Quand on vous refile un citron...

Northeast New Brunwsick was a lot of fun for us.  We're staying in Caraquet, New Brunswick, which has a very strong French Canadian / Acadian influence.  (according to Wikipedia, 98.5% of the population speak French and less than 1/2 of those folks are bilingual.)  Signs for all businesses, road signs, and everything else is in French.  I only took 2 years of French lessons in High School so it's been a bit of a challange.  But we're doing reasonably well.

Every time I greeted someone I acknowledged them with both English and French so they realized I'm not from around here.  At one of our stops, Chuck and I ended up talking with a couple who have lived here all their lives.  To our luck they were bilingual and we had a nice conversation with us trying to use French and them using English.

The trip to the supermarket was lots of fun.  One staff member and I spoke about what a specific sign meant - turns out the cooked lobsters/ homard cuire for sale in the store were not cooked on location, rather somewhere in town / marche.  She said folks are very particular about where and how the lobsters are cooked.

Some of the oddities in this region though include milk and mail.  Milk can be bought in a 4 Liter bag.  That's right, a bag.  It also comes in plastic bottles, but a bag.  And the cost of milk is a case of sticker shock for us - $6 - $8 depending on where you shop.

The other interesting oddity is the mail.  Instead of the carrier going house to house like most U.S. neighborhoods, we saw multiple community mailboxes - some in the middle of a town, others out along the roads through the villages.

I was happy with how well we got around in this region.  Although it's not where I would want to settle down, I feel I could visit it several times and get by.

As for the title of today's blog....

Canadian Maritime Provinces

During the month of June we’ve visited various areas of some of the Maritime Provinces of Canada: New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island.  Each area has something different to offer, and yet so much is similar.

We started our Canadian adventure when we crossed from Calais Maine to St. Stephen NB.  We’ve crossed into Canada at this border crossing yearly since 2007 so the roads and gates are very familiar to us.  Each crossing is different in that we’ll never know what questions we’ll be asked or when they’ll want to “inspect” the trailer and pickup.  Most of the time it’s been a few polite questions: where are you heading to, how long will you be here, do you have any firearms, alcohol, produce... With our prior experience in crossings, we’ve learned to empty the fridge in the days leading up to our planned crossings - have heard tales of folks having to throw out steak and lobsters, as well as fresh corn or other produce they had just bought.

In New Brunswick, our travels have primarily been along the south coast, and once again we kept to form, visiting 2 campgrounds before crossing in to Nova Scotia.  Except for road signs indicating a change in highway numbers, the countryside is very similar in these 2 provinces. And there again, the countryside is very similar to Maine.  Lots of coastline, sometimes with cliffs, other times long tidal beaches. Rolling hills, covered in forests with the occasional village.

Nova Scotia holds special meaning for Chuck and I as we honeymooned and took a few anniversary trips in this Province via the ferry from Portland (alas, the Scotia Prince stopped that service several years ago - part of the reason we got an RV).  We deliberately did not return to places we knew from those trips and headed into the unknown for us.  Even our venture over to Cape Breton, although a new destination, felt like so much of Maine, especially the Down East region.

Most recently we headed to Prince Edward Island, and returned to a campground we had stayed at before. Our first visit there was a short 2 night visit and we .  This time however, we stayed for 8 nights and visited some of the Provincial Park Beaches, Cavendish (Anne of Green Gables fame) and even got some kayaking and bicycle riding in.  An old railroad line that went from tip to tip of the island was converted into a public trail and we enjoyed riding parts of it.

PEI has the biggest difference in landscape of the 3 Provinces we’ve visited thus far and that’s it’s elevation.  The island is relatively flat on either end and has rolling hills in the mid-region.  I think I read that the highest elevation on PEI was around 450 feet.  Between the lack of major hills and the strange tides we’d have at the campground, it made for a fun time.

With access to Labrador/Newfoundland a bit awkward (travel by ferry, 6 hours, dogs can’t be on deck with us and we can’t go down to car deck to check on them), we’ve now returned to New Brunswick and have moved inland on our journey back across.  Our current destination is fairly close to Frederickton, an area we visited last summer. The landscape is once again very forested and dotted with lakes and streams.  

Our plan is to head northwest through the province to work our way into other regions.  Time will tell when and how we do this.

Once, twice, three? times in our lives

Most people visit Hopewell Rocks in New Brunswick once in a lifetime.  For Chuck and myself, we’ve now been twice - lucky us.

