Misc Liisa
Random musingsDay 17- Another Ferry, More Angst and What to Do
We were up early the next morning and ready to get our $1/3 minute showers, which pretty much sucked in the weird 50’s style bathhouses with the strange art on the walls framed with branches and the stalls that had doors that only went down to your knees. I am fairly certain that at this rate I will never get my legs shaved properly again. After our quick showers, we went back and made some omelettes. Camp omelettes always taste pretty great and these made up for a lot of misery since we also had some cinnamon roles left.
Of course cooking a multistage breakfast cost us time getting the food cooked and the dishes washed before we could pack up and get out of camp and threw us off schedule. It irks Tom to no end that between showers and breakfast and cleanup and packup it takes about 2 hours to pull things together to get going in the morning. That is unless we compromise breakfast or don’t really clean, both of which you pay for later.
We got out of the campground about 15 minutes later than we planned, but still with plenty of time to get to the ferry and get in line. We ran into yet more construction, but made it there without any problems and were placed near the front of the camper line to get on board. Tom was really befuddled about why they only charge for the ferry going the other way. You pay for “round-trip” if you go from PEI to Nova Scotia, but you pay nothing going from Nova Scotia to PEI. It had cost us $250 for the passage on the ferry to Nova Scotia from New Brunswick, so I was grateful for getting a break on this leg of the journey.
While I ran over to use the bathroom, a guy from PEI came over to ask Tom about the Silver Shadow. By this point, Tom is thinking he should be charging $5 for tours. The guy turned out to own a B&B on PEI and told us that he loved the island because of all the farms. He said he’d been to Cape Breton for a wedding and wasn’t sure how people could live there since there was nowhere to have a farm.
This started a series of negative conversations. First, Tom is certain that we won’t get on the ferry. Even though we’re in line and it looks like it’s not that crowded. Then, he starts in with the “What will we do on PEI? Why are we going there?” It had become pretty clear that he didn’t want to go to the island, but the sites were booked and I think you can always find something interesting to see and do and everyone I’d mentioned PEI to said “oh, you’ll love it there!”
We ended up on the ferry with no issues and got Tenzin settled in the car and us settled in the lounge. Tom saw another porpoise out the window. This ferry prides itself on having a Cows ice cream store. It’s supposed to be some fantastic ice cream and there was a line out the door the entire time of the crossing. We headed to the cafeteria to grab some lunch and found people ordering poutine- which is french fried, coated in gravy with cheese melted on top and looked to me like a cholesterol nightmare. We ended up ordering some pizza and beef stew and a green slushie- weird combo, but it was pretty good.
When we got to PEI, we started driving toward the campground. The guy was right, it was dotted with farms. Tom thought it looked a lot like the midwest US, but I didn’t think so. The midwest has mostly sold out to factory farming and these were still small family farms. This one cows and that one potatoes and the next one with corn. Some had pretty victorian farmhouses and others very standard ranch houses. We were both disappointed that the architecture in Canada wasn’t any more unique.
We found that PEI grows new potatoes in the red clay-filled soil there that they are very proud of. Nearly every farm had a little stand out at the road where you could get a bag of potatoes and leave some money. They grown nearly 1/3 of all the potatoes for Canada on this little island and they serve potatoes with nearly everything. For a foodie, it was an interesting place because they were so agriculturally self-sustaining.
We got to Twin Shores Campground and found that it was the biggest campground we’d ever been in with more than 650 sites on both sides of a road and from one bay to another. I had asked for a spot in the trees and their sites were literally surrounded by evergreens with very tight and angled entrances. Our first attempt at parking the camper wasn’t successful and Tom was nervous about the fact that people were watching from campers on either side of us. He insisted I drive back around and I had that one fleeting moment of being so annoyed with his snippishness that I considered leaving and leaving him behind. But instead I went back and we tried again and again and eventually got the camper to a good enough spot that we could move it by hand.
Tom went for a run to try to reduce his tension and I set up camp and walked the dog while he was away. When he got back, we went for a walk on the beach of red sand. It was pretty, but Tenzin snuffled a bit in the sand and ended up with sand in his bad eye. We got back to camp and cleaned it out. Tom grabbed a 25 cent/5 minute shower and put on his Oscar the Grouch shirt as a warning that he still wasn’t feeling too good about being at PEI. I told him maybe he needed to wear it for a few days.
We got a fire going with some difficulty (more damp wood) and made fire pie pizzas and strawberry rhubarb pies for dinner. The people on either side of us had kids and popup trailers and with the amount of music and noise, we were starting to really understand why we’d never had children. I can’t imagine why nature would make the voices of little children so shrill and squeaky. A camper about 3 sites down from us had some serious country music blaring and I’m not sure what exactly an Ontario based camper has in common with the beer/tight jeans/out of work lyrics he was listening to besides his truck, but he definitely felt the need to share his musical interest.
We were pretty happy to get to bed once things quieted down and wondered at the noises outside the camper that night. I thought maybe some of the cheeky red squirrels were into something and drifted off to sleep hoping the next day would be more pleasant.
Pics from today are here- http://bit.ly/bEaiZg
Day 16- Separate Ways Down The Other Side
The plan for today is that Tom will get ready and help me pack in and hitch the trailer and then he will leave camp on his bike and I will drive the car and trailer with the dog.We figured that by this point I’d be sufficiently well versed in maneuvering the camper by myself (I’ve driven the whole way so far and have now gotten the trailer parked into 8 different sites).
We got everything packed in and ready to go pretty easily. We took the usual picture of Tom before his ride that we always take- the one I’ll show the police if he goes missing 😦 He was planning to take a side trip off the Cabot Trail and we figured we might meet up in Ingonish or likely a bit farther south from there. We planned to meet in the parking lot of a glass studio, one where from the satellite image it looked like we’d have space to park the trailer and get it turned around. We checked our phones to make sure we could make calls to each other in case he needed me.
