Day 2: Edmundston

From: Cobourg, ON
To: Edmundston, NB
Total KMs: 1016.7
Sim's Iced Cap Tally: 2

Today was definitely and almost exclusively a driving day.  It is a push to get across QC and into NB and there are few places to stop and hunker down.  Edmundston is just one of those stopover places.  If you want to make it into NB you're going to be staying here or Grand Falls, depending on your will power.  And tomorrow we are well-situated for a stop at the Potato museum.  Not really but, maybe?

Sim and I almost witnessed a major major major accident in the rear view mirror.  We were zipping down the highway, two lanes divided, positioned in the fast lane.  We came up around a corner and boom, there was a turtle just on the other side of the dividing line.  The car in front of me dipped to the left, and I followed suit.  Behind us was a 52' tractor trailer, in the slow lane.  This guy swerved so far to the right he almost went straight into the ditch.  And then he jack-knifed and fish-tailed and I think he started to tip.  He kicked up a huge dust cloud, and we honestly thought he was going to tip over do some major damage.  All for the sake of avoiding hitting a turtle.  Sim casually mentioned later we were lucky to be 30 seconds in front of him instead of 30 second behind.  BIG TIME LUCKY.  We noticed the driver depart the hwy at the next available exit.  Traumatic.

We had a big big accomplishment today.  We had been struggling with keeping all electronics charged at all times.  And if the Go Pro runs out of batteries you have to recharge it to a certain level before you can access the menu.  And when it's plugged into the USB port to charge the car tries to read it, and again the menu cannot be accessed.  We pulled into a small town called Montmagny to get some food.  My dad set us up well with some tuna sandwiches and veggies for lunch but our tummies were grumbling.  After a quick bite, we tried to set up the GP and couldn't get passed our charging conundrum.  I suggested to Sim we turn off the media console and maybe it would stop trying to read the USB port.  That didn't work so I asked her to get out the owner's manual.  After the manual search was fruitless Sim went to return the manual to its home and pulled out a car lighter USB charger  "Did you know you had this?"  *Shrug* "Do you have a car lighter jack?" "No."  "What's this? *pointing to the car lighter jack*" "That's my car lighter jack." And so we plugged the camera into the car lighter jack, eliminating the attempt for the car's console to constantly try to read read read.  And we could access the settings menu while charging.  And as this particular charger had two USB ports, in addition to my car's USB port this gives us enough power to keep everyone charged and happy at all times.  I'm super glad this was all figured out on DAY TWO!!!!

Other that than that, it was a pretty low key day.  A bag flew in front of me and at the last minute I saw that there were feathers and I jumped out of my seat.  Sim was like, "What?"  And I told her in my head I was screaming "A CHICKEN, it's a chicken!!!"  Good thing I keep some things to myself. We also stopped next to a cool bird house collection, and Sim snapped some awesome photos.  We had talked about a few other stops along the way but it turned out the timing was not in our favour.  And losing an hour driving into NB also came into play.  We pulled up to the hotel at 9:30.  And we ditched our bags at the front office so we could grab a drink before the bar closed.  Priorities people, priorities.

Tomorrow we have our third early morning.  We have to have breakfast and get out of here by 9am to make it to Fundy in time to see the end of the tides.  And we'll be crossing over to the grand old Island of Prince Edward.  So so so so so much to do.  We leave you with two awesome hotel pub mugshots.  We out.