New Brunswick & Nova Scotia, Aug 2019

Aug. 17. Only day five and it’s been interesting!  Thunderstorms, hail and tornadoes shown on our iphone maps (and the sky) in front of us.  Kansas!!!  No way around — north or south, so we simply continued east on I-70 towards Kansas City.  Right before Colby, interstate traffic stopped dead  -- for half an hour — no idea why.  Continued on, planning to stop at rest area about a mile east of Wakeeney for the night.  Then, the Highway Patrol, with headlights in our face, stopped all eastbound traffic and sent us off the interstate into a gas station — again, no idea why.  

Next morning, stopped at a rest area on further east.  Getting ready to pull out, we realized NO ONE was leaving!  A semi-truck was stranded and blocking the ramp back to the interstate.  WE, however, could turn around with our pickup camper and go out the entry, which we did.  I still vote to remove Kansas altogether — knit together Missouri and Colorado!  We have endured wind storms, hail storms, thunderstorms, and snow storms crossing Kansas.  Nasty weather in Kansas!  Lovely in good weather.

Nice visits with Mike and family at Auxvasse, including the newest member of the family, Brantley.  Three months old now, and really getting cute.  Lovely little smile.  Then a nice visit with Ron and family at Mercer.  Shelley loved her visit to Ireland and wants Ron and us to go back with her.

Brantley Bickel, great grandson

Onward and northward.  Just realized we would be going through Minneapolis/St. Paul so I called my cousin Cheryl there.  That eve we stopped at their home in St. Paul for an absolutely delightful evening AND morning with her and John.  She is crazy enough to be great fun.  It was John’s birthday, as well!

Crossed the river into Wisc and northward.  Very civilized country interspersed with dense woods so far.  Camped at a roadside park tonight.

Aug. 20.  What a wonderful little canoe trip we had yesterday morning on the Brule’ River.  Short run, small river, only 4 miles.  But it was flowing so well, and so busy with twists, turns, rocks just under the surface of the water, and some trees, that it was delightful.  No pics; didn’t take cameras, but vegetation was right down to the river so a intimate feeling.  Sunny day, not too hot,  not too cold, no upstream wind!  Great.

Aug 21, evening.    Next interesting stop was the Iron County Museum in Caspian/Iron River, Michigan.  Old homesteading cabins were very good, but it was the information on the lumber camps that was so new to us.  They did much of their moving of the downed lumber in the winter on snow/ice tracks.  They had concrete rollers that they packed snow with, and very long sleds that they packed VERY high with logs.  I don't see how horses could possibly pull these, even on watered-down snow/ice.  

As one can imagine, the camp cook was the most important single person in the camp of a hundred or so lumbermen.  What appetites they must have had, and such dangerous jobs; from felling and sawing trees, to the breaking up log jams on the rivers when moving them to the sawmills. At a fuel station, Mike talked with a current day logging trucker.  Many now carry precisely-cut 8 foot logs cross-wise on their trucks.  They can carry many more logs this way, and they are made into 2x4’s and 2x6’s.  BUT we speak of 18-wheelers in the States. . . . . this truck had THIRTY-FIVE wheels under it!!

This is also iron country and there were many, many iron mines around.  The head frames rose over a hundred feet in the air.  Years ago, one elevator beside a head frame collapsed into the 400-500 foot hole beneath it.  Amazingly, no one was killed.  Another dangerous occupation!

We stopped at a lovely spring at Palms Book State Park.  Beautiful clear green water with 2-foot long Brown trout.  A large wooden raft on a cable took people out across the pond and back so they could look down.  You could see the roiling sand boiling up from the bottom with 16,000 gallons of water a minute coming in. 

At Munsing, at the Pictured Rocks Natl. Lakeshore, we got one nice picture of lovely shoreside rocks, but little else.  It was a bit of a bust because the wind on Lake Superior was so blustery that the boat tours couldn’t go, and one trail down to lovely rocks was just too strenuous for me.

A boat tour of the “Soo Locks” at Sault Ste. Marie was lovely.  We were ferried upstream to the locks, the gates closed behind us, and the water began filling from several places from below the water line underneath the water.  As the boat rose, we were no longer looking at concrete walls, but began peeking over the edge at the landscape and eventually were nearly level with it.  It was honestly kind of magical — and fun.

Before filling lock

I was especially taken with the railroad tracks crossing the river and the locks.  In three places the RR track crossed the locks and had to be removed in some manner to allow the boats to go through.  In one, the RR tracks/bridge were raised directly upward horizontally from the water; in the second, the tracks swung around to be parallel with the locks; and in the third, the tracks split in two with each  half tilting skyward with heavy weights on the back.  Three different methods to obtain the same outcome of removing the train tracks from over the locks.