He took off first and I followed a few minutes later and then passed him on the road. I stopped at a shop and we crossed paths again so that I could see that he nixed the side trip. I enjoyed stopping at various look-offs along the way and taking pics, but I had to choose carefully to make sure I could get the car and trailer in and out without needing any spotting. I got myself into a jam at one place I turned into when I realized that there wasn’t enough space to make the turning circle. But I did find space to park and it was a beautiful spot. So I hung around and waited it out until the car that I needed to be out of the way to make the circle left.
I found few shops along the way that had the parking situation I needed, so I mostly stopped at look-offs and beaches. They were gorgeous. This whole side of the island is full of large pink granite rocks tumbling down to the ocean and the water was a glorious blue color. Tenzin was happy to nap in the passenger’s seat. I missed the turn off to a beach and pulled into the next drive and got the trailer a little stuck. I was patiently working to get it turned around when a guy ran over and asked about the trailer and offered to spot me. He was really helpful and I was able to get turned around in about 4 moves rather than 14. The beach at North Ingonish that I went back to was well worth it.
People chatter a lot about the teardrop trailer. “Oh, look at it!” “It’s so cute” “It’s so tiny” They chatter even more when it appears that a woman is alone with it. But they come over to talk a little less, which was nice. I just got to overhear their conversations. And I was pretty proud that I was doing well driving alone. I had been worrying about how to get through this section of the journey for weeks and it was going just fine.
After pouring the sand from my shoes into a bag to take home, I headed off again to be sure I’d be in place at the glass shop on time. There was an outrageous amount of construction going on and the roads were terrible around it. It made me worry for Tom. These Canadians are very serious about road work and we had run into quite a lot of roads that were in the middle of construction along the way. From there I headed up a mountain and then down tiny curving roads that were extremely steep. I had been passing and catching up to 3 cyclists most of the morning but hadn’t seen Tom since he didn’t make that turn. I was very worried about him riding down these hills. There was a ditch that was at least 6 feet deep and walled with the granite of the mountain on one side and the cliff off the mountain with a guardrail on the other. There wasn’t much room for error. I was thankful for the Continuous Variable Transmission of the Subaru and the paddle shifters that let me manually shift into lower gears down hills.
Once past the mountain, I spotted a gift shop that had adequate parking and I pulled in and parked and switched out of my sunglasses. Suddenly, Tom came riding over. Apparently he was sitting on a guardrail just past the shop and he thought I had spotted him and was stopping to pick him up. Happy coincidence. He decided he’d had enough cycling after the scariness of that mountain and while I checked out the shop he got cleaned up and changed (the teardrop is a decent portable changing room).
We drove on to where we were supposed to meet and found that the glass shop was beautiful, but it felt too risky to buy anything that we’d have to transport so much further. There was a cute restaurant across the way and we stopped for lunch and then at another pewter shop, where I finally found a couple of charms (the purpose of my gift shop searching is to find interesting charms for a bracelet).
We continued to drive through more construction the rest of the day and eventually got to Hyclass Campground. We felt like we were getting this camp setup thing down to a science and were up and ready to go in no time. The site was nice and wooded, but Tom was really annoyed that 1- they charged us $10 for a bucket of wood that was obviously more than anyone could use in one night and 2- their showers were $1 for 3 minutes, which forces you to spend $2 to get 6 minutes. Plus it was one of the more expensive camps we’d been at in Canada.
We checked out the beach there (small, rocky, a group that seemed to have rented the whole thing). There was a kid at the beach that wanted me to go out in the water to get back his ball. Clearly he had been told not to go in the water and they had convinced him that the little snails on the rocks were leaches that would bite. I had on leather shoes, but did manage to finally get the ball close enough to reach out and grab so I could help him.
It wasn’t until later that we realized the wood was wet and it took forever and a lot of firestarters to get a decent fire going. Tom was still stuck on the fact that most campgrounds as part of their camp cleanup recycle whatever wood you haven’t used and put it back into their next pile to sell to the next camper. But this campground was so clearly ripping you off with this (a bundle of wood is usually $4-$5) and the wood was wet. He was determined to burn as much as possible and we sat by the fire for quite a while once I got it going.
We decided to cook in the fire and baked potatoes wrapped in foil. Add that to some spiced black beans and cheddar and you have a camp meal that Tom calls “Mash” and declared to be “very good.” Another successful simple camp meal.
We tried to reserve a spot on the ferry to PEI for the next day, but their website sucks. It has options for specifying that you have a vehicle that is 21-30 ft. long, but then it can’t book a reservation. It doesn’t error and there is no info saying you can’t make a reservation, it just gets stuck. This made Tom nervous that we’d have to leave really early to get there and make sure to get on the boat. I wasn’t so nervous because there were lots of ferries each day and we had no time obligation on the other side.
Once we got settled into the Shadow that night, we watched the last episode of Better Off Ted that we had on the iPad. This was going to be a problem. We’d gotten used to the 22 minutes of TV before bed, but the other shows I had on the pad weren’t things Tom liked. But since we had so little connectivity, there wasn’t a chance to load anything new to watch. Besides, Tom is very picky about TV shows. They have to have no laugh track, something funny, but not too weird, preferably some science fiction element and no law, medicine, or police action. Oh, and he hates most sitcoms. So these days when I can find something he will tolerate, we like to buy a whole season or two and watch an episode a night until it runs out. I wasn’t sure how we would get through the next several days and get home.
Pics from today are here- http://bit.ly/aiU2Ym
Day 15- This Isn’t Kansas Anymore
I got up early in Halifax, intent on getting a little more laundry done since the hotel had a guest laundry room. I wanted to wash the towels and the dog’s blankets. I felt bad that Tenzin’s car binkies hadn’t gotten washed when we were at Acadia and at this point were stinky and here we had a clean dog. So I wanted to get his binkies clean too so he could enjoy his time in the car. I was up at 6:30am getting the laundry into the washing machine.
