Sorry to take so long between posts but it's been a really fun and exciting couple of weeks. We got it together and went on a road trip to a place I've been dreaming of for about 20 years, and just never managed to get to.
You see, it all started with Lucy Maud Montgomery, Megan Follows, Colleen Dewhurst, Richard Farnsworh, Schuyler Grant and their spectacular Anne of Green Gables.
Yes, I am an Anne fan. Just thinking about her makes me smile. And watching this version of Anne makes me cry. Alot.
Happy tears. You gotta love 'em.
DAY 1
So anyway, we'd planned to take about two weeks and make the road trip up as relaxed and enjoyable as possible, so we stuck the Harley in the back of the truck (the roads up in PEI seem made for beautiful bike rides), packed the backseat with everything you could possibly imagine, found a wonderful pet-sitter, planned a route and armed with cameras, video camera, coolers filled with fun food and tunes cranking, we hit the road Tuesday morning, July 6th. (I have video clips of a bunch of stuff but have to figure out how to convert them, so...)
It was a blast. The weather was gorgeous, and we took scenic routes out of PA, drove up through NY (where we stopped and had blueberry muffins and cold drinks on a picnic table in the shade), into Vermont
and pulled off onto a very secondary road along a lovely river to get out and stretch and relax in the shade along the river for a while.
It was gorgeous and spirits were really high. The Green Mountains were (dare I say?) awesome and we stopped at a look-out store high up on Hogshead Mountain (I think it was HH), ravaged their maple syrup collection and left with delicious vanilla and strawberry milkshakes.
We made it to Concord, NH that first day and the ride was great, although the highway we took to get in suddenly ended and was riddled with road work (the whole east coast is riddled with road work, apparently, and we caught quite a bit of it) so it was an er, challenge finding the first hotel. We did though, and hallelujah, ordered take-out salads and lovely breadsticks from the room and just lounged out and planned Day Two's course.
DAY 2
The next morning we had the WORST coffee in the world, so we packed ourselves up and headed straight for the nearest Dunkin Donuts. That revived out spirits, and so we headed across NH, where we started seeing moose:
and other funky and interesting things:

and stopped to check out this really interesting bridge and I cannot remember whether that baby was in NH or Maine, so.

We stopped at a little store and bought bananas and muffins and were taking the scenic route up the coast of Maine and coming into the state low, so I thought we'd be driving right along the ocean -- wrong -- and while the traffic was thick, the scenery was still interesting. Camden was gorgeous, the houses weathered by the sun and wind, and the cottage gardens full of flowers were to die for. We drove and drove and watched for live moose (none) but oh, it was just beautiful anyway. The fresh salt scent of the sea, the pines, the breeze...

We decided to spend our second night out in Acadia, and people, this is one breathtaking park. I would go back there in a heartbeat because there was no way to do and see everything in the time we had. But we tried! We took the Park Loop road and made it up Cadillac Mountain
and it's a shame the Cat Ferry doesn't run from here anymore, because when we first began planning this trip we were going to take the car ferry up to Nova Scotia. Ah well, it sits in dock.
Frenchman's Bay was so beautiful. The whole park was beautiful.
Boulders and stone surfaces everywhere, and I'm wearing wedge-heeled sandals. Inappropriate footwear is my lot in life. .
There's a wildlife sanctuary up here too, that I found out about too late, darn it but the animals are given lifetime homes and their interaction with strangers is very limited. I really wanted to make a reservation and get in there but PEI was calling and I wanted that more. (And this gives me a concrete reason to go back.)
So, we went into Bar Harbor and wandered around down on the dock by the water and I made do with this lovely guy.
Then we went out to have a Maine lobster dinner, and this was an experience in itself.

