July 25, 2024, Day 6. Grand Falls to Edmundston, New Brunswick.

   When we checked in at the campground on the St John River gorge last night, we asked if there was any trouble with raccoons, and we were told there wasn’t.  We kept our food in our tent anyway. This morning, Jim found a torn-open bag of chewed-on hot dog buns that came from the campsite of the people staying next to us. 

  Last night we were worried that we were going to have a noisy night, as there were a number of people in their group occupying 2 adjoining sites and they had a lot of alcoholic beverages, but they talked fairly quietly, then settled down and didn't bother us.
  This morning, we talked to somebody from Quebec who had a clever small homemade camper they pull behind their car with a bed inside and a fold-down cooking area on the side.  Everything seemed much more compact than a normal trailer.  They also told us about a bike route that was north and west of Montreal for about 280 km and  very beautiful.
  After leaving the campground, we stopped at a Tim Hortons to get some food, and after we were inside, it started to pour. So we hung out there for about an hour and a half waiting for the rain to stop and chatted with several men similar in age to us about bicycling and about what they do when their dog gets sick. 
  Today we traveled on the old trans-Canadian highway and traffic wasn't bad since the expressway goes parallel to the old route. We passed a large potato processing plant, then a motel at which we had stayed on the way to Halifax.  We now understand why it had a large model of a potato with a face in front of it!  We continued following the St. John River upstream, with Maine being on the other side of it starting soon after leaving Grand Falls church across the river in Maine.

   We had mild rain on and off until near Edmundston when it started raining hard, so went inside a  gas station/convenience store/restaurant and got some food to eat. Also eating there were a couple from Colorado who were riding motorcycles to the east coast and back again. They were getting their clothes dried before riding off again.
 On the outskirts of Edmundston, we were trying to follow signs for the Trans Canada Trail and got confused and ended up by some warehouses where we were able to come back out onto the road. We found our way to a tourist information center.  Here we finally found a map of the interprovincial trail going up into Quebec and to the St. Lawrence River. Yippee!
Guess what, shortly after that we were sitting at Tim Hortons waiting out rain again. This time we saw a beautiful double rainbow.  After this it sounded like there would be no rain and the sun was shining, so we headed toward a park north of Edmundston where we had considered camping.  However, when we were about 15 minutes from the park, the clouds grew very dark and we heard thunder, so we stayed at a nearby motel instead. We beat the rain there which was heavy for about an hour.