July 27 – Sayabec to Dalhousie (NB)

Bike log: 160.1km, 809m of vertical, avg. speed 31.5 km/h

Here we are in New Brunswick! We took a fairly sparsely traveled route into the province, crossing by bridge just past Matapedia, Quebec, and unlike every other border crossing so far, there was no “Welcome” sign immediately visible. We checked our GPS maps, and looked across the bridge to Quebec (which did have a Welcome sign up), and we were pretty sure we were in New Brunswick, so we pressed on and eventually found the welcome sign a mile or so down the road. I’m glad it was there – it would have been a bad sign for the famed east coast frendliness had we not been welcomed!

The road through the Quebec side alternated between extremely good and bone jarringly bad today, in about equal quantities. We hit some construction for about 5km though, they are definitely working to improve it. I found that the roads in Quebec were either terrible or fantastic. I think they do not do a very good job of patching them up, and wait until they are really bad before repaving. I have definitely hit the worst potholes so far here. But the good parts on the whole were much more common.