Fundy Tour 2002

It was late spring and Jodi and I still hadn't decided where we wanted to tour this summer.  Well that's not entirely true. We had decided last year that we wanted to go to Ireland. Changing jobs this spring left me with a lack of both time and money. So this plan was shelved until a later date. Maybe next year.

 As spring promised to turn to summer, we started to think about this year's trip more concretely.  We spent a rainy Sunday looking at maps and throwing around various ideas. One idea was to ride down the New Jersey coast to Cape May, take the ferry to Lewes, and continue down the DelMarVa peninsula. We would then ride back up the Chesapeake Bay side, cross the bridge to Annapolis, and finish our trip at the home of Jodi's sister outside of Washington DC. This trip had possibilities, and we tossed it around for a while. But in the end we decided a trip on this route in the summer tourist season would be too crowded, too hot, and too expensive.

Another gander at the map and we struck on the idea of circumnavigating the Bay of Fundy. Now, of course, you can't actually ride all the way around the Bay of Fundy on a bicycle. It is, after all, a bay. But you can do it if you allow yourself the luxury of using a ferry for the watery bits.

Our first idea was to ride Amtrak's Downeaster (roll-on bike access with reservations) from Boston to Portland, Maine. We would then ride up the coast of Maine, into New Brunswick, then Nova Scotia, finishing the loop by taking the ferry from Yarmouth back to Portland. Our first estimate was that this would be about 700 miles. On further research, we realized that this was an underestimate by quite a wide margin.

After several iterations, our final plan is to drive to Bar Harbor, Maine. From here we will cycle along the coast to Lubec, then cross the FDR International Bridge to Campobello Island. A ferry will take us to Deer Island, followed by a second ferry ride to the New Brunswick mainland. After cycling to Saint John, we'll take yet another ferry to Digby, Nova Scotia. The bulk of our vacation will be spent exploring Nova Scotia, ending up in Yarmouth where we will catch our last ferry of the trip back to Bar Harbor, Maine.

Copyright © 1996 - 2011 Allen F. Freeman
Last modified: November 03, 2011