Tom was very nervous about the fact that we had a lot of driving to do that day and was annoyed that I was working on the blog rather than getting breakfast. Once we figured out that he just wanted to go to the hotel restaurant and get something, we packed up and went downstairs to eat while the clothes were in the dryer. The restaurant there was terrible. Their breakfast paled compared to the eggs Steve Chapin had made us the day before and it took way too long.
But we were able to hitch the trailer quickly and be back on the road with clean towels and binkies shortly after 9am. Now we just needed to find somewhere to get some gas. We wanted to find something close to the highway so we didn’t lose too much time getting off the beaten path. Tom tried using the Google maps on the iPad to find something and we were reminded once again that Google maps SUCK in Canada. We kept seeing exits that had no gas listed. And we kept driving. And then the empty tank light came on and we started to get really nervous trying to figure out how many miles/km we could go. We finally found a gas station and pulled in on what might have been fumes. There was also a Tim Horton and we got some iced coffees and timbits for the road. I don’t think that I had every really realized that Tim Horton is really just Dunkin’ Donuts Canadian style.
As we drove across the island again, we found that it really looked a lot like anywhere. It could have almost been the midwest US. But then you get to the Canso Causeway, which crosses over to the island that makes up Cape Breton and the scenery changes. For awhile, it’s a lot like driving along Route 1 in California.
We stopped along the way at a Co-Op to pick up some groceries and get some lunch. It was surprisingly hot that afternoon and we were making good time with the trip. We parked the trailer and went into the grocery and were surprised to be accosted by someone who walked up and started talking to us about being from NY. Clearly, he had watched us park and had followed us into the store. It freaked me out a little, but that’s just how open and friendly people in this part of Canada are. People throughout the store were chattering about us and our little trailer. We started wondering if no tourists ever shopped here, but we persisted in finding some good things to cook while camping and pick up fresh local milk and eggs and Canadian bacon.
Once you get to the National Park and the Cabot Trail, the scenery changes again and becomes something you’ve never seen. The road winds up and down and twists and turns on mountains with fantastic vistas of the sea and completely flat mountain tops. There are look-offs all along the road and we realize that is just what they call them here. A storm chases us as we wend our way up the trail and we can see it out over the ocean and behind us in the rearview mirror.
At one look-off I see what looks like a whale, but by the time Tom gets back with the binoculars I can’t pick it out again. We are headed across one of the flat mountain tops when we suddenly see two bikers- one of them an old man with a long white beard riding a high wheel bicycle. You know, the kind that was popular back in the 1880s. We were both befuddled by the sight. As Tom said “I never thought I’d see Santa Claus riding a bike across a mountain.” We stopped at the next look-off and waited for them to come by so we could get pics and ask questions. And we were shocked to see his braking system- foot on back wheel and think about the mountain road on the way down.
The next section of the road was tremendously scary. It was steep. It was windy. It was the kind of thing that made Tom and I both happy for the Subaru and the easy handling of the Shadow. And grateful that he had decided to bike the next day and not this one.
As we got to the lower part of the mountains, we suddenly saw two moose come across the road. They were huge and majestic and calmly hurried across- a big one and a little one. Ten minutes later, we saw another pair do the same thing. We were able to quickly grab the camera, but only got one good shot of the moose.
Once we got to the Hideaway Campground and Oyster Market, we got the campsite setup and headed off to see their little waterfront. We liked the campground there- it had great wooded sites and good bath facilities despite the paid showers. There was a cool piece of driftwood there that looked like a dinosaur skeleton. I made Tom’s favorite pasta dish for dinner (penne with red pepper, black olives and mozzarella in a balsamic vinegar sauce) and we had a nice evening by the fire. At some point, Tom noted that in the end “all these camps are the same once it gets dark. It’s dark, there are trees. It could be anywhere.” I beg to differ. Some places aren’t dark. Some places don’t smell as nice as this pine forest. Some places don’t have trees. And it is comforting to know that no matter what’s outside we always have our comfy little trailer to settle into to sleep.
Pics from today are here- http://bit.ly/bamxmK
Day 14- A Day of Regular Vacation
We awoke the next morning weary, but happy to still be sitting in a little silver trailer on the side of the cliff and with only a view of fog and no more rain. We ventured out to the bathroom and found several other exhausted campers coming out of tents and cars and examining what had gotten wet or disappeared. Our unused wood had gotten sopped and a camp lamp had been left on the table and was severely waterlogged. Our chairs had been tucked under the camper and were pretty sopped, but otherwise we were ok and we knew that we’d be headed somewhere dry and civilized that day.
We headed up to the bathhouse by the restaurant to get some showers. We were pretty psyched since this would be a free shower. It ended up that the shower room I was in had a leak and there was water that had come inside and was dripping down one of the beams. It was like chinese water torture since I couldn’t find a single spot to stand in while I balanced on one foot to dry the other and slide on shoes and clothes without getting dripped on.
We decided to get breakfast at the Miner Diner since there wasn’t anything dry to sit on at camp. We went inside and found the whole place filled with the Chapin clan who were still there vacationing after the big concert. It was funny and awkward that I knew who many of them were and knew stories about all of them from my friend and to them we were just some campers who might steal the salt and pepper. Tom leaned over at a certain point and whispered “I think we may be in someone else’s movie today.” Breakfast was delicious and exactly what we needed. At a certain point the chef came out of the kitchen and we realized that Steve Chapin had made our eggs!
After breakfast we hooked up the trailer and were off to Mahone Bay, a cute little waterfront village we had passed through the day before. We stopped to visit Amos Pewter and see how their pewter pieces are designed and made. It was fascinating and we bought a few things. It wasn’t until days later when I had seen pewter done in other places that I realized what a treat it was to have Amos objects. Their work is so superior to the other pewter I saw.
