Northern Vacation- Day 4

 

The stormy weather continued when we woke up in Portland.  We had booked a seal watching boat trip for that afternoon and was wondering if it would even run.  Of course, you would think that if they were canceling it the company would call you.  Yeah, apparently with boat trips, it doesn’t work like that.  Nicole called up and discovered that even if the weather was good they had no intention of going because there were less than 10 people signed up.  Gee, thanks for letting us know.  I totally get that they are beholden to the weather and also that taking a boat out with two people in it would be a waste of gas but you would think the least they could do would be to give us a call.  It just seems like basic customer service.  But enough of that.

Bar Harbor

Sandy Beach

With our plans changed, we decided to head out and make our run for the border.  The drive up was pretty uneventful.  We did make a side trip to Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park.  We had lunch in Bar Harbor and did a little wandering through the shops.  We stopped off at the visitor's center of the park and everyone and their brother was in there.  Now we know where everyone goes when it's a rainy day.  I grabbed a map and we ran for it.  The national park was created in 1919; it was the first designated park east of the Mississippi.  It was originally named Lafayette National Park, after the Revolutionary War hero and French guy.  The name was later changed to reflect the area's connection to the Acadian people of Canada.  Now I know that we only had a quick visit, but I wasn’t exactly blown away by Acadia.  While it did have a few nice coastal views it seemed that most of the ‘overlooks’ were of tree tops.  I am pretty environmentally conscience and on the whole am anti-tree cutting but I think Acadia was in desperate need of some tree trimming.  There were all of these overlook and outlook places but you couldn’t see a bloody thing.  I didn’t pay the entrance fee to see trees!  It was while driving around Acadia that we noticed a pattern forming that would continue for the rest of the trip- no wildlife.  I already knew from my last trip that the moose of Maine were cagey animals.  We saw SO many perfect vistas for wildlife to be frolicking in but they were totally empty.  And if all the moose signs that were thrown up every five miles wasn't bad enough, they kept naming things after animals that we never saw: Beaver Damn Pond, Bear Brook, Eagle Lake, Otter Cliff Road, Seal Harbor.  Come on!  Rub it in how bout it!

After bidding adieu to Acadia and it's non-wildlife, we continued north to Calais and the border crossing.  This would be my first trip to Canada and it would be fair to say that I had been building it up a bit.  I had the vision in my mind that Canada would be like a Diet UK.  Obviously it wouldn’t be as great as the real UK (I really hope I don’t have to point out that by UK, I mean United Kingdom) but it would be better than most.  Maybe they would have decent fish n chips or know how to make a cup of tea.  Nicole, who had been to Canada a bunch of times, counseled me on not getting my hopes up but I was determined to continue with my delusions.  We got to the border crossing and pulled right up.  This particular border crossing is about two years old and apparently no one else knows about it; fine with me!  So we drove up and handed our passports over to the border agent.  Our agent was nice as can be, as you would stereotypically assume of a Canadian, and welcomed us in.  My only complaint was that there was no passport stamp given.  This is a pet peeve of mine; I hate that passport stamps seem to have all but disappeared.  I mean, how else am I supposed to show where I’ve been?  It’s insane to think that you can have used your passport to visit countries and have nothing to show for it?  (I’m looking at you, European Union.)  For shame!

Oooh, Canada

Anyhoo, we continued north towards St John, New Brunswick.  For the most part, Canada was still looking a lot like Maine.  The only difference was that the distances and speed was now in kilometers.  Seriously, Canada?  Even Great Britain has waved bye bye to kilometers and everybody appreciates that.  Trust me, it’s one less thing you have to worry about when trying to stay on the right side of the road!  (Come to think of it, Canada should totally just do that.  Convert to miles but drive on the British side of the road.  Problem solved.)  You could tell that the route we were on was somewhat new because there was a whole lot of nothing!  We were staying outside of St John at the Moore's Specialties Tourist Home; turns out it was WAY outside of St John.  We drove further and further out into the middle of nowhere as evening set in.  We finally arrived at our place for the night around 8:30.  Mae, our lovely host, welcomed us in and showed us around.  She mentioned that another group was supposed to arrive at 9:30 as well.  Of course I thought, ‘okay that’s in like an hour.’  Turns out it wasn’t.  We thought we had arrived at 8:30 but once we crossed over into Canada, we lost an hour so it was really 9:30.  Sheesh, that suddenly made the long day we had seem even longer.  

Mae made us a cup of tea and we chatted in the kitchen while she waited for the other group.  She told us that she was drawing us a map for tomorrow of places we might want to check out.  Nicole leaned over and said, “she made us tea and she’s drawing us a map- this is like the UK!”  (delusion proven correct!)  Over our many trips to the UK, we had noticed that British people love to draw us maps.  And most of them are adorably specific.  We were at a castle in Scotland one time and had asked how to get back to the bus stop.  The woman proceeded to draw us a map to show us the route through the countryside.  “Turn left at the tree with no bark, go through the fence, walk around the rubbish pile and you’ll be there.”  At first we thought she was trying to get us killed but it took us exactly where we needed to go.  Since then, we are always happy to see someone draw us up a map.  Since on the drive in we noticed that there was NOTHING around us we were prepared to hungry that night.  Mae told us that unfortunately B&Bs weren’t allowed to offer dinners because it would take away business from nearby restaurants.  Of course the irony being, there were no nearby restaurants.  I’ll just say that Mae was an angel and found a creative way to not let us go to bed hungry. 

It had been a long day of driving and we still had a lot of driving ahead of us but we were looking forward to seeing some of Canada tomorrow.     

Tomorrow: Bay of Fundy