The actual distance was only about 113km, but then leaving town (because the time was still early) I decided to take old Highway 2, which parallels the new road. For the first few miles, it seemed like the perfect choice. Then the pavement became more primitive, but that was still okay. Then when I reached the national wildlife refuge, it went to loose gravel. That still would have been okay, but the small black flies that had been eating me all day (and stung! worse than a mosquito) went to town, and now that it was cooler, the mosquitoes were out in force as well. I tried to carry on for fifteen minutes but had to turn around. There was no paved road over to the new highway, and the two gravel roads I met looked sketchy (and didn't appear on my map) so I went all the way back to town. It was pretty well dark till I got there, and I was covered in bites, so I did the cheap motel route again rather than carrying on back to the campground.
I seriously wonder what the flies were. Unlike mosquitoes, they showed no preference for bare skin but happily bit through shirt, shorts, socks. The heat of the day didn't phase them. They weren't put off much by DEET. I mentioned them to the hotel manager, who simply called them "gnats", a handy catchall term. But these things were bigger than what I'm used to calling gnats. The touring cyclist Ilya who warned me in the morning that I was entering mosquito country was, I suspect, really talking about the flies. (Like the three other cyclists I met shortly before him -- by maybe an hour -- he started from Bar Harbor, but he knew nothing about them.) I'm desperately hoping to pass from their territory soon.
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