Goobies to Hillrood 125
(Courtney)
This morning.
For the second last time.
We crawled out of our sleeping bags. We packed up our tent. We put on our (slightly smelly) biking outfits.
Tomorrow afternoon, in just 165km, we'll be in St. John's at the end of our journey. But let's not get ahead of ourselves too soon. We still had to get through today.
One of the first conversations we had was with a lady who was joining her trucker husband on a work run. She asked is if we'd taken advantage of the wonderful free showers inside the gas station. Danica and I stared at her in disbelief. There were showers? We hadn't showered in days, and no we hadn't even heard of them. Oh well it was too late then.
We packed our worldly possessions and our declining hygiene standards onto our bikes and began following the signs for St. John's.
It was another windy day on the rock and believe it or not the wind was (again) blowing against us. This combined with the hills made for a slow day.
At around the 25km mark we were zooming down a hill when I ran over what must have been a particularly sharp rock. My front tire was now making a slightly disconcerting hissing noise... Tire change!!
That done we set off again for a town called Whitbourne that we had set as our lunch break. We found the Tim's and settled in.
Talking to people we meet has become progressively more fun the further get across the country. So naturally, here in Newfoundland has been the best so far. People are astonished at how far we've come just on our bicycles. We met a few ladies in the Timmies who'd also traveled from BC (by car). They loved hearing our stories.
We set out again for a campground 40k down the road. Hopefully there would be a little restaurant were we could get dinner. When we got there we were greeted with two pieces of bad news. The campground was full due to a Band Perry concert that was happening in the area the next day. Also they didn't have a restaurant. They offered us a nice patch of weedy gravel to pitch out tent and suggested we bike the 5k down into the town of Holyrood to find dinner.
So off we went. The ride into Holyrood was super easy. It was literally all downhill which was awesome but there was NO WAY we were biking back up it. Not for the nicest patch of gravel in Newfoundland. We found a little diner right on the bay for a delicious meal then went to subway for desert. Maybe not our usual hang out on a Friday night but we just wanted somewhere warm inside to hang out and charge our phones for a few hours. Afterwards we went across the street to the Irving gas station and got permission to camp on their lawn. Tonight we'll be dreaming of finish lines and champaign!!
Camping by a dumpster... Not our finest
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