We headed from here to Halifax, where we checked in to the Best Western Chocolate Lake Hotel. We had decided that a hotel somewhere midway would be a good idea to get the dog washed. One of the difficult things about camping is that no campground will allow you to bring a dog into a bathhouse or use one of their sinks to wash a dog. And there is no way we’d ever try to hose Tenzin down. But we knew by this point that he’d be annoyed about being dirty (he jumps in the tub at home if he doesn’t feel clean) and we’d be annoyed about having him in our bed in the trailer if he was dirty.
I had picked this spot because they advertise themselves as very dog friendly and they were- they gave us a nice stuffed goose squeaky toy for him (it made a nice car pillow for the rest of the trip) and bags and bones. But they specifically told Tom we couldn’t use their tub to clean him. We unhooked the trailer and moved it into a parking spot in their lot so we could leave it for the day while we drove around town. We pondered the bath conundrum while we wandered Halifax.
Our first stop was the Citadel- a great hilltop fort they built that really never saw much in the way of the type of serious defense it was built for. It was impressive as far as forts go and we were intrigued by the signal flags that they raise from what appear to be ship masts there. We quickly realized that they had us park in what would have been one of the moats of the fort. We also found it funny that they had fireplaces inside the barracks that had chimneys sticking up through the fort walls. It seemed that an easy way to get to them would be to plug the chimneys or drop things down them.
The whole time we were there, they had gun and cannon demonstrations and it was wildly loud. We were very concerned that the dog would be freaked out waiting in the car. We got back to the car only to find him happily snoring away and oblivious to the noise. I think the Subaru must be well insulated.
We headed to the waterfront hoping to get some lunch and book a cruise on a boat that toured the harbor. We put the car in a garage and found an odd coffeehouse where we had samosas and meat pasties for lunch (I think this may be what they mean by “Canadian” food). Then we found out that the boat we wanted to take wasn’t running that day. So we went to the Maritime Museum instead.
The museum was pretty cool. We got to find out a lot about the Halifax Explosion- the biggest man-made explosion until the atomic bomb in Hiroshima. It happened in 1912 during WWI when two boats in the Halifax harbor collided. They both caught fire and one was a French vessel full of explosives. When it exploded, it destroyed nearly everything in a 2-mile radius, killed nearly 2000 people and injured more than 9000. And the next day it snowed 16 inches. The skills developed for dealing with strategy during this time prepared Halifax for the Titantic sinking just a few years later and their involvement in that tragedy.
The museum had many artifacts from the explosion and from Titanic. In fact, they have the last remaining deck chair from the Titanic. Tom got a picture sitting in a reproduction one. We both found this funny as we like to say things that are nonsensical and going nowhere at work are like “rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.” Now we know what it would take to rearrange those chairs!
After the museum we wandered around town for a while killing some time before dinner. We thought it was interesting that they had an outdoor gear store called Mountain Equipment Co-Op (MEC) that has a very similar logo and offerings to our US based Eastern Mountain Sports (EMS) shop. It was another reminder that things are just a little different in Canada. We found a cool candy shop and bought enough malted milk balls to last through the rest of the trip. There was a great spot we saw through the window that was featuring knitted and crocheted camp stuff. Tom found a store called “Biscuit” that had super cool clothes. Almost too cool for us, but he did find a shirt that he loved. We eventually ended up having dinner at a great place called “Economy Shoe Shop” named for the recycled neon sign they have outside.
After dinner we headed back to the hotel and gave the dog a bath. We figured in the end that they’d rather have him clean on their nice white sheets than not. And I scrubbed out the tub afterwards and we used our own towels so that there would be little impact from our breaking the rule. Tenzin was thrilled to be clean and we were unsure what to do with the tv. We watch 22 minutes of programming every night, but we hadn’t seen a tv in 2 weeks and really didn’t need to. All in all, today felt a little more like one of our usual vacations and that was a nice break from the camping.
Pics from today are here- http://bit.ly/bSZccZ
Day 13- From the Valleys to the Shores
Sherwood Forest was just as empty in the morning as it was the evening before. And if they were vampires, well, they didn’t bother us. It was a cool night and we slept well. Which was good, because we had a busy day of exploring planned. After a breakfast of oatmeal that we filled with the last of the fresh blueberries and cherries, we packed it in and headed off to find rocks.
In Canada they have what I consider to be an excessive number of tourist information centers. They are marked on the highways by signs with a question mark. At the one we stopped at yesterday, the woman had recommended that we visit a “look-off” where you could see the farmland of the Annapolis Valley and also a couple of beaches- one that had agate rocks and another that had amethyst. Their tourist info centers are weird. There are the normal brochures organized by either topic or area. But to get the good brochures, you have to actually talk to a human being and listen to their advice about what to see and do. I had done that as soon as we got to Nova Scotia and here were our personalized recommendations. So off we went.
One of the things we quickly realized in Canada is that gas is NOT cheap the way it is in the US. Where a tankful in the US is subsidized in such a way that it might cost us about $38 to fill up the car, that same amount of gas was $54 in Canada (or at least in Nova Scotia). We were a little surprised and I’m not sure why. Since we’d noticed that they drive a lot of trucks, I’d have guessed that they weren’t paying so much for gas.
We drove across the valley and then up the side of a steep hill to get to the Look-Off that had spectacular views of the farmlands below. And a putt-putt golf course (though we didn’t take the time to play). We wondered about why they called it a “Look-Off”. From there we headed down the other side of the mountain ridge we were on to the shores of Scot’s Bay near Cape Split. The hike out to Cape Split would have been too long and too much for Tenzin, so we just wandered beaches. The beach at Scot’s Bay is totally rock strewn and known for agates. We also found amazing spotted rocks there. It was about at this point in the trip that I realized that we’d found pink granite rocks on nearly every shore we’d seen.
