Day 8 Tip to Tip

Day 8

Alex
7:30 morning at Freetown. A sunny day in countryside. Train station and playground at Emerald known as "County Line" leave Prince County into Queen County. Ran on deep hills, bridges, farms, detour at bridge, 150km mark of trail and blackberries on trail. Break at Fredericton Station near the provincal highest point. Ran end at Hunter River near Central Queens.

jypsy
We got an early start and finished nice and early, before the heat of the mid-day hit. We were in Hunter River at 11:20, having covered 23.92K. Another sunny day, early morning clouds had about gone by the time we started. The breeze was stiffer today, fine by us, it wasn't in our faces.

The first bit of the day, from Freetown, through Emerald, across the County line and to Breadalbane was pretty flat. From Breadalbane to Fredericton (the highest point on PEI is just up the road there) was a steady, gradual, climb. Just up the road from the (what's left of) old train station in Fredericton, in Glen Valley, is where our first home was. In 1979 we hand built a cabin in the woods and lived there until Alex was 6 months old (and his older brother was 2 1/2). We lived without electricity until 1985 and without a phone until 1987. They were very happy days....

Fredericton to Hunter River was pretty much downhill, the decent as long and gradual as the climb had been. Although at the beginning of the day there had been many wildflowers lining the trail, here the banks were rockier and there was a fair amount of reindeer lichen growing. The raspberries are ripening and the blackberry crop looks fabulous (Roger makes us wonderful blackberry pies!)

The land rolls in these parts, some of the banks are very steep through here - I can't imagine how they built some of these sections way back when. It's so pretty I took a lot of pictures along the way. There are still fields of potatoes, only instead of extending straight back to a distant hedgerow, they quickly disappear over a hill. We saw many horses and more & more cattle. A dog joined us as we rested in Fredericton, he waited patiently (and unsuccessfully) for Alex to offer him a piece of his sandwich. We met a couple of dog walkers, a couple of bikers and a walker. We passed the 150Km trail marker between Fredericton & Hunter River.

There's not a lot of conversation between us on the trail. For the most part we just point things out to each other, with or without comment. I ask him how he's doing along the way and usually, about once a day, he'll tell me about something, usually something he's read in the morning paper. Today's story was about the Sports Hall of Fame inductions. After he went on a bit it occurred to me he might be repeating, word for word, what he'd read. Then I realized he had so many little facts and statistics in there that no article would be written that way. It's scary the number of facts he has stashed in his head.

We've gone 177.33Km from North Cape

Day 8 Photos Here