Tuesday, September 3, 2004, 29.9 miles: When we get back from one of our trips, we often look at each other and say, “Well, it wasn’t a relaxing vacation!” With some resistance, I reluctantly agreed to riding to a hike. This meant another trek over the logging road we used on our first day to PEI and a 15+/- mile ride to the Five Islands Provincial Park and good hiking as we’d been told.
The ride to the park wasn’t that bad as we weren’t fully loaded — just some hiking stuff and lunch — and it was mostly downhill with a tailwind. The biggest obstacle was the logging was in active progress and even in the week since we last rode it, the road was pretty chewed up by the caterpillar tracks of the logging equipment. Made for an even bumpier ride.
Once at the main road though, it was very smooth sailing with those aforementioned downhills and tailwinds. The park lived up to the hype. Though it was a stretch hike for me with my foot trouble at 6.2 miles, it was a walk in the park for Dana. We took the outermost loop we could along the East River, back up over the ridge, and down to Red Head point. Beautiful views of the Bay and the red sandstone cliffs.
On the way back, we stopped at Diane’s Restaurant for ice cream and it was very hard to resist “The Best Fried Clams in Nova Scotia,” but we did. Especially with that logging road climb ahead of us. The ice cream made the return trip — uphill and against the wind — more tolerable. We ended the evening with a feast of the remaining food we had as we were leaving in the morning for Halifax, and a gin and tonic toast to Dana’s dad, Bill.
Total miles on this trip so far for Paul is 527.9, and 564.9 for Dana.
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