Next up: Charming Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont

Sept 10.  Maine. Well, the slide mechanism cannot be fixed.  Motor removed to get numbers for expensive replacement.  This slide must remain in, so we are unable to access our refrigerator, clothes and pantry.   So we purchased a 10-volt cooler, took basics from fridge and some silver and a pot and skillet.  Pulled out some cans of soup from the pantry and some clothes from the closet.  Told Mike, we are getting practice for the “basic” camper we are renting in Chile next month.  

The slide was pushed in, and heavy ratchet straps wrapped over the top of the camper to hold it in.  If the other slide had stopped, we couldn’t have used the bathroom, and if the back slide had quit, we wouldn’t have been able to get in!  So, out of three, this was the best one to go bad.  I can do limited cooking, so we’re fine.

So, with that problems solved as best we could, we drove to Acadia Natl. Park.  After being in SO neat Nova Scotia, Maine is. . . . well, the U.S.  A lovely home here, a junky place there, everything in between.  And it was truly evident the moment we crossed the border!

Acadia National Park had only a couple of places where we could drive with our tall camper.  We found a couple of spots of the rugged coastline to drive to and take a walk.  Bar Harbor is a tourist town of the first degree:  lovely inns with front porches with rocking chairs, flowers everywhere, and little shops of all types — and all the new architecture was in keeping with the old.  We found the LLBean Outlet store on the way.  We stopped and purchased 2 pairs of pants for Mike and 6 pairs of wool socks for me — all at a great price!

So, in summary, we were not really able to take the scenic drive around Acadia because of low bridges throughout the drive, but in a car, while it certainly would be crowded, it would be lovely.

The granite cliffs and the sea provide the beauty
 in Acadia Natl. Park

Sept  10 Evening.  What a delightful morning we’ve had!  We started across Maine on Hwy 2, a little south of Bar Harbor.  Back roads.  How we love them (but then my sister teases that we are easily amused, — I think she’s right!)

We notice the crops — what is THAT!?  Or a lovely house, or a decrepit barn, or . . . . This morning it was the old huge houses from the last century,  well the 18th century, actually.  Three, sometimes four stories, huge homes, with attached one-story connections attached to an equally huge barn.  The house is always white, but the barn is sometimes painted red; sometimes white.  Homestead after homestead, we saw different configurations of these three elements, some in a straight line; others in an L.

Cold, long winters made it prudent to venture outdoors as little as possible to do chores.  The one-story connections were used as a mud room, pantry, storing wood, a small shop for repairing machinery (or harness in the old days) or other necessary storage.  But as a collection, they were so different and enjoyable to see.

And apple trees!  All apple trees; long-abandoned or cared-for, in a wood lot, a ditch or mowed yard, in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia or Maine — they are  all positively LOADED with apples this year.  An amazing sight, over and over.  I wonder if they are this prolific every year. . . . 

The old towns we went through. . . .  some were just a village with large, very old interesting, crumbling buildings facing the road.  At Skowhegan we were flummoxed by the road through town:  Lanes separate to go around a building in the middle, turn left and meet again to cross a river, curve hard left to cross another river and turn right to get back on track, on the road leaving town.  All in a very short distance. I’m sure in the old days with a horse and buggy no one thought this unusual at all!

Skowhegan was an old town with a dam and a huge mill, possibly a paper mill as they were quite common in the 18th century.  Another town, Rumford, also on Hwy 2 in western Maine, was once a paper-mill town with hundreds of employees.  One street had 6 or 8 very plain, large, square, red brick rooming houses, all side by side, lining the street. And the road through this town seemed to circle around in three directions before finally getting through town!  The rivers through these towns cause a lot of confusion with streets.

Perfect example of house, with addition, connected to shed, connected to barn.

New Hampshire. This afternoon we hired a shuttle  to take us to the top of Mt. Washington, the highest point in New Hampshire at 6,288 feet.  Doesn’t sound impressive to you Westerners?  Don’t be fooled!  As you go up the paved, but very narrow twisty road to the top, you pass through regular forest, then treelike short, twisted pines, and then on to tundra. The peaks here look remarkably like the high elevations above treeline in Colorado over which we’ve been ATVing. 

