Fall Colors Week One

 

 

 

 

 

 

Maine Coast

Eileen & Adele in Bath, Maine

Adele, Carl & Eileen at Fort Popham

Lighthouse at the entrance to the Kennebec River

The Birthday Girl!

Riverside Village

The Sea, Oh the Sea!

Carl, Adele, Eileen & Tom on Georgetown Island

Back in the USA

After seven enjoyable weeks exploring Maritime Canada we returned to the US at Calais, Maine on the day of the Navy Yard shooting in Washington. Other than after trans-Atlantic flights this was the longest time we’ve spent at border control. We were in a long line which wound its way through the little town of St Stephen in New Brunswick for in excess of an hour. When we eventually reached the top of the line the border guard surprised us by coming on board where he checked the bathroom and the bedroom; most unusual as they rarely leave their booth, every vehicle was similarly checked. When we heard the news later that afternoon we understood the delay and caution.

Our first RV stop was in the small town of Harrington on a lovely part of the Maine coast while there we had a delicious home cooked dinner in a restaurant called "The Fisherman’s Wife" in Milbridge a nearby town. We stayed in Harrington for two nights during which the harvest moon was so bright it was almost like dusk all night.

From Harrington we traveled through Ellsworth on our way to Boothbay – Tom wanted to revisit LL Bean! On our arrival at LL Bean Tom, as is usual, checked the car on the tow dolly to discover that the hook of the ratchet on one of the straps had broken; a safety chain had stopped the car from falling off the dolly. We asked people in the car park where the nearest auto shop was and a local couple gave Tom a ride to O’Reilly’s where he purchased a stop-gap solution and then walked the mile and a half back. One of the men we chatted to in the car park was from Australia who was no help but gave us a chuckle when as he walked away saying "No Worries Mate" - we thought we had lots of worries! We jerry-rigged the temporary strap securing the car on the dolly and checking the reversing camera (our rear view mirror) frequently, we hoped we could make it to Boothbay; in fact we made it all the way to the Barth’s in Winthrop!

In Boothbay we stayed in Shore Hills a lovely RV park surrounded by enormous RV’s (45 to 50 feet long); most of them on an organized "Fall Leaves tour of New England " starting from Boothbay. On our second day Eileen and Carl came down from Winthrop to stay for two days; we walked around the lovely town of Boothbay, did a little shopping and then Eileen and Carl checked in their B&B a beautifully decorated house right on the edge of town. From there Carl drove us to Ocean Point and Southport Island and on returning to Boothbay we went to Ports of Italy restaurant where we celebrated Adele's birthday in style; it was good to share the celebration with friends!  

Some of you may remember from our August 20 blog that Adele was very annoyed that her Canon camera had broken and asserted that she would not purchase another Canon camera! Well, she did not; instead she wrote a letter of complaint to the President of Canon and within a few days received a phone call and a follow up email confirming that Canon would replace her camera. Adele had it delivered to Eileen and Carl’s who carried it to Boothbay for her – the new camera is quite an upgrade from her previous one. So, a birthday present from Canon! Adele is thrilled with the multiplicity of features – better zoom, panoramic ability and even GPS – the photos taken so far are vastly superior to her previous camera. All she needs now is for a moose or bear to appear to capture them up close! And, of course we’re both looking forward to capturing some spectacular fall foliage photos. Thanks Canon.

Day two of the Barth’s visit continued with great weather, in fact a bit too hot for this time of year. Carl chauffeured us around once again; he took us to Bath a nice town which we walked around and had coffee. Bath remains a big ship and missile building town. From there we went on to Fort Popham, yet another stone fort (never completed) meant to protect the mouth of the Kennebec River and Bath further up river. We continued down the peninsula to Georgetown Island which is on the Sheepscot River. Returning to Boothbay we sat on the deck at the Lobster Dock restaurant enjoying the sunset and…guess what we had for dinner.