Tom was starting to get hungry, but I really wanted to see the beach with the amethysts, so we persisted and found a red sand beach near Kingsport that I thought would be the one. We didn’t find any amethysts there, but there were some amazing red cliffs and lots of kids splashing on the shore. We didn’t stay long and proceeded to Wolfville in search of lunch.
After a nice lunch in Wolfville, we wandered through town. It was a college town scene not unlike you’d find in New Paltz or somewhere else that had lots of outdoor activities in the surrounding area. There was a movie theatre/coffeehouse where a local coffee provider and old movie theatre had partners to revitalize an old theatre and make a great new shared business. There was also a bike and woodstove shop- the first that we’ve seen. Tom joked that there was something there for both of us (I do obsess about woodstoves sometimes). There was also a great store that sold only items made from bamboo (look Wendy- you can do it!) that had some fabulous clothing.
It was somewhere on this day that we noted that we saw a huge flock of crows in a tree overhead. Tom was concerned we were about to be in the middle of a Hitchcock film when I reminded him that the crows had been following us the whole trip. We had seen crows everywhere. They were on Cape Cod and at Freeport and Acadia. They were at the Bay of Fundy and sitting on the ferry along with the gulls. They were in the trees at Sherwood Forest and flying by when we were taking pictures at the look-off. I wasn’t sure whether there was a pair following us who just kept meeting up with others, but that’s what I like to think. They were vacationing with us.
We left there and headed across the island towards Ovens Natural Park, south of Halifax. It was supposed to be a rainy afternoon and we kept weaving around what looked like stormy clouds on our way, though saw little rain. We got to Ovens around 5:30 and got our little trailer set up perched on top of the cliff that they had assured me would be a great and beautiful site for it. It was pretty looking out on the Atlantic. We decided to go for a hike and check out the caves there before the weather changed.
Ovens is a spectacular place and exactly what you might expect of the rugged Nova Scotia coastline. I had originally wanted to stay at this place on our trip and then nixed the idea because it felt a little out of the way. But then my friend Carol recommended it because it is owned by Steve Chapin, the brother of her friend Tom Chapin (both brothers of the late Harry Chapin, who I was a big fan of growning up and both great musicians in their own right). I reconfigured the trip agenda so we could stay here and then at a hotel in Halifax the next night.
They have a trail that leads along cliffs and ventures down to show you several areas of caves that have been carved out of the cliffs by the pounding of the Atlantic. These caves are shaped like ovens and for a couple of rock lovers are really cool. We took lots of photos and were headed back to camp just as it was starting to get darker and look more stormy. Despite that, we bought the last of their wood and schlepped it back to the camper.
We also checked out the point that jutted into the water just below the cliff we were camping on and did a little more rock hunting among the masses of dulse that had floated up. Tenzin wasn’t so sure about walking on that squishy stuff and was completely uninterested in the many bleeding sea birds that were camped out on the big rocks.
We got back to the camper and were talking about how difficult it would be to make dinner with the wind gusting off the ocean at us when it started to rain- actually to pour. Literally and sideways. We quickly moved from the camper to the car and decided to drive back to the Miner Diner restaurant in the campground. When we got there, we were soaked from the rain and they were fully booked for dinner, but the place wasn’t full of campers at all. It was full of locals and others here to see the live music they have every night. We begged for them to find somewhere for us to sit and they put a couple of folding chairs at a little bar ledge along the side of the restaurant and we settled in to warm up, dry off and listen to some music while we ate.
The previous weekend had been the big Chapin family concert that they hold here every year. But that night was Steve Chapin playing the piano and singing along with Jennah Barry (formerly of the O’Darlings) who was covering classic sad songs that night. They were great together and the music was fantastic. We were really happy that the rain had driven us inside for the evening.
We drove back to the camper and I used the car to try to block the little camper from the winds and rain driving sideways in from the ocean. It helped, but the trailer rocked all night with the wind and we were very afraid of blowing off the cliff. We couldn’t open the vent on the top of the camper because it would have been torn off by the wind. We had the side screens open, but the water poured in through them and got us and the bedding wet. There were people in tents on the cliff as well and they packed up in the middle of the night (how, I don’t know- it was raining too hard to see where they were 40 feet away) and left. It was a long and fairly sleepless night.
Pics of today can be found here- http://bit.ly/bnhFNS
Day 12- Must. Make. Ferry!
When I awoke to the sunrise, I realized that Tom was already awake (this is rare- I usually always am up first). He was looking at his phone. We quickly realized that the time on his phone and on other devices were different. The time had changed- we were so far east at this point we were in another time zone, which we hadn’t considered when planning for this trip. Fortunately, it was still very early and didn’t affect our ability to get to the ferry on time. And it would mean we’d have an extra hour of daylight at the end of the day when setting up camps- yay!
We hadn’t setup much for camp so that packing in would be easier. But while we were getting ready, we had several more curious Canadians stop by for tours of the Shadow. I think Tom was on to something when he said we should charge for showing people around. Or I should have some cards from the folks at Little Guy and be getting some commissions. “And inside, there is a queensize bed, and cabinets and a fan. The ventilation is quite good. Oh yes, it’s very comfortable. And the back opens up for more storage and a kitchen. Yes, we have power with the marine battery and an inverter. We keep an electric cooler in the back when we’re at camp and in the car when we are on the go. Yes, it’s very easy to pull. Just 800 lbs and you can move it by hand when you get to a site. Oh, setup is simple. Just get it into position, plug it in, set the chocks, open up the doors and the back and pull out the camp chairs and rugs.”
