Back in the USA

Labour Day in Canada is just like in the US - picnics, camping, day trips with family.  We took that day to write blogs, balance the checkbook, pay bills, take a walk and then dine out at a very nice restaurant.

Tuesday we crossed back into Maine and spent the day picking up our mail and prescriptions, grocery shopping and washing the RV and Jeep. 

Wednesday we visited with our wagon master, Jim and Cherrill, before pulling out and driving to Franconia, NH in the White Mountains. It was a lovely but short drive.  We wanted to stay in the state park but it was full and we discovered later that we would not have been able to squeeze our RV into any of their campsites.  We did find a nice private campground, Fransted Family RV Park, that was very handy to the state park.  After we got set up we drove around the area just to check out things to do and hikes to plan.

Ministers Island and The VanHorne's

Just outside of St. Andrew is a small island called Ministers Island because a minister built a home on it and then struggled to meet the needs of his parish because he couldn’t always get off of the island due to tidal changes.  Then William Van Horne built his summer home on the island but it was still known as Ministers Island.

We crossed during low tide and rode our bikes on the sand/gravel tidal road along the ocean floor onto the island with the warning that we had to be back across before 2:30 or we would be stuck there until the next low tide tonight.

William Van Horne was the owner and builder of the Canadian Pacific Railroad and the many buildings, train stations, hotels, inns an lodges all across Canada along his railroad. He is quoted as saying “If we can’t export the scenery, then we’ll have to import the tourists.”  The huge hotel we saw in Quebec and the lodge in Banff are just two examples.

His summer home has 50 rooms, he had two dozen servants and many, many visitors. Mr. Van Horne was a corpulent man and his taste in furnishings reflected that.  Everything was huge.  The billiards table, the dinning room fireplace, the board room on the second floor and the many bedrooms and sitting rooms.  Out buildings included a round bath house on the shore, a huge barn where they raised cows, horse, pigs and more, a windmill to run the water pump and a carriage house with living quarters for the horse master.

The trails were more for hiking than biking so I pushed my bike along most of the trail but it was pretty. We crossed the sand/gravel road before the tide covered it.

Time to Say Goodbye

The Caravan officially ends today with breakfast together and lots of hugs and handshakes. We have made some new friends and shared some wonderful adventures with them on this trip not to mention seen many truly beautiful sites. We hate to say goodbye but we know that somewhere down the road each of us will reconnect and renew these friendships and shared memories.

We reluctantly packed up and drove on down the road to St. Andrew on the Sea while others headed back to Maine, some to Fredrickton and some back to the Hopewell Rocks.  But all will eventually head to new adventures.

The campground in St. Andrew is right on the Bay with brisk ocean breezes keeping us cool and comfortable. It is Labor Day Weekend, even in Canada, so the place is packed.  We walked into town, just a half mile away and shopped, ducking into each shop and checking menus at each restaurant.  One place caught our eye so we went back to it and had a glass of wine and charcuterie appetizers before going back to the RV for a steak dinner.

City Tour and Reversing Falls

The Caravan tour is winding down as this is the last day.  The city tour took us to many of the same places we walked around yesterday but we got a little more information about what we were looking at.  Homes in the Heritage District must maintain the look of the late 1800’s.  The guide pointed out the former homes of Walter Pidgeon, Louis B. Mayer (of Metro Golden Mayer) and Donald Sutherland. We shopped at the Old City Market and then visited some of the small city parks and other neighborhoods, including the guide’s home.

The Carleton Martello Tower  is a National Historic Site. The tower was built by the British during the War of 1812 but not completed until 1815 when the war ended.  It was used to protect the harbor and town during WWI and WWII but mostly it was neglected until made into a Historic site.  It is being renovated so we could not go inside.

No visit to Saint John is complete until you stop to see the Saint John river change direction and flow backwards.  The tides in the Bay of Fundy are so high and strong that when the bay waters meet the river it actually forces the river water back up stream until the tides turns.  If one has patience you can see the river flowing down stream then it stalls as the tide rises and then it flows backwards.  

