Cross-Canada: Day 16
Spry Point, PEI to North Sydney, NS Distance: 665 Kms Time: Approx. 10.5 hours
We left PEI by the same method as we arrived, the Confederation Bridge. The sun was shining again, which was a rarity for us, in fact since leaving B.C. I don’t think we had started two days in a row with sunshine. We entered New Brunswick again and rejoined the Trans-Canada highway heading east for Nova Scotia. We entered the province just before the town of Amherst that was to be our first fuel stop of the day. 
This stretch of four lane highway is pretty non descript with trees lining both sides of the road and no great views to speak of. The only thing of interest that we passed was the tollbooths that charged us $4 for the privilege of using the road. When we hit Truro the highway splits with the 102 going south on to Halifax. We stayed on hwy 104 heading for Cape Breton Island, the countryside became hillier here and the highway had an increasing number of long bends.
Once we crossed on to Cape Breton, by way of the Canso Causeway, things changed rather dramatically. After the town of St.Peters we were down to a road with one lane in both directions and the twists, turns and hills really started. This is what we had been waiting for, for days now. The surrounding scenery was breathtaking and the road was a drivers delight. The road hugged the coast along Bras D’or Lake twisting and turning as it followed the contours around, up and down the surrounding hills that ran down to the shoreline pretty dramatically. Here 
our trusty Equinox came into it’s own. As mentioned before we are driving the LT model with the four-cylinder engine and front wheel drive. It was a blast to drive along this stretch of road. The steering was precise and tight around the ever tightening corners with no noticeable body roll at all. The 2.4 litre engine had no problem at all handling the steep inclines with very little increase in engine revs or noise. The six speed automatic transmission was very smooth especially when changing down as we hit some of the steeper places along the route. The seats are firm but comfortable, especially after 8,000kms, and held us tightly in place going into some of the tighter bends. We will be doing a complete road test on the vehicle when we complete the journey and will be giving out fuel economy numbers that up until now have really surprised us.
We continued on to Sydney, where we stopped off for our final Shell fuel fill up on the mainland. From there we followed the bay around to North Sydney to the ferry docks to get ready for our over night sail to Port-aux-Basques, Newfoundland.
This will be both of our first time visiting “The Rock”. We are both looking forward to it, but it also means that our journey is quickly coming to an end. I don’t know what will be the most upsetting, finishing the journey of a life-time or having to give up our trusted third team member, our Chevrolet Equinox!
Don’t forget, if you see us on your route in Newfoundland tomorrow give us a honk and a wave.
A big "hello" goes out to the people we met on route today!
Dawn Gouchie in Amherst, Rick Hyde in Truro, Kevin Russel in New Glasgow and
Paul Bodhaine in Sydney
