We finished out a great four weeks, spent mostly in Canada. We spent the first few days visiting with friends in the Poconos. They live in California but have family in Philadelphia so eastern Pennsylvania is often a place we meet up. Those first few days were HOT. Luckily, we have air conditioning in our trailer and we had booked a site with 30 amp hookups. There was a pool at the campground, along with a lot of other kid-friendly attractions. While Leah is one of my best friends, our kids aren't very close and it always feels like a bit of a gamble to see how they'll get along. But of course, they found plenty of fun things to do together, and we ended that portion of our trip with our traditional 2-4-6-8 group cheer and a reflection of our favorite things. Common answers were smores and star gazing. The downside of this location was that it was freaking expensive! Later I learned that there was a NASCAR event in the area, which drove up the prices. Also the bug bites were epic.
After that we headed up through New England, stopping at two Harvest Host sites. Neither had hook ups, but luckily evening storms cooled things off a little bit, and we spent most of each day driving with AC on. The first Harvest Host was in the driveway of a homeschooling family! The second was in a church parking lot and had a beautiful view of a field of wildflowers. Both were very quiet all night.
The next day we stopped at a Walmart in Bangor to pick up some supplies and were soon at the border between Maine and Canada. Our vehicle was flagged for a search and we sat at the border for a good hour. Once we got going again we realized we were entering a new time zone and had lost yet another hour. The temperature also started dropping, and fog rolled in from the Bay of Fundy. We were very close to the water, but couldn't see a thing. That night we pulled into a county park that had a campground in Saint John, New Brunswick. We spent the afternoon hiking around the park (the trail system was extensive) and taking hot showers (as it had been three days since we had hookups).
The next day we didn't have to be at the ferry dock until the afternoon so M went out to run and the kids and I took a hike. Rockwood Park is really a hidden gem and worth a stop. The campground wasn't much more than a gravel lot, but the park itself had several picturesque lakes, an arboretum with lots of signage, swimming beaches and an activity center with fusball and board games. The extensive system of mountain biking/hiking trails is really the park's best asset. It is right in the city of Saint John and just a 10 minute drive to ferry. On the way to the ferry we stopped to the see the Reversing Falls, one of many rivers along the Bay of Fundy that flows backwards with the tides. We loved watching the ducks play in the rapids, and were delighted spot some harbor seals swimming.
The ferry was a lot of fun. It's very orderly, as are many things in Canada. You check in and they measure your length, and then put you in a lane. When the ferry pulls up, you get to watch all the cars and people unload and then you drive on, lane by lane. The crew is very polite but make sure you get as close as possible to the vehicle in front of you. We transferred our intrepid travel cats into the trailer with some food and water, and went upstairs to the passenger area. Two movie theaters, several snack bar/restaurant areas, and a lot of seating both inside and outside made the two hour trip fly by. We got some snacks and drinks, but spent most of the time sitting gone the deck looking at the bay. It was a beautiful, sunny day, and we were enjoying not being hot and sweaty, as we had been on most of the trip.
When we pulled off the ferry, we were in Digby, Nova Scotia. We camped at the most adorable little campground that had a communal fire pit, full hookups and a coin laundry. The weather was sunny and breezy, but not too hot. The campground was right on a bike path so we could walk into town for dinner. We had lobster, scallops and fish and chips at a restaurant with a view of the water. We were getting used to reading the temperature in Celsius and following the speed limit to the kilometer and keeping track of our loonies for the laundry. There were still quite a few other Americans around and it wasn't too different yet. The biggest change since we had entered Maine was the water. There's water everywhere, rivers and lakes and inlets from the oceans. Every time we crested a hill or came around a corner there was more or different water in front of us.
The next morning we woke up very early to head to our whale watching tour. If whale watching itself were not exciting enough, we also had plans to meet up with our former next door neighbors, who moved to Canada about the time we moved out of our house. They had never done whale watching either, so we booked tickets on the same cruise.
That is a tale for another day.
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