In the morning we watched in amazement while the family of 6 packed up all of their belongings into the back of a truck and a trailer. They were in a bit of a hurry to get to Quebec City, where they had family from France waiting for them already so they were getting a bit of a boost ahead.
After saying our goodbyes, we packed up our own things and hit the road heading for Bathurst. Less than a kilometer out the door I looked back to see Joanna sitting down next to her bike on the side of the highway. More then slightly curious I turned around and rode back down to where she was, her chain had broken. With a slightly useless emergency multi-tool chain breaker I removed the broken link then re-assembled it only slightly shorter. This took over an hour of
fumbling around with tiny chain pieces before success. Then with the increased chain tension due to shorter chain the shifting performance on the old drive train was extremely poor. So rather than risking the open highway we made the decision we had been putting off since we left and replaced Joanna`s drive train. This also meant one more day with our gracious hosts André and Charline. We were only able to get a chain, cassette and one front chain ring on short notice from the local Campbellton bike shop but this was enough to get us back on the road. So the following day we picked up the bike around noon and a little after one set out for Bathurst(again).
It was smoke`n hot and after about 100km we grabbed a campsite about five km north of Bathurst. It was a very nice campground with an arcade, pools, mini golf and even waterslides, none of which we used. But unfortuneatly it just so happened that we did have some young teenagers camped right next to us. So after drinking at the beach and other areas all day they brought the party back to their campsite 10 feet from our tent at around 11:30pm.
Even when people politely asked them to be quite the party lasted well into the am. So slightly groggy the next day and with temperatures in
the mid 30`s we rolled through Bathurst and headed along the coast up the Acadian Peninsula towards Caraquet. After four hours or so in the heat we came to the Acadian Historic Village but with only 30min before closing we had no choice but to grab the nearest campsite and come back in the am.
It opened at 10am so we packed up early and were one of the first people through the door. The village is set up into three sections showing Acadian life in the 1700`s, 1800`s and then early 1900`s. Each home and building is fully set up as livable areas, where you can walk into every room, watch people cook and eat their own meals, work in their gardens and create handmade projects, such as square nails, linen aprons, wool blankets, etc.
We got a nice lesson on how to weave linen from homegrown flax, and saw one of the first Irving
Gas stations, which now can be found all over the area. The park is completely bilingual, which was great for us so that we could understand everything that was going on.
We finished at the village around 3pm, and Luke noticed that his back rim was done, so instead of carrying on as we had planned, after biking over 30km to the village and back we grabbed another campground just a few km from the one we stayed at the night before, and waited for the next morning when the bike shop opened.
The next morning we went to the shop, which didn`t have anything to help us, so we rode 40km to Tracadie-Sheila, where there was another bike shop and a used rebuilt wheel that would work for us. We went out for lunch at Subway while we waited for the shop to finish the bike, and left town again at 4:30. We biked on for another 60km to Oak Point where we got a campground for the night.
Wanting to make up for a little lost time, the next day we put in 177km (our longest ride so far) to get to Moncton, where we had arranged to camp out in Vincent`s backyard through warm showers.
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