This evening was our farewell dinner and party.  The dinner was nice but the party afterwards was better.  We gathered outside around the TV at Mellow and Janet’s RV and watched a slide show that Mellow had put together about all the things we had seen on this trip.  Then Pat and I led the group in a song that Pat wrote to the tune of “God Bless America”.  She is quite the poet.  Cathy and Bill put together a little piece of prose about each person on the trip and some were quite funny. Like Barry having too many Hot Rum toddy’s and dancing, me and a name change, Janet being too cold and Conrad’s tire thumping to name just a few.

Saint John

You may be confused by the name of this city.  We did visit St. Johns in Newfoundland but this is Saint John in New Brunswick.  It it the largest city in NB with about 125,000 people in the metro area.  We are camped in the city park - Rockwood Park.  It too is the largest municipal park in North America, two times bigger in area than Central Park in NYC. The campground is mostly a parking lot with nice grassy areas around the edges.

Since it is relatively close to the downtown area, John and I walked down the hill, across the interstate, through a kind-of rough part of town and into the Old City Market, built in 1876.  A large number of the downtown buildings are connected by an enclosed pedestrian walkway but we stayed outside and walked several city blocks in all directions.  I enjoyed looking at all the old buildings and unique architecture while John was more interested in the restaurants and bars and there are lots of places to choose from.  We first partook of wine at a very nice wine bar and then had dinner at “Italian At Night” restaurant.  Fabulous dinner!

But then we had to walk up a very long hill to get back to the campground.

Moncton & Flower Pots

It was another short drive today so we stopped in Moncton and rode our bikes on one of their trails.  This one ran along the Petitcodiac River which is at the north end of the Bay of Fundy. As we reached the end of the trail we realized that the tide had turned and was coming in fast and furious.  We could see waves of brown, silty water moving up the river.  Within minutes we could tell that the water was rising.  As we rode back towards the city, John paced a rapid in the river at 7.2 mph. We found out later that the river is just a few feet wide and only 4-6 feet deep at low tide and over 1 mile wide at high tide and 160 ft. deep. This happens twice a day, every day.

Because low tide was around 7 pm we got a guided tour of the Hopewell Rocks Provincial Park starting at 5 pm.  The water was pretty close to the shore line but receding quickly.  At the end of the talk, 1.5 hours later, the water’s edge was over 40 yards away.  The ‘flower pots’ are rock towers that look like small islands when the tide is in but like pedestals with trees and grass on top when the tide is out.  The trees along the shoreline are quite old.  One tree, sticking out from the rock at a 90* angle, was 170 years old and had been growing at that angle for over 70 years.

Acadian Historic Village

Monday was our longest travel day for the whole trip at 260 miles along the coast of Gaspé into New Brunswick and continuing along the coast to Caraquet.  This is a large town with what looks like a very nice bike trail but unfortunately we don’t have time to ride on it.

This morning we visited the Acadian Historic Village learning the history of the Acadian people by visiting homes, businesses, farms and shops from the 1840's -1950's.  The Acadians are from France originally and settled here claiming the land for France.  But then the British decided they wanted this land and during the Seven Year War in the late 1800’s they systematically deported the people or they left and moved south, some as far as Louisiana where they are known as Cajuns, or they stayed and joined the protestant church.  One family’s story was the wife was Catholic and the husband was Protestant so their three girls were raised Catholic and the four boys Protestant.

Even though he’s retired John continues to research brooms throughout the world.

Each building was inhabited by a “resident" from the era and they were performing the tasks of that time.  Gardens, woodsheds, barns, fencing, and tools were what would have been in the 1840’s to 1890’s.  We visited a wood worker making cedar shake shingles by hand, several housewives with spinning wheels or carding wool or flax, a school teacher, a blacksmith, the general store which sold items made in the village, a tavern where there was no beer but wine and spirits, a print shop, and a church.

When we crossed the covered bridge we entered the 20th century with a gas station, train station, three story hotel, a wood mill, gristmill,  a cooperage, a cobbler sewing leather soled shoes, another general store, a tinsmiths shop and several large homes.  All of the buildings were brought here from around the provinces. Some were built according to original plans and some restored.

We left the caravan around 2PM and drove by ourselves to Moncton to spend the night in a Walmart parking lot so that we could be at the Ford Service department at the break of dawn (or so it seemed) to get the A/C compressor and fan belt replaced. Six hours later we were on our way to Cavendish on Prince Edward Island where we rejoined Caravan.