I found that if you use the steel storage bin on the front of the camper to put the stove on and use the camper to block the wind, you can get enough water to boil to make a little coffee. We were happy to have an untimed hot shower this morning. It was good for me, since I’ve been fighting a sinus infection for days and steam always helps to clear my nose. My throat was also sore, and feeling sick made me a little homesick for the first time on our trip. I just wanted to be home lying on the couch under a blanket warm and snug with my sinus mask and nothing to do. Instead, I had to deal with cranky husband who was worried about getting to the ferry, drive through town with a trailer, get to the other side and figure out how to navigate in Nova Scotia. I still wasn’t used to the km instead of miles and doing the math to figure out how far things were and how fast I was going.
We headed out at 10am and thought we had plenty of time to get to the ferry. But of course there was construction. And more construction. And we got lost. Again. Often the notations on the map don’t correspond exactly to the way exits work in reality. And though the camper is easy to haul, I can’t turn on a dime (a quarter maybe. a loonie, definitely), so we often get to intersections and Tom isn’t sure where we should go. Often I just wing it since I can’t hold up traffic for him to decide and sometimes it’s right and sometimes it’s wrong. I figure you just go with it and reroute if necessary. He hasn’t quite gotten used to being that flexible and he’s gotten so used to maps on the iPad that track where you are that he’s nearly forgotten how to just read a map.
We got to the ferry in plenty of time and got the rig loaded without a problem. We packed the dog in his little bag and headed up to the passenger decks. After wandering around a bit, we got in trouble for having the dog on the deck. Keep in mind, he’s a tiny dog, in a bag hanging on Tom’s arm. His little toes haven’t hit the floor. But they told us he either had to stay in the car or go into the kennels on the boat. I told them they shouldn’t advertise the boat as “dog friendly” if that is the case. Nonetheless, he went back to the car for a nap, which he didn’t mind.
It was pretty cool to see how they loaded the semis in a row in the middle of the boat, the campers in rows on either side, then cars and motorcycles. It was all neat and orderly and probably pretty well weight balanced. The car deck was wet and smelled of fish. Tom was worried that maybe they let water in and I thought maybe it was that the trucks were filled with fish being transported back and forth. I overheard a truck driver up in the lounge talking about how they lost 32,000 lbs. of perch onto Highway 9 recently and made every bear in Maine really happy. We had just driven that long stretch of Highway 9 the day before and I was glad to miss the perch and bears.
We settled into the TV lounge area and got some coffee- Starbucks! It’s the first one we’ve had in I don’t know how long. It was nice to sit in comfy chairs with free wifi and drink good coffee someone else made. The trip was nearly 3 hours and a bit boring. Just sea to see. Tom saw a couple of porpoises, but I was inside and missed them. We got there without mishaps and back in the car we were nearly first off the boat.
As soon as we were off the boat, we stopped at one of the handy travel centers they have in Canada. I was a little weirded out that for the best brochures you had to actually talk to a human being, but I got over it and the woman was very helpful. She gave me tips on things we should see in the areas of Nova Scotia we were visiting and about 3 inches of brochures and booklets.
We had almost no cash at this point and were in sore need of some Canadian currency. We found a bank in Digby and got some cash and then found lunch along the way.
We headed for our camp at Sherwood Forest in the valley of Annapolis. After checking in, we headed through the campground and were a little surprised to see that though the place was full of campers, there was almost no one there. We guessed it must have been a place that has mostly people who own trailers and come on weekends and since it was during the week, no one was around. But it was really strange to be almost alone in a camp full of rigs.
The showers here are a quarter for 5 minutes. I told Tom I thought we could splurge and have 10 minutes for 50 cents each! Tenzin was in the camper and decided there was something in my purse. For the last couple of days, we had been tucking something from lunch into napkins and into my purse and then taking them to him. He decided my purse smelled of lunch and that I was hiding something that he must find.
We spend a quiet(ish) evening planning the next couple of days of our trip and examining the many brochures. I say quiet(ish) because we quickly realized there was one other camper nearby. There was a tent and a bicycle and a couple of tarps and suddenly someone walked over and there was bountiful laughter and talking and coughing. An old man with a beard came out of the tent eventually and came over to see our camper. He told us he would keep it quiet to give us some peace and Tom said “no, that’s ok.” Famous last words. The guy cranked up blues music and played it all evening. It wasn’t bad, but I think Tom learned to say “Thanks. That would be great.” in the future.
There were a couple of other people who suddenly appeared from their campers at dusk. It was odd to me that people would show up without cars driving in. One stopped by to see the trailer and another just said hi as I walked the dog. I wondered whether maybe they were vampires. There were signs about karaoke and bingo and yet besides the blues guy, silence. In a forest overlooking a field of campers. And though it was Sherwood Forest, we never saw Maid Marian.
Pictures from today are here- http://bit.ly/9WPTSo
Day 11- On to Canada, eh
Well, after a week at the Somes Sound View Campground in Somesville on Mount Desert Island (on the “quiet side” of Acadia), we’ve decided we really like it here and it might be a place that would compete with Lake Placid for future camping weeks. And on this last morning we walked around looking at all the camps and tried to decide if there was a better spot than the one we had. There were a couple that were maybe worth trying, but we realized we had a pretty good site and would happily come back to this same spot with the circular camp and the trees in the middle. It’s a really nice laid back campground where people are more serious about camping than partying. We never got to a point where we loved the $1/5 minute showers, but we got over resenting them too much. And we kind of liked the fact that they expected you to boil your own water and wash dishes on your site and not be disgusting about disposing the graywater.
After breakfast we broke down the camp, packed everything in and took a last spot check. This was a harder breakdown than future ones will be since we had to take down the tripod and the hammock which we aren’t likely to use again in the next section since we’ll be packing out every morning. We waved goodbye to Acadia and Mount Desert Island and headed off toward Bangor to go half an hour out of our way and find an RV store where we might be able to buy a replacement stabilizing leg.
