Blogs from New Brunswick, Canada, North America - page 10

"She was, she was as beautiful as rainbows in the sky She was so beautiful and not at all am I" With the mellow sounds of Jacques Brel's "La Fanette" drifting over us and providing a soothing start to the day, we headed out for Acadia National Park. The park was established as Lafayette National Park in 1919, but the name was changed to the present form in 1929. It is the oldest national park east of the Mississippi. The park has wildlife, but we saw very little other than gulls. It is perhaps best known for its craggy, rocky shoreline vistas. We spent the day in and out of fog (mostly in), and therefore we saw a lot more of craggy and rocky than of vistas. The park includes the better part of Mt. Desert ... read more

BRILLIANT DAY. Short and sweet: - Left Charlottetown 10:30 am - Arrived St. John New Brunswick 7:00 pm - 280 kms And In Between: - Rode across Confederation Bridge from PEI to New Brunswick. 13 kms long, longest bridge in world over ocean that freezes. - Survived roundabout at Moncton. Must have been same designers as Victoria Airport Roundabout combined into one with lanes mid roundabout that end and unforgiving unyielding drivers. - Fantastic ride along narrow, winding, hilly coast of Bay of Fundy on route 114, through Shepody National Wildlife Area. Saw massive moose on road. - Hopewell Rocks on Bay of Fundy. Stopped in for couple hours. Hiked down to Flower Rocks. 42' tide today. Maximum at 5:00 pm. Stayed on beach for one hour to watch tide rush in around us. Incredibly mindboggling ... 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

Geo: 47.7911, -64.9523The rain didn't stop pouring all day on Peter's birthday. It was a long seven hour drive to the wilds of New Brunswick at Caraquet, but at least we stayed dry. When we compained about the cold wind and steely cloud in Quebec we were told that 5 degrees is nothing. It gets down to Minus 60 celsius in Winter and is often - 30 degrees, and somebody said 'at least its not raining' which it then proceeded to do for the next 2 days. So we're getting good impression of how short the summer is here and winter is setting in. We should therfore be more grateful I suppose for the gulf stream which keeps England much milder on a similar latitide. Looking forward to going South from now on. The hotel does ... 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