning to notice more trees changing colour, this area will be really beautiful in a couple of weeks.

When we arrived in New Brunswick and passed under the archway we lost another hour, we are now on Maritime time. This is the last time change we will encounter.

We arrived in Edmundston at 7:45 pm, (due to the hour we lost for the time-change), the distance and the terrain.  Although it was a rail trail we still climber over 500 metres. We found a motel and had DQ (Dairy Queen) for dinner! Both of us were tired, but it was a good ride.

Farewell Quebec we enjoyed your green routes, your history and cities and the people.