The weather is notoriously wicked with weather coming down from Canada, and across from the Rockies and colliding in moist clouds coming in from the ocean.  This day at the bottom of the mountain,  the temperature was 63 degees, and at the top, 38 and dropping with a fierce cold wind.  Mt. Washington’s head was in the clouds that swirled around us, giving quick views of a short distance below, before closing in on us entirely before we started down.   

The museum at the top told of the experiments with the wind and winter cold.  Many products have been tested here in the wintertime, from clothing to equipment. The museum also told of the lives lost of those testing their skills against the mountain, especially in the wintertime.  

The rest of the drive out of New Hampshire was nice, going through the quintessential old-time summer and ski resort inns.  We took a nice short walk on the Appalachian Trail up to a waterfall.  Mike walked further to another lovely waterfall,  before the weather closed in.

Weather station on top of Mt. Washington

Old dining hall in "hotel" on top Mt WA

Appalachian Trail

Waterfall on trail.

In Vermont, we could immediately tell the difference in affluence.  Homes and farms were a little less neat where we were traveling.

At Barre, VT we had a tour of Rock of Ages factory and quarry.  They have been quarrying beautiful rock for cemetary monuments and capitol buildings for over a century. Their rock carving artists are among some of the best in the world.  And the local cemetary had some incredibly intricate monumets in it, in which we drove around.

The Rock of Ages quarry

Note detailed flowers

We stopped by Montpelier, and went inside the capitol building, and we stopped by Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream for a quick video and tour of their factory.  Of course, got a sample of their delicious ice cream:  caramel with chocolate chunk today!

We headed down the famed Route 100 on the eastern side of the Green Mountains.  While it was basically a tree-lined corridor now, we could imagine it in fall color.  It would be glorious.

More glorious houses

On to Albany, NY and a nice visit with my cousin, then onto the boring interstates across  wide NY,  a corner of PA, Ohio, and Indiana.  Just west of Indianapolis, the interstate was SO rough and in bad condition, that we jogged a bit north to the 4-lane Old Highway 40.  What a pleasure!  Road condition very good, no semis, and Midwest scenery of small towns and farms along the way.  It ended at Terre Haute, but was worth every mile. Illinois was no problem, and crossing both the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers within minutes of each other made me realize how much larger the Mississippi really is!

 Our son Mike lives in mid-MO, and we spent a couple of days there.   A bearing and seal went out on our dually pickup, so Mike and Mike fixed that — a real hassle with problems that shot the whole day.  Before heading west, we went for a quick canoe trip on the Current River with son Mike, then left the next morning.

This has been a wonderful trip seeing so many new places, cultures, and people.   This trip has been one of the most stress-free trips we’ve taken!  

P.S.  We stopped at Costco on the way home to pick up a few supplies for our next trip to Patagonia in Chile, South America.  Leaving October 22 for five weeks.  Stay tuned.

Nova Scotia's Cabot Trail, then Fleeing a Hurricane

Cape Brenton and More  We were told Cape Breton was a “must-see”, and we had already heard about the Cabot Trail.  But as we were traveling along the coast through all these small towns, we knew it was time to try the areas famous fish and chips and seafood chowder. 

Both were absolute perfection!  The fish generously battered and deep fried perfectly; the chowder rich and creamy with huge chunks of scallops, haddock, and shrimp.  

Tiny flavor-bursting wild blueberries, picked-ripe “real” strawberries,  genuine maple syrup, smoked whitefish and salmon, plus lobster are other delightful treats of the area.

Sept 5.  The Cabot trail is a path that circles Cape Breton’ through small Scottish and Acadian communities, along most of there long coast and through the Margaree Valley across the bottom.  The highlands of the National Park portion truly are “the highlands” — an especially remote, rugged coastline, spruce forests on mountains tall enough to have some rocky treeless tundra at the top.  The valleys hold hardwood maples  which will be stunning in fall color with all the dazzling red color.  Atlantic salmon are prized catches in the smaller, tumbling streams, the Margaree being the best-known one.  

