Wind Woes

On very windy days, the Confederation Bridge is closed to high-sided vehicles. The forecast for the day we planned to leave was “Windy”. So when we got up in the morning, we checked the status of the bridge. It was closed to high-sided vehicles! We checked weather.com. It was only blowing about 22 mph but would continue to blow all day and the next. The bridge is higher off the ground, of course, and the wind is certainly stronger up there. We were disappointed because after spending 10 days on PEI, we wanted to scoot along to Nova Scotia before cold weather set in. But, we decided to make the most of it. I wanted to see a few sites we had missed, and David wanted to go to WalMart to buy what he needed to change the oil in the truck. First he checked the shower to see if he could determine why it was leaking. (He couldn’t locate the problem.) I got ready to go. By 9:00 we were ready to leave for Charlottetown, 30 minutes away. 

I checked the bridge website again to see if the status had changed. It had. The bridge was open! “Let’s go!” I said. “It’s going to take me time to get ready,” said David. Checkout was at 10 but we knew they wouldn’t mind if we were a little late in leaving. We rushed around to prep the trailer for departure. After a week in one spot, we had a lot to do. It took about an hour and a half, but by 10:30 we were leaving. We drove to the bridge, about 20 minutes or so away. On the way we tuned the radio to the station that gave the bridge conditions. “Open to all traffic and running smoothly,” it said. We got up to the toll booth around 11:00 behind another camper. Then the camper started backing up. The woman in the toll booth walked up to us and said the bridge was closed to high-sided vehicles. So we left and parked in a nearby tourist shopping area where we had a good view of all the waiting 18-wheelers and campers. 

We started planning contingencies. I looked for alternative places to go if we didn’t get across till much later. We figured worst case if we had to cross at night, we would just park in the visitor’s center parking lot on the other side of the bridge for the night. Or if we couldn’t cross at all, we’d spend the night in the parking lot here. “It’s like hiding behind a rock in the Bahamas,” said David referring to the many times we waited on the boat for the wind to die down before we could leave an anchorage. Meanwhile, more and more trucks and campers were piling up. Some were queueing for the bridge. 

After an hour and a half, we decided we might as well have lunch. So we moved ourselves and the cats to the trailer and started making tuna melts for lunch. We had just put them in the oven when I saw the trucks starting to move. “The bridge’s open!” “What do we do with the sandwiches?” said David. “Should we eat them now?” First I said no. I wanted to leave immediately and besides, they were barely warm. We started cleaning up. 

Then we decided to just chow down quickly. “It will take 30 minutes for all those trucks to get through,” said David. I started eating as fast as I could. We both stood, stuffing pieces of unmelted tuna melt in our mouths, swallowing and washing it down with grape juice. Meanwhile all the trucks and campers were streaming across the bridge. “They’re moving fast,” I said. “They’re all almost through! We should have queued up behind the trucks. There’s almost no one left!”  I swallowed the last bite. “Let’s go!”

“What if the bridge closes before we get there?” I said. “ “Well, even if they do, it’s not the end of the world,” said David. We shut everything off, grabbed the cats and rushed to the truck. David turned us around and got behind a long line of cars at a red light where we had to turn left. It turned green. We were moving. Then the light turned red, and we had to stop and wait another signal cycle. 

To us it was just as windy as it had been 2 hours ago. It may even have been windier. “They may close the bridge before we get there!” I said again. “It is what it is,” said David. The light changed; we were moving. There were only three or four cars at the toll booth. Three 18-wheelers were at the weigh station. Everyone else was gone. We got to the toll booth. “56 dollars,” said the toll booth collector.” We made it! 

It was very windy on the bridge but not so much that we were being pushed around. We got across and drove another hour to a campground in Moncton, New Brunswick, a few miles from WalMart and CostCo, where we planned to stock up before heading to Nova Scotia the following day.