Our first trip was 5 years ago and we stayed at a campground about 2KM down the road from the rocks.  It was a really nice experience and we walked on the ocean floor as it was low tide when we arrived that day.

Yesterday we returned, again at low tide and did a much faster visit to the ocean floor, partially because it was close to closing time at the attraction, but also because we had already been driving for over 4 hours and still had to get to the campground to set up.

It was somewhat our plan to return to the rocks this morning and kayak around the rocks at high tide, but the weather is not that great (cold and windy).  We’ll go back to get some photos from land to really get the full impact of the tidal range in this area (some say upwards to 40 feet in height difference).

After the Rocks we’ll head over to Nova Scotia and take a few days break from traveling before we head up to Cape Breton Island (part of Nova Scotia) and tour the Cabot Trail.

International Travel and trials

Having some free time between assignments in Bar Harbor, we decided to take our "home" and dogs across the border into New Brunswick, Canada. We've crossed the border in Calais / St. Stephen many times in the past 8 years and were ready for a quick, easy passage.

This trip across, they asked to inspect the camper and truck - we think they liked our Cameo and wanted to see one up close and personal. Inspection went very smoothly - Customs opened and closed every closet and drawer and moved on to the next -fortunately the inspector knew enough to keep her hand over the opening of the upper doors to prevent things from tumbling down as items shift in transit.

Our favorite place in New Brunswick is the quaint community of St. Andrews By The Sea. When we first came to the town, we'd stay at the Windsor House Inn, a beautiful property right on the main drag through town. Moneypenny gave them a full four paws on her visit - they spoiled her royally. A few years back we bought our first RV and stayed at the Kiwanis Campground out on the point in the town. We enjoyed our visit at the campground and returned 2 other years before this year. Prior to this year's trip, our visits to St. Andrews have been during "low season", i.e., not during July and August.

We phoned the campground to see if they'd have room for us for 2 nights and they managed to find us some space. We asked about staying 1 more night, so we'd be in town for Canada Day, but they are so full already, there are people "dry camping" or boondocking in the field in front of the rows of RVs. If you have an RV with slides and awnings, you want to put them out as soon as you get on your site so the next unit to pull in beside you knows how much room you need. We saw 2 units so close to each other, they were sharing the shade from 1 awning.

Later today we'll head out and return to a very small, quite campground in Hawkshaw, NB that we stayed at 2 years ago. The view from the campground is wonderful as they've terraced their sites and you look on to the St. John River. Not much to see or do there, but that's what vacations are all about. And we'll want a few quite days after yesterday's trial.

We had taken Rugby out for a walk and a chance to chase his ball. Moneypenny hadn't seemed interested in a walk at that time, so she was left behind in the camper. While playing ball, we noticed a deer feeding along the road and it seemed to be intrigued by our 4 legged creature as it moved in the same direction as us. After the deer left, we headed back to the campground down a trail blazed through the woods behind the campground. After crossing a small wooden bridge, Rugby started acting extremely weird - whimpering, shaking paws, trying to lick them, kicking out in a spasm twitch. We quickly felt his pads for burrs, thorns or rocks but found nothing.

We got back to the camper as quickly as we could and tried to calm Rugby down. He raced about like a crazed creature and wouldn't let us touch his paws. Because we had no idea of what was going on, we got on the internet and found the number for a local vet. We were blessed that there was a vet in the town, and although it was 4:47pm on the day before a major holiday weekend, the vet would be in and we could come by - only a 5 minute drive. As we headed towards the vet, we were trying to remember exactly where we were and what happened when I remembered seeing small ants on the bridge when we had crossed it earlier in the day - could they have been fire ants I wondered? (I thought they were in the southern U.S., but perhaps they were in the Canadian Maritime region.

The vet saw us immediately on arrival and when we made the comment about ants, confirmed that there were indeed fire ants in the region and combined with our description of Rugby's actions, felt it was indeed the reason for his behavior. Dr. Sandra Holdway, DVM quickly checked Rugby over and then gave him an injection. The entire time time we were at the vet, I was thinking in my mind about how much an after hours, holiday weekend, emergency visit was going to cost. The emergency call portion of the bill was only $90 Cdn. Total bill was $200 Cdn. A major relief for us. And hopefully the pet insurance we have will cover a portion of this.

Rugby rested well all night and seems none the worse for wear this morning. Maybe Moneypenny skipped that walk intentionally.

Time to get the camper ready for the road. Happy Canada Day from us in Canada and Happy Fourth of July for the U S - bookends for the weekend. May the only fireworks you experience be in the skies at night.