After lock is filled

We crossed over into Canada at about 1 PM on Thursday and began crossing Ontario towards the east.  Wild country with many forests, and huge barns to house hay and animals in their long winters.  As we got closer to Ottawa the land became somewhat more populated with large farms reminding me of Indiana or Ohio, except with more forests.

One thing we did learn quickly in Ontario:  Don’t get in the way of a Canadian and his Tim Horton’s!  Trying to locate diesel, we were nearly run into by a fellow that appeared to be hurrying to get in the take-out line at Tim Horton’s.  Horton’s is the coffee shop, donut, sandwich hangout of Canada and they are EVERYWHERE! And each of them are very, very crowded -- all day long.

Passing south of Montreal was a road sign to “New York”.  Imagine!  We were straight north of New York City!  Neither of us has even been this far east before.

Aug 26   Spent the night at the Wal-Mart in Levis’ which is across the St. Lawrence Seaway from Quebec.  We wanted to drive to the nearby ferry, park and take it over to Quebec Old Town, but apparently there is no place to park! So we had to drive into Quebec and located found an RV parking area.  However, it is for overnight and costs $70!  We parked in adjacent lot for $10.  

LOVED walking around the Old City.  The buildings are truly so fabulous!  And so much history here.  We were going to take a “get on-get off” tour, but it took so long to walk to the center to get tickets, that we settled for just walking around because we only had four hours on our parking.  

Very fancy hotels and restaurants on top of the hill, horse and carriages, and lots of tourists. We took the funicular down the hill to the waterfront.   Lovely small quaint stores down at the waterfront. — In the 1700’s, the soldiers would have been down at the waterfront, with the aristocrats and military brass up on the hill. I really wanted to go to the Museum of Civilization, but we were running out of time.  And it was a LONG walk back to the pickup.

We headed on down the road east to New Brunswick.  The farms here are unbelievable — HUGE barns with many silos.  Three farms side-by-side will have as many as 11 large silos between them!  These are the large dairy farms of Quebec.  Everywhere is so incredibly neat: all the homes and farmsteads, the fields of corn and barley.  

Russian made BMW motorcycle, modeled on a 1938 WWII
German one.  Still being produced.

August 27.  We turned south at Rimouski, Quebec, headed for New Brunswick.This was our furthest north point.  Up until now, we have been following the St. Lawerence Seaway all the way from the Quebec/New York State border, as it became wider and wider.  Sunsets over the river have been beautiful.

Blue Heron in morning.

In New Brunswick, I was surprised at the difference in the homes: most lovely and fixed up, others very plain, and still others, almost shacks.  More junk around.  The people here are Acadians;  the history complicated. 

Settled by the French in the 1600’s, Britain kept trying to take over, finally winning after many battles.  They sent the French Acadians packing because they wouldn’t give up their Catholicism — many went back to France, but some moved to New Orleans.  Hence, our "Cajuns."  

There are also Native Americans here and obviously, all depend on the fishing or tourist industry for a living in the northern part of NB. We are now in Atlantic time, one hour east of Eastern time!  We went to a small, interesting museum on the French immigrants to the area.  I loved the small cookstove with an oven built in to the chimney.  All explanations were in French, but we could understand a lot.

Most people speak English here, so we are not stuck.  On reading signs and printed material, some words resemble English; others resemble Spanish; so we do pretty well understanding.

We also went to a nice aquarium since it was a showery day.  Learned about all the 
appendages of a lobster, and watched (my favorite) Moon Jellyfish floating in the water, nearly colorless.  My least favorite — always: eels!

August 29.  We spent yesterday at a park, Ancient Acadian Village.  Old homes from the 1700 and 1800 had been moved here and a “town” erected.

People in period costumes were cooking or working at each house or building.  The women were all cooking something different on the old cookstoves. The smells of what they were cooking was wonderful, the explanations, delightful and it was very interesting.  They explained the history of the family that had lived there, and being good French Catholics, the children numbered from 9 to 18!  (two different wives for the 18).

There were about 15 homes and businesses in the old part, and a few newer 19th century ones in the newer part. I loved a small cookstove, with two ovens:  one down below behind the firebox for meats with hotter heat, and the other in the chimney (or just below where it begins) for breads.  Quite ingenious.  We spent a lot of time in each house/business looking around and talking with them.  They always had to switch to English for us, but did so easily.  The cost was only $30 Canadian; in the US it would have been $70!

Barn with garden and dug potatoes in foreground.

Sod covered root cellar in foreground.  Drying wood in "teepee".

Campground tonight for laundry, water and dumping.   Nearly all of our camps have been boondocking (just parking wherever).  There are Boondockers Welcome spots here, but our schedule is so random, I hesitate to ever make a reservation.