We were too late in the season for a Puffin boat tour, which we both would have enjoyed.  The whale tours offered were not as enticing (nor was the coming hurricane weather.)  We actually arrived in “shoulder season,” between all the summer activities and the fall color.  I feel the weather has been quite good; Mike remembers mostly cloudy days (I think he’s forgotten the often high cloud/pale sun days of the Midwest!)

Temperatures have been in the 50’s at night and 70’s in the day.  We did have one truly rainy day — the one we spent going to museums.   There have been no crowds, and generally parking with the rig has not been a problem.  It has been pretty stress free — for us!

The drive, with views of the coastline was worth many pictures. The farms and houses, mentioned above, add to the enjoyment of the scenes.  Oddly enough the water off the Northumberland coast has warmish water, delightful for swimming.  (Being from Colorado, I am convinced all water north of the tropics, — in a river, a lake, or coming from the sky — must be COLD!) 

 This same water of the ocean freezes solid in the winter, isolating communities.  Before the road of the Cabot Trail was carved around the island, the far-flung towns of the outlying areas were totally isolated in the winter, except for snowshoes and sleighs.  No wonder they were so self-sufficient within their individual communities.  Cheticamp is one of the true French Acadian culture towns that was so remote before good roads that their culture is still pretty much untainted.  

The story is told of the forest fire that burned for 12 days in 1947 stranding the occupants of one town, and nearly running them in to the sea.  A neighboring town’s fishing fleet came in the night and evacuated the villagers.

Theoretically, a lot of wildlife abounds in these mountains, but we saw almost none.  Mike was disappointed that even the local birds had already migrated and others already passed through for the season.  No moose or bear, but a deer and her young, a coyote, a red fox and many Canadian Geese were about the total.

In the park itself, is a 1000 acre bequest of virgin hardwood forest, the last on the eastern seaboard.  Within are sugar and red maples, beech, oak and birch. A small stone crofters hut replica sits, with one open side.  Often the sheep were brought in with them to get out of the weather.  Other times this side filled with chunks of peat, to close off the wall and allow the fire to warm the hut.  

After leaving there, we hit incredible dense fog for a time, until we drove to a lower elevation to get out of it.  At Cape North we stopped at a small museum depicting the rugged lives of these people in the last century and a half.  Then on down the road, enjoying the coastline and homes.  Mike said he can’t imagine this whole area in fall color!

At the end (or start) of the Cabot Trail, we stopped in the delightful town of Braddeck which was the summer residence  of Scotsman, Alexander Graham Bell and his wife Mabel.  He was a teacher of the deaf and inventor who loved nothing so much as finding the answer to a question, then moving on to something new.  

He invented the telephone, and had many adventures with powered-flight. The first real success was in 1909 with a colleague in the air with the “Silver Dart” for 40 minutes around the bay of ice.  The Bell museum was quite interesting with a lovingly recreated Dart in the museum, along with a cigar-shaped hydrofoil that sped across the bay at 70 mph, a speed record that stood for 10 years.  

We would like to have spent more time in the town, but we checked, and Hurricane Dorian was bearing down on Nova Scotia towards Halifax, in particular — right where we planned to head. We walked down to the harbor and Mike spoke with a man pulling his boat from the water, with another waiting to do the same.  The first man explained that the sailboats we saw headed out, were going to a small cove which was filling up fast with boats to wait out the storm.  He said, “By tomorrow morning this time, there won’t be a boat in the harbor!” 

The locals were taking the storm warnings seriously.  Yet we had seen no RV’s headed out of Nova Scotia.  We kept thinking of the RVers that we knew were on the very tip of Cape Breton’, and others all over the Cape.  No one was moving!  But, three to four days before planned, we left.

Simply more churches

September 9.  We are in Bangor, Me.  We left Nova Scotia with the sun shining and made our way down to St. John on the New Brunswick coast.  We wanted to see the St. John River at the spot where there is a tidal bore when the tide comes in.  A sign welcomes you to “The Reversing River.”  We were between tide changes so no tidal bore, but the water itself was fascinating.  Not since the Grand Canyon, have we see whirlpools and boiling water like this.  