This is a lovely part of the Maine Coast busy with tourists well into October as they have an extended season thanks to the autumn leaves. All the towns we visited look prosperous and all the buildings elegantly restored and well kept. In addition to lobster fishing, tourism is the big industry all along the Maine coast which boasts the longest coastline of any state in the US.

St John, New Brunswick Photographs

Lunch with Judy & Chuck

Meet me under the clock!

The reversing rapids at low tide

Queen Mary 2 dominates the skyline

Famine Celtic cross with 3 sisters lamps in the background

Plaque of Celtic cross

St John, New Brunswick

On a Fall Color Cruise our very good friends from California Judy and Chuck had a scheduled stop in St John and we arranged to meet with them after our drive down from Moncton. So the previous evening we set the alarm; we’re not known to be early risers! We reached Rockwood Park, parked the RV un-hitched the car and headed downtown to meet Judy and Chuck. The day was grey and foggy so we spent most of our visit over lunch. We were a little late arriving at the Britt, in the meantime Judy had filled the waitress (who was a ball of fun) in on her traveling friends; the meal was delicious and we passed the time easily catching up on California news.

Judy took us on a quick walk about on the way back to the ship and after we had said our goodbyes we returned to our RV to hook it up to the water, electricity, Wi-Fi and sewer. The town center was a mere 5 minute drive away from this beautiful 2,200 acre City Park which has a zoo, a golf course, an RV Park and is a walking, biking paradise of trails around 10 manmade lakes; enough to keep a walker/biker happy for a year. Adele was in paradise and was up and about walking at 8am every morning. One of the lakes had a large function oriented pavilion with a restaurant, as there seemed to be a wedding party there every day we never got to eat there.

The forecast for the following few days was for rain so we decided to visit the New Brunswick Museum which we found very interesting with three floors of different exhibits; one about whales where a docent gave a fascinating talk, others were the wood industry and ship building – which were a major employers for many decades. We watched a documentary on the hundreds of thousands of little sand pipers who summer in the muddy salt marshes of the Bay of Fundy and having doubled their weight feeding on sand lice and other bird delicacies fly home to South America – 4,000 miles non-stop. Thousands of United Empire Loyalists fled to Canada between the revolutionary war and the 1812 war setting up most of the port towns on Canada’s eastern coast and as one would expect the museum had an interesting loyalist exhibit from which we learned a lot there’s an abundance of loyalist history throughout the Maritimes. Back outside we discovered the day had very little rain.

We woke to a very foggy morning the next day but by 10am it had dissipated and turned into a warm sunny day; perfect we thought to take a city bus tour. The Queen Mary 2 had docked overnight and lots of people from the ship were on the tour; we had the funniest driver/guide with a wonderful sense of humor. While waiting in line for the bus Tom noticed a couple staring at him intensely and wondered “what’s going on?” Our first stop was at the reversing rapids and while there the man approached Tom and asked if he could take his photo explaining that Tom was his brother’s exact double! He turned out to be from Belfast in Northern Ireland. The reversing rapids are another Bay of Fundy phenomenon; as the tide comes in on the St. John River the rapids reverse and race upstream, then as the tide goes out the rapids flow with the river. This is caused by an underwater rock ledge which has a 30ft drop carved by the last ice age; the river is only navigable for a total of about 40 minutes every 24 hours at calm tide when the waters have leveled. The bus driver showed us a house whose chimney looked like a witch from a certain angle and told us that when he was growing up in St John right across the road from the witches house was the local Asylum (since demolished it’s now a park), the next building is still a funeral parlor and next is a grave yard – as you can imagine the driver had us in tears of laughter telling his childhood Halloween stories – imagine living as a child in that area. He also told us about the Irving (Irving Oil etc.) family who are very big benefactors to the city of St John and local charities. Several other successful businesses are located in St John including Moose Head beer.

St John is an old town which was named by Samuel Champlain who landed there on the feast of St John the Baptist in 1604. At the end of the Revolutionary war 14,000 United Empire Loyalists arrived to make St. John their home. St John also encouraged and was very welcoming to immigrants, 30,000 Irish landed there during the Irish potato famine in the 1840s; many more started the journey across the Atlantic but succumbed to illness and disease, of those who reached St John their health was so bad that they did not survive. Overall, the Irish immigrant stories are heart breaking and are commemorated by a large Celtic cross on Partridge Island where all immigrants arrived and were quarantined; many Irish are buried on the island.

