August 12
End: North Sydney
Miles: 20.7
Total: 5043.6
In the morning I didn’t really feel like getting up. I stayed underneath my tarp in the small cemetery behind the Catholic Church. I wondered if anyone would even notice me back there. Even though it was a Sunday, I thought that maybe everyone would go straight into the church and not see me.
I didn’t realize that one of the doors was on the side of the building, in plain sight of my tarp. I caught a man peeking out at me and decided to pack up and leave. I found out that the grocery store was closed for the day. Heading to the laundromat, I started my wash after some difficulty obtaining detergent and change.
While there I wrote more journal entries. I still was in the mood to get completely caught up after lagging behind for so long. Even when my clothes were done I kept going, and got totally caught up for the first time since the first few days of my trip.
The plan was to walk down to Narrows, where I would take a pedestrian ferry and get back on the trail. However, when I looked at the map I realized that I could get to North Sydney by walking about twice the distance to Narrows on the Trans-Canada Highway.
I may have underestimated the distance. After three or four hours I checked the map and realized that it would be well after midnight before I arrived. I just kept on walking, wondering where I could find a spot to put my tarp down. I walked over a mountain which had fog, mist, and then some light rain.
I descended the road which wound around down to a bridge which I could see from up on the mountain. What I couldn’t see from that far away was that the bridge had absolutely no shoulder and was not meant for pedestrians. I stared at it in disbelief, and stuck my thumb out to see if I could get across this obstacle. Incredibly, a car stopped though there was nowhere to stop.
I hurriedly jumped in and thanked the young couple inside profusely as they drove me across the bridge. When they heard I was going to North Sydney, they drove me all the way there, even though they were planning to turn off the highway a few miles short of that.
They advised me on camping spots, and we stopped at the McDonald’s. I hung out there and used the Internet before finally heading back up near the highway to camp just inside a walking track next to the local skateboard park. I was about to leave Nova Scotia, and though I was a little nervous I couldn’t be happier.
