One of the great things about these East Coast Greenway Week-a-Year tours is that you have a chance to hear what’s happening elsewhere on the 3,000-mile route and to talk with local (and sometimes state) officials.
This time, we’ve already heard about the vision to close the 110-kilometer (66-mile) gap in Canada between the East Coast Greenway and the Trans-Canada Trail, which will be completed next year to mark the Canadian sesquicentennial. That trail — a mix of road, trail and even water — stretches from the Pacific to the Atlantic and will be 24,000 kilometers (nearly 15,000 miles) long — the longest trail in the world. But when it crosses the province of New Brunswick, it’s well north of St. Stephen, the town opposite Calais. So that’s got to change.
Then we heard about an even bigger vision — to link two great national parks, one in each country, with a linear park. That would be Acadia National Park in the U.S. and Fundy National Park in Canada. The big missing pieces are two bridges on the Canadian side; otherwise the back roads, keeping you away from most of the RVs, already exist. And it would double as the connection between the East Coast Greenway and the Trans-Canada Trail.
Who knows when it will be done, but we heard support from an MP, among others. And the stars seem aligned in the sense that there is a Liberal government in charge at the national level and a Liberal government in charge at the province level.
Exploring by bicycle 