Devastated by fire in 1877 when the two-thirds of the town was destroyed the town Fathers’ amended the building code mandating that all buildings be constructed of stone and with flat roofs. As a consequence the town was rebuilt in an even grander fashion than before. The downtown is on a hill; however, one can cheat by going into the shopping center then use escalators and cross bridges to go uphill. There’s a wonderful indoor market open 6 days a week which is accessible from the shopping area; reminded Tom of the English Market in his native Cork.

We had wonderful weather on our last day so we headed down town to take a walking tour of the places we saw from the bus. True to its loyalist heritage the major streets are King Street, Prince Street, Duke St, Queen Street, Prince William Street - you get the drift - how loyal was that? It did have a St Patrick Street! We enjoyed St John and Rockwood Park where we were parked; the park is on the Trans Canadian walking trail and naturally Adele thought that maybe she should walk to Vancouver and visit her brothers! 3,000 miles - how long would that take?

Hopewell Rocks Photographs

Descending to the ocean floor

On the ocean floor

In the process of sculpting new formations

An hour after we left the ocean floor

The smaller rock at the right will be fully submerged at high tide

The tidal bore in Moncton

The Pulse of the Cosmos

We stopped for a few days at Moncton and what a visit it turned out to be. To begin, having seen the Fundy tidal bore at Truro we wanted to see it once again as it is truly amazing. The town of Moncton has developed a boardwalk on the river front with story boards dotted about with information on the town and its more famous people; the boardwalk has a Bore Park in the shape of an amphitheater where a docent regales visitors with facts, tales and tall stories including that the bore represents the “pulse of the cosmos.” An intrepid surfer entered the river just as the bore was due although he did not manage to ride the wave however, it was fascinating to watch him being swept along by the incoming tide.

Another attraction is Magnetic Theme Park which has a Magnetic Hill where one drives to a designated spot at the bottom of the hill, then puts the car in neutral and release the brake - and the car reverses back up the hill. We found this so unbelievable that we did it three times, twice backwards and once facing front. Other cars were doing the same and we all enjoyed the fun of it and…yes the wheels were moving and so were we – uphill! From there we went to a nearby Casino; inveterate gamblers that we are we started to bet our $5 and try as hard as we did we just could not lose; after one and a half hours we had enough and cashed out + $1 at $6. The following evening we returned, lost our $1 gain but returned to the RV with our original $5 stake. We had hours of fun and like these Canadian Casino’s as it’s difficult to lose money.

Our principal reason for stopping at Moncton was to visit the nearby Hopewell Rocks in the Bay of Fundy, where in designated areas one can walk on the ocean floor at low tide and marvel at how nature, tide, wind and erosion has created spectacular sculptures from what at one time were cliffs; these free standing structures are worn away the bottom, yet have vegetation growing on top – one is aptly named the Giant Flower Pot. Of course nature continues her work and throughout there are many caves and emerging new structures being carved ready to stand alone. On arrival we checked the time when the tide was due to turn to ensure that we would have plenty of time to walk on the ocean floor and later on watch the tide come in. All visitors had to leave the beach at a certain time so when the time came we went to lunch; there are very good facilities at Hope well Rocks and an excellent interpretive center. After lunch (40 minutes) we went back to see how far the tide had come in to discover that the ocean floor we had walked on was under water. The speed of the tide coming in is amazing, as is the high tide which can be from 25 to 50ft higher than low tide. Another feature of the Fundy basin is all the miles of mud cliffs and mud flats which are environmentally protected areas.

Not really a tourist oriented town Moncton is surprisingly, to us, a bilingual town with residents switching between French and English perfectly. It appears to be a busy financial center and the streets all have beautiful flowering hanging baskets. After Halifax Moncton is the Maritimes second largest city.