I kicked this one off with a lovely watermelon frozen dacquiri because I was a little iffy about what came next. I've never eaten a whole lobster before -- I hate to know that a live being is dying just for me -- and while the tail and claws were good, I'll never do it again. I am just not someone who can blithely crack a body in half and set its upper torso on the table to stare at me while I devour its appendages and tail. But I gave it a shot -- even the bib -- and laughed through dinner because it was fun being tourists.
Downtown Bar Harbor was mobbed and so we explored a bit but it had been a long day full of sea air and excitement, so we headed back to our motel, a charming little vintage place, for coffee and some R&R because tomorrow was going to be a blast.
We were headed up into New Brunswick, Canada to the Bay of Fundy.
DAY 3
We left Acadia the next morning and headed up Route 1 for the Canadian border. We were going to cross into New Brunswick at Calais, and had all of our documents ready. (Or so we thought.) Funny, how there was almost no traffic after Ellsworth, and although the day started out misty and foggy, it got hot and gorgeous pretty fast.
We were still keeping a sharp eye out for moose but they must have been laying low because we remained moose-less.
The scenery was breathtaking,
And then we found ourselves in Calais, Maine, at the border, in a small line of cars waiting to go through.
And that was when the amnesia set in, although I didn't know it until we pulled up and the customs agent gave us the cool eyeball, took our passports and said, "Where are you from?"
I opened my mouth but nothing came out. Huh? Where was I from? My mind was skittering around like a trapped rat, knowing I knew the answer but all of a sudden I couldn't decide which one: Pennsylvania? New Jersey? Milltown? Somerset? East Brunswick? I was from all of those places; which one did she want to know about? Happily, Stew remembered where we were from without issue, and I seized and echoed his answer. Whew. Until the next question, which stumped me all over again, not to mention the pawing frantically through the glovebox searching for the car registration which we both knew was in there but for some reason, I could not manage to find until she gave up in disgust at my idiocy, handed back the passports and waved us through. THEN I found all the paperwork without issue.
I don't know what happens to me at customs. When they give me that skeptical eyeball. I always have the urge to confess everything I've ever done that was even remotely shady, including the eraser stub I swallowed in second grade which, technically, belonged to my grade school and might have been considered stealing. Bizarre.
The drive up got gorgeous again but my oh my, the folks on that road were speedy. There we were poking along at 70 and being whipped past like we were chugging along in an Edsel. Astonishing. The good part was that they seemed used to passing sightseers like us, so there was no malice, just matter-of-fact zooming at 85 or so. Sigh.
We hit fog and perked up at the moose crossing signs

but there was nary a moose to be found. We did see a beautiful bald eagle back at customs while we were waitingin line though, and that seemed like a good omen.
Then the fog cleared and it got gorgeous.

And we got to the Bay of Fundy, and after seeing the park -- another place I could stay for a longer time -- decided to stay in quaint little Alma, in a motel right on the bay.
This is not the bay, obviously, just a shot I thought was pretty. I have about 900 pictures so I'm trying to weed through and not put anyone to sleep with them.
This is the bay with the tide out, so we tossed our gear into the room, met a gorgeous dog on the way across the lawn

and headed out onto the naked ocean bed. It was really cool -- the wind gusted so hard it made us stagger -- and warm and sunny and all I could think about was the tide coming back in and catching us too far out to make it back to land safely and drowning, because OF COURSE people told us stories of imbecelic tourists who just walked and walked out farther and farther, ignoring the inevitable return of the tide, and drowning. Yikes.
So of course we walked out there.
All of the land you see is underwater when the tide comes in. And while we were out walking and beach combing, the waves kept coming in closer and closer.
It was vast, gorgeous and nerve-wracking, as drowning was not on my list of things to do.
Creeping closer.
Cool stone.
When the tide really started coming in, we left the sea bed and walked up on the dock, where, on our way in, these boats had been sitting on dry land. Now they were floating some.
We went out to eat at a lovely restaurant in town -- Alma is small and just right the way it is -- and later, when it got dark, went back out to the beach because there was a buoy out there and we heard talk of a whale hanging around it. We watched a fishing boat go out and search for it with the floodlights on, and Stew caught sight of it through the binoculars but I didn't see a thing. We also watched two young guys launch kayaks into the kind of rough waves in the almost-complete darkness, and I'm sitting there thinking This is not a bright thing to do at all. The first kid powered through the waves and got pretty far out. The second kid kept being pushed backwards, back on shore by the waves, and finally gave up in disgust or good sense. I'm with the second kid, who enjoyed the evening on dy land.
More coming. (Of course there is more, including a lovely giant rabbit.)