PEI Tour - Day 2

Monday, June 30, 2014 - Mill River Provincial Park - 75 km

Drunken assholes next to us kept us up half the night and then somehow managed to get up early enough to wake us up again the next morning. Fortunately they left the park shortly thereafter so we could eat our breakfast in peace. Got on the bikes at 08:00 and rode out on another warm and sunny day. We travelled west along route 11 to St. Nicholas and then joined the Confederation Trail again. Today the gates at every intersection with a road became really annoying. They seemed to be everwhere, even at a dirt farm track would be a pair of gates blocking the trail, slightly open so you could almost manouver a fully loaded bike through them. More than once I crashed into these things with the rear bags. Fortunately the ATV riding population had created paths around many of the gates and riding these rutted trails was often easier than riding through the gates themselves. Ironic how a barrier to ATVs on a cycle trail is more of a barrier to cyclists than the unwanted vehicles. The trail also became newly gravelled for a section which was difficult to ride as it was too soft. Nevertheless, we pushed on and eventually overtook a trail crew that were laying the gravel, after which the riding got easier again. We rode into the town of Portage which looks like a large town according to our map, hoping to re-supply as well as get a bite to eat indoors out of the heat and beating sunshine. Unfortunately the town consisted of a boarded up Quickie Mart and a rather useless tourist information board. We continued on to the town of O'Leary, where we found a restaurant for a very good pizza, a grocery store for a fill of the food bag, and a liquor store for a bottle of wine to combat tonights Yahootee population. There must have been a retirement residence in town because we had several interesting conversations with the long lived locals that were wandering around the streets and stores. We continued on to Mill River Provincial park and found a provincial park that was deserted, kind of nice though, so we rode in and set up camp. As it was early afternoon we read for a while and snoozed for a while in the tent out of the swarming mosquitos and the heat of the afternoon. When we came back to conciousness however, we started noticing the somewhat steady stream of individual men cruising the park, seeing us, and then leaving. We then realized that we were not in Mill River Park, but actually Bloomfield Park which has a closure time of 20:00. Though we did not feel threatened by the gay guys, we did figure that we probably would get the boot at 8 PM, when the warden came to close the gate, so we packed up and rode out. It is very unclear from the map where the entrance to the camping park across the street is, so we explored one way to no avail, and then chatted to a couple friendly residents who pointed us is the right direction. We found the park and a nice wooded site for too much money, but it seems to be a fairly quiet and empty place, with just a few family campers in the vicinity, so we hopefully will sleep better tonight.

Another beautiful day.

Riding the trail.

Gates of annoyance.

The scary scarecrows of the day.

Our camp for the night.

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