Ok, so what is a stabilizing leg you ask? It’s a metal thingee on the back corners of the camper that fold down and stretch out and hold the corners steady. Since the trailer has 2 wheels that we use for driving and 1 little front wheel, these extra two legs give it some stability. They can also help level things if you need them to. It’s nice to sleep in a trailer that is relatively level or otherwise you’ll roll into one another. They aren’t necessary, but they are nice. Most people call them stabilizing arms, not legs. But I think that’s just silly since they also say the same thing has “feet.” Clearly if it has feet and stands on them, it’s a leg. One of ours has a broken spring. Tom had tried to reattach the spring, but it’s not strong enough. So we need a new leg or a new spring.
I had found an RV shop on the internets that we were headed toward. We saw it coming up on the highway and pulled in. After a few minutes, we realized that it wasn’t the same place I had found on the internet, but another RV repair shop. Surprisingly, there are two side by side in this part of Maine. With a campground between them. The folks at that campground must break down a lot. They didn’t have a new stabilizing leg, but they found an old one among their parts and the nice folks there even sawed it down and cut off a little part of the metal so that it was identical to the one we had. They charged us $5 and we were on our way. We decided to stop at the other RV place and see if by chance they had one. Not only did we find a brand new one for $34, but we also found a handy fire claw thing that Tom thought might help me with my firebugishness and keep me from catching on fire. We bought both and figured having an extra leg would be helpful at some point.
We drove over 79 miles through that part of Maine up towards the Canada border without seeing a single town. Not one. We saw lots of deer and moose crossing signs, but no towns. It was a bit refreshing and we were glad to have plenty of gas.
By the time we got to the border, we were starving. But the border town of Calais, ME is pretty pitiful. It looks like a town that has hit some serious economic strife in recent years. So we decided to head across to Canada and look for lunch there.
After 5 minutes at Canadian Customs- “Why are you traveling here? You will not work? What is your license plate number? What is in that trailer?” we were off to Saint Stephen and to find lunch. The town on the other side in Canada is definitely in better financial shape, but we still didn’t find much for lunch. We ended up stopping at a Kentucky Fried Chicken, where Tenzin was elated to share my lunch. We don’t usually eat KFC at home, but oh, man, that dog loves their chicken.
We sat in the car in the parking lot plotting the next section of the drive and Tom was very worried about the next day when we would take the ferry to Nova Scotia. We had booked on the noon ferry (the only other is late at night) and the campground I had chosen was maybe an hour away. You were supposed to be there at 11am to board, so we’d have to leave by 10am. Tom wanted somewhere closer and we agreed to find another campground. He found a couple on Google on the iPad and off we went.
So let me just warn you that the combination of Google maps in Canada, Campgrounds and Canadian signage are not a good mix. That is, not unless you like to get lost and argue- a lot. Tom would find a camp on the Google map, we would see signs at the exit that appeared to indicate camping (a tent and a trailer- that’s camping, right?) and off we’d go. The next thing you’d know, we’d end up driving through a residential neighborhood and down an empty road and where the camp should be would be a gate protecting the woods. Not a road, not a sign, no traditional campground. And then I’d be stuck trying to get the trailer turned around and another half hour back to the main road.
After 3 of these attempts, I started to argue that he should have trusted my instincts that from the internet I had found there are only 2 real campgrounds in this area and both were an hour from the ferry. At this point we were well beyond the one we had booked, so let’s just get to the other one. He argued that “but these come up on the map” and “we have to be able to stay closer” as I just kept driving past the ferry and towards the other campground- the Century Farm Family Campground in St. Martins. Eventually we got there and amazingly, the sun hadn’t set yet. We got a site right on the beach with our tiny trailer at the end of a long row of huge rigs.
We quickly found that true to rumor, Canadians are way friendly, very curious and say “eh” quite a bit. Several came over to see the Shadow. “Nice rig, eh?” “You could take that anywhere!” “Oh, where you from? New York, eh?” The campground was really nice for a place with big fields to camp in and right on the beach on the Bay of Fundy where you could see the caves in the cliffs. There was another campground next door- well, there was a graveyard between the two. We wondered if that is where the retirees end up after traveling in their big rigs. The folks across from us were from Texas and we overheard them telling others that they sold their house 10 years ago and bought the ginormous bus they were driving and have traveled all over since.
We got pics of the sunset and a quick walk on the beach in before setting up a campfire and starting dinner. The plan was to cook some mac and cheese to go with our chicken sausages, but we found that on a windy shore, it’s silliness to try to boil water. The stove just can’t handle the wind and getting the pot hot. So we ended up just cooking the sausages in the fire and having some chips and salsa and guac with them.
We had unfortunately not positioned the camper in an ideal spot considering the light from the campground, the light of the sunrise and the wind coming off the Bay of Fundy. It was a windy night with the light from someone’s camper in my window and then the sun rising into Tom’s window. It woke him early.
Pics from today are here- http://bit.ly/cxq8mt
Day 10- Prepping for the Next Leg
There are often transition days on trips- getting from one place to another or even in the case of a long trip like this one, prepping to get from one place to another. The 10th day of our journey was such a day. And since it was overcast with light rain, it wasn’t a bad day to do it. We had planned that I would take clothes to be washed to the laundromat and Tom would go for a run and then try to fix the camper leg that was still broken.
I forgot to bring laundry bags on this trip (we don’t use them much at home), so I used a handful of those reusable grocery bags to pack up clothes, towels and other things that needed washing. We had brought more than a weeks worth of clothes because we weren’t sure when we’d do laundry, but we figured it would be good to get this out of the way and get some clean towels before the next section of our journey since we weren’t going to be staying in any one place for more than a night for at least another week.