The day was rainy but the next day was predicted to be sunny.  Mike wanted to see Acadia Natl Park, so we headed that way.  Buffeting winds sent us into a truck stop in Bangor, Me at Saturday noon.  Monday noon, we’re still here!!

The thing Mike and I have always feared happening, happened.  A slide won’t go in.  Mike tried everything, to no avail.  So here we sat until Monday morning.  Call to RV repairman.  News not good — probably gear box for slide.  A man will come by to maybe help push the slide in manually.  Then we can travel, but with little food or the refrigerator.  Gear box several hundred dollars and 8-10 days for factory to make!

While here, we have been mildly entertained by the power line bucket trucks coming and going.  They are all from New Brunswick and have been to Florida and the Carolina’s to help restore power.  Now they are headed for Nova Scotia to help there, as Dorian pretty well knocked out power to the Maritime Islands.

The number of trucks was amazing.  The first night 12 trucks, all with two men each, rolled in to the truck stop, parked, ate and left.  Sunday, a group would come in, eat, then hit the road back north again.  We counted groups of 9 trucks, 7 trucks, and then 18 trucks on Monday morning.  Amazing to think of the miles these men put in traveling, to help.  I can’t help wonder who is footing the bill. . .

Bay of Fundy, New Brunswick & Nova Scotia

Next, Bay of Fundy

August 30.  Yesterday was a rain and travel day.  Stayed at Baoutouche, lovely little town with wonderful old houses and gardens. 

On the road, we saw a sign “Veterans Highway” in English, and down below were the French words “Anciene Combatant Highway”.  I got the giggles calling Mike an “ancient combatant”!  Another French sign I loved was in the side of a church lot, “Point of Reassemblment”— obviously a meeting spot.

We made our way down towards the Bay of Fundy, which has the highest tide changes in the world — my destination for this trip.  Hopewell Rocks is the favorite tourist spot at the top of the Bay of Fundy with huge water-sculptured rocks and pillars.

Today high tide was about 12:30; we managed to get there about 12:45!  So we worked our way down the nearly 100 steps on the step tower, taking “before” pictures of the rocks sticking out of the water.  And back up those same steps.

Low tide was about 7PM.  After having lunch and a nap in the camper, we went back down about 4:30.  The tide was already out further than the base of the large rocks, and everyone was wandering around on the bottom of the sea.  The high tide mark on the rocks and shore was about 25 to 30 feet above us!  It was a bit surreal.   

Water at high tide at Hopewell Rocks, Bay of Fundy

Same view; low tide.

Walking on the sea bottom, 20-30 feet below high tide

Later, we drove out to Mary’s Point a few miles away to camp beside a marsh, which turned out to be the most glorious field of cattails I’ve ever seen.  There must have been 60 ACRES of them, tall and waving in the stiff breeze.  Absolutely NO birds, though.

In the morning we stopped at a muddy ditch where the tide was currently out.  Just bank-to-bank brown sticky mud.  Actually the entire bay is the color of chocolate powder stirred into water — VERY brown.  We began talking with two local men, who showed us salt greens they were gathering to cook with roasts, etc.

As we stood there chatting, the older man excitedly yelled, “Look!  Look!  The tidal bore is coming in!  See down there?”  And indeed, we were lucky enough to watch the tide riding in on a wave, known as a tidal bore!  It came up this sticky mud ditch quite quickly.  The delightful adventures we find on some of the back roads that we go on. . . . 

The lovely marsh with ACRES of cattails where we spent one night.

The tide is out on this waterway showing only mud ditches.

The ripple of water coming upstream is the tide coming in.
This is called a "tidal bore."

Today we drove all the way around to the other side of the bay, and camped across from where we were last night, but with this expansive view of the mud flat, since the tide again was out.   The water itself was nearly a half-mile or more out at this point, and this mud flat with little rivulets was between us and the receding water.

