Blogs from New Brunswick, Canada, North America

Today was a real change in road conditions. Leaving Quebec City, we headed west to cross the St. Lawrence river via the Pierre LaPorte bridge (no metal bridge deck thank god) and onto the Trans Canada #20. The highway follows the south side of the St. Lawrence and offers breathtaking views of the north side of Quebec City and further as you travel along. We were blown away by the size of the river at times, its width 3 miles I would think. Across on the north side, we were offered patchwork views of small farmsteads in equally linear narrow plots, much the same as we saw on route 138 a couple of days ago. The Trans Canada heading east ends in Riviere du Loup, and it is here that we turned south onto TC #2 ... read more

I forgot to mention yesterday that we were rousted out of bed at 6 am by a fire alarm in our hotel. Some jerk pulled the alarm as a prank, but do you think anyone would come and tell all of the cold, sleepy people standing outside what was going on? No. Not impressive! Luckily we didn't have an agenda and were able to go back to sleep for a couple of hours. We spent yesterday driving. 12 hours of driving. Pretty boring day, but at the end of it my sister's friend in Fredricton had a cozy place for us to sleep. Even late at night she made us right at home. This morning we slept in late and then went for lunch at the most random motel restaurant that was really delicious and cozy. ... read more

As an aside, I absolutely HATE the fact that this blog forces me to select a continent, country, region, and city and then doesn't give me the choice of Clair, NB, which is where I've been for the last 5-6 days. The best I could do was Edmundston, NB. Sigh! We've had the extraordinary good luck to be here for the absolute best of the fall colors. We came east at this time of year in part to see this again, and we have certainly not been disappointed. We're hoping that as we move westward, we'll catch more of the peak, given that the season is probably earlier here than in Quebec and Ontario. A bit of comic relief from all this beauty are the cluster flies that have been plaguing us at the camp for ... read more

Rainy day The pitter patter of rain on the roof was soothing and we slept in til 8 am. I jumped up and said “It’s high tide, we have to go to town”. Then I checked the tide schedule and high tide was 12:08pm so we had lots of time for coffee/tea. There was a little break in the showers so Oscar went out very quickly. We listened to music, had coffee, played on the computer and plotted our day as it promised to get worse. The showers indoors got a very good rating this morning. We had breakfast in town then walked down to see the condition of the fishing fleet. It was ½ hour from high tide and the water was really high already. Pictures What do women do on a rainy day, shop! ... read more

What a night! Marg woke with a start thinking there was a bear right outside her window. Then she thought someone was stealing our chairs. It turned out to be her pesky bunk mate trying to get a chair to star gaze. I woke early and just glanced out the window and saw sparkling diamonds everywhere. The moon had set and the clouds had parted leaving the stars in an incredibly dark sky. How could you just go back to bed! I was just about to get Marg when she came out saying “I want to experience it all”. We sat there for ½ an hour or so trying to identify some constellations, even seeing 4 shooting stars one of which lasted a long time and had a red firey tail. Both of us gasped at ... read more

We had a wonderful 59 days in Canada, but it was great to cross the border and be back in the good old USA. Our first stop in Calais, Maine (rhymes with Dallas) was at a gas station to fill up the RV. After spending almost 2 months paying over $5 a gallon in Canada, the price of $3.95 seemed like a great deal! Then we headed to the credit union ATM as we hadn’t had access to an appropriate ATM during our time in Canada. Last but not least we stopped at a Wal-Mart and a supermarket. It felt good to have cash in our pockets, a full gas tank and cupboards restocked with familiar brands. Our goal was to spend a couple nights in Lubec, Maine. So yes we are back in the US, ... read more