Tom took off on his run and I got in the car headed to the laundry. Of course, when I got there I realized that I had forgotten the detergent and softener. And since we don’t use anything made by Proctor & Gamble (it’s both political and allergies) I couldn’t use anything for sale at the laundromat or the grocery. So I headed back to camp to pick up my Seventh Generation soaps and made a mental note to leave them in the car and not the camper. Once I got the laundry underway, I sat in the car and finished the book I was reading.
It was great to pull warm clean clothes from the dryers and pack them back into our duffels. It reminded me that one of the reasons I love owning a house so much is that we have our own eco-friendly washer and dryer that have never seen any chemical based products used in them and it’s no more trouble than running down to the basement to wash anything I want. Camping always reminds you of things that are easy to do at home and also easy to take for granted.
When I got back to camp, I found Tom wondering if I had gotten the text he had sent (I hadn’t). He had left the camper leg in the car and I took the car. He tried and tried to fix the stabilizing leg, but he couldn’t. In the end he decided it would be best to remove it and try to find an RV store to get a new one. We had to leave MDI to go to Home Depot to get the socket wrenches he needed to remove the leg.
We went down to Southeast Harbor and wandered a bit before grabbing some lunch. The day continued to rain on and off and we decided late in the day to try to get in a view of Sand Beach, which had been crowded all week. Nearing dusk it was nearly clear of people and the rain had stopped and we had a nice walk on the beach and took pictures and picked up rocks for our collection. A red squirrel chattered at me from some trees and I marveled at the red squirrels we often see on vacations. There was a huge eye on the beach made of shells and bits of dulse.
After we left Sand Beach, we stopped at Thunder Hole. It wasn’t thundering since the tide wasn’t in the right spot, but it was a beautiful place at dusk. We headed back into Bar Harbor after that and picked up some Thai food to eat back at camp.
Pics of today can be found here- http://bit.ly/cog6he
Day 8- Impromptu Lazy Day (for me)
We had expected rain on friday and woke to cloudy skies, but no real rain. As we headed off to the bathhouse to brush our teeth, we ran into Austin, who said that he’d decided to stay an extra night and was looking to bike the Park Road that day. He wanted to know if Tom wanted to come along. I urged Tom to go and looked forward to another day around camp. Austin had to move camps before they could go and he had to wait for someone else to leave first, so Tom and I both tinkered around camp for a bit. He was excited to move to a cheaper campsite where he didn’t have to pay for the electric he really couldn’t use considering he only had a pup tent and a bike.
I took the time to do a camp pedicure- well, I painted my toenails and put lotion on my feet. It felt pretty good after days of walking on rocky beaches and dirty paths in sandals. I also did more blog and photo work. It was becoming pretty clear that the problems I had with my camera card were related to the card itself and not the card reader so much. My eye-fi card had cracks in the plastic and wouldn’t read on any reader or device I had. I finally got it to mount on my iPad and was able to get the pictures off of it and uploaded directly to Flickr. I had another SD card, but it was smaller and I knew I’d need to head back to Radio Shack in Bar Harbor and get a new card before we left MDI (Mount Desert Island).
I was amazed by how quiet things are at camp in the middle of the day. There is a flurry of activity at this campground in the morning. People are getting ready to head off for their bike/hike/kayak/explore adventure days and others are pulling up camps and shoving them back into packed cars. Each morning there was a surprise of different people leaving (oh, look, the hip campers are gone!). By midday, everyone was out and about and almost no one was at camp besides the workers straightening up sites prepping them for the fresh batch. By 7pm the place would be full and lively again, but it was nice to have this quiet time and dappled sunshine coming down through the trees to enjoy.
Tom texted me from the top of Cadillac Mountain where they had ridden. I wasn’t surprised he could send a text from there since it’s the one good spot of connectivity around here. But I was surprised to actually get the message. Being connected here is an effort and a surprise and not a given- which is nice. The churches here have signs that say things like “God has unlimited minutes” and
After Tom got back, he got cleaned up and we had some lunch. He said that Austin tells him that he doesn’t bother to bathe when he tours because it’s pointless- you just get a shower and 80 miles later are drenched in sweat again. I can’t see Tom doing that. He doesn’t mind getting stinky running or biking, but I pity the man who tries to keep him from showering afterward.
We decided to get in another short hike and headed over to a little path that went between Fernald Cove and another Cove where there is a cliff. It was a nice hike, even if Tenzin fussed a bit and had to be carried back. Tom lied and told me there was nothing at the end of the hike- that it was just about enjoying the journey. And then we came out at a nice little rocky beach with a sailboat and a really high cliff. Tom explained that he’d read that Man-o-War ships liked this cove because they could come into the deep cove and refill their water barrels from the water coming off the cliff without ever having to get off the boat.
We wanted Mexican food when we got done with the hike, but we didn’t want to drive back into Bar Harbor. So we decided to do the next best thing- we bought stuff to make nachos and we made them over the fire. We’re learning to be very creative about cooking our camp food and an aluminum pizza plate and the little grill over the fire go a long way.
Austin came back to hang out and talk around the fire that night. We talked about books and Austin told us about a book he was reading and one that he wanted to read. While he told us about it, I bought and downloaded the book on my iPad. He was really jealous that I already had a copy of a book that he’d have to look to find and probably wouldn’t have by the time he finished the book he was reading.
He said he had sat by the pool and read all afternoon. He’s a lobbyist for renewable energy and Tom and I were surprised at the sort of “techno retro” attitude he had. His whole vacation was about leaving his email behind, but he also seemed to not have a lot of tech savvy beyond that. It was an interesting and different attitude for us to consider. Someone younger than us who wrote letters and read physical books and didn’t care about connectivity other than a cell phone to make a couple of calls.
There are many loons here at Somes Sound. You can hear them in the evening calling to each other at dusk and just after. There are also owls who call out in the night. It’s very peaceful.
Pics for today can be found here- http://bit.ly/dCh8Dn
Misc Liisa 