September 1.  We’re in Nova Scotia tonight.  Easy day to this camp beside the ocean.  It is the local hang-out out for beach bonfires and we’ve been visiting with the locals.  Today, our curiosity got the better of us, and Mike stopped, walked up to a farmhouse of a large farm and said, “I have a question of what you keep in your barns over the winter!”  The delightful young woman spent nearly an hour giving us a tour of their his-and-hers 100-milk cow operation.  

And what do they keep in their barns in the winter?  Their cattle.  While this made no sense of how one could keep dozens of cattle in a barn all winter, her explanation made sense.  Ten square feet are required for each cow if they are at-large.  If in individual stalls, less space is needed.

Nearly all the barns in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Quebec are huge.  Larger than I’ve ever seen.  They were built in the 19th century of wood, but as they entered the late 20th and the 21st century, they were upgraded rather than being torn down.  On modern farms the wood exteriors were covered with steel siding,  roofs strengthened, ventilators and automatic side windows installed, and a floor of grates with a 10-foot pit below for manure.  Then for the dairy farmers more mechanism was added:  automatic feeding with movable head gates going forward as the hay and silage is eaten over a period of days. Each cow wears a tracking collars that measures steps, (Yes!) , how much and how often she eats, and how frequently she lays down.   Automatic milking has progressed to the point that the cows themselves choose when to be milked!

Automatic brush for cow's hide!

The cows get treats when they go in the gates to be milked, so some enter as often as possible.  If the computer on her collars says it’s too soon, the gate in front of her opens and she walks out, trying again a bit later.  Our guide laughingly tells us of one good milk producer who has it figured out almost to the minute how often she can come back, and usually comes in for 5 milkings a day.  Yes, cows definitely have personalities; just ask anyone who has ever worked with them, closely.  

We then asked about the bale wrappers; the white plastic that one sees around the bales and how the machinery works to do it.  There are two methods, one in which the large round bales are wrapped into one long sausage; the other where they are wrapped into individual puffy white marshmallows.  It takes very complicated, sophisticated machinery to do this.

Our hostess's old Scottish homestead.

Mike and our lovely gracious guide.

Sausage bale wrapper

Typical dairy farm with winter's hay in white sausage rows.

The coastal roads of Nova Scotia are so lovely.  We like to get off the main roads which are tree-lines corridors.  They are great for covering miles quickly, but definitely not scenic.  Nova Scotia was settled by Scotsman, French Acadians, and a smattering of Irish.  

The different communities announce their heritage by their names and by their buildings.  The Scottish built huge, beautiful homes and barns.  The grounds are incredibly neat, including outbuildings and even the fields.  A profusion of flowers abound around the houses and the large mowed lawns.  

The French communities are a little more eclectic — smaller homes, many beautifully neat with many flowers; others not so much.  Small craft shops are sprinkled throughout thecommunity.  The architecture is different, somehow.

And the churches are wonderful— and numerous!  They range from the huge stone churches with white or silver-painted steeples piercing the sky, to small white charming, country churches in a tiny community of homes.  All were well-kept and lovely.  

There are so many photos I would love to take, but miss as they go past.  In New Brunswick, many homes are painted in deep-tone colors of darker blues, navy, greens, browns and reds, all with pristine white trim around windows, doors and eaves.  In Nova Scotia, many more homes are white with colorful trim.  A favorite was the coral house with pale yellow trim!

 I am publishing this 'as is', because every time I try to fix it, it just blows up and disappears.  So after 10-15 times of going round and round, I give up.

The Northumberland Shore borders the strait of the same name and supports fishing for lobster, crab and herring. The southern shore of that same peninsula borders the Bay of Fundy with it’s unique challenges of living and farming with a 52 foot (record) discrepancy between high and low tides.  First Nation ancestors have long been in this area. In addition to farming, they no doubt made their living by fishing and clamming, which is still popular here today. 

The homes are more modest here reminding one more of the Missouri/Arkansas Ozark area, some lovely; and a few rather decrepit.  But the people everywhere in these country communities are great.  Twice when we pulled to the side to take pictures, someone has stopped to see if we needed help.