The Rest of the Trip

This is why we love to travel by RV:
You won't see this from a motel or hotel room unless you're in Denali.


Traveling through the rest of Kentucky and then West Virginia, we stopped for the night in Kanawha State Forest campground. Using the GPS, we managed to find it on the first try. The last time we tried to find it, we missed a sign or two (they are small!) and had to back track. Some of the sites are up on top rises and just a little too steep for our 30-foot RV. The host said the federal government had given them a grant to widen the road all the way from the main highway and had even purchased 37 houses so far to tear down in order to straighten out the road some. The campsites are unique as some are pull-throughs, one to a hill; most are like back-in parking spaces beside the creek which is just about dried up due to the drought.
Leaving the next morning, using the GPS again just to see how it would take us to Mt. Crawford, VA, we were told to exit the interstate, go down the road a while, connect to US 33 east, even though the map showed the fastest way to be by I-64 to Lexington, VA, then north on I-81. After we got past Charleston onto I-64, I turned it back on then she said to get off I-64, go down some other route, then re-enter the same interstate! Needless to say, I turned her off!
The trees are changing colors looking beautiful. Because this area has had a very dry summer, the leaves will probably not last long. Quite a few trees have lost all their leaves already so I guess we're lucky to see some color at all.
I had planned to call some friends who live in Alderson, WV, to check on when they would be returning to FL but my cell phone was dead!! No screen at all; wouldn't take a charge, either. After we got to Luray, I remembered the other phone "reset" itself when I removed the battery, cleaned the contacts, and replaced it then punched a couple keys. Bingo! It now works - but too late to call our friends.

Mammoth Cave National Park Caves

Arriving in Mammoth Cave National Park on a Wednesday, we had no trouble getting a camp site. The next morning we went south to Bowling Green to take the Lost River tour on a flat-bottomed boat. Because of the drought, they had to dam the river to made it deep enough for the boats. We had to kiss our knees so we could go under the ceiling while on the boat to get to the actual cavern.





Just outside the boat loading area was a very large 'shelf' that was used as a night club even though the local politicians outlawed the sale and consumption of alcoholic beverages below street level (they had business interests in the other local night spots). The party goers simply climbed up the stairs to the bar then came back down to dance and socialize.
This cavern site also had a business as a cabin motel during the 20's and 30's and was billed as a honeymoon place. Only one of these cabins is still on the site but cannot be entered for safety issues.
Before returning to Mammoth Park, we stopped at Diamond Cave to take that tour. So many of the formations are white and glittery that's how it got its name.

After looking over the Park information sheets that night, I decided that I would take only two of the ten tours available in the fall; the Gothic Avenue Tour is only available once every Saturday from November 1 – March 18 every year.
The Park was busy with school groups because the area schools were on Fall Break. I did get my two tours, Frozen Niagara and Great Onyx Lantern, when I wanted only because I was first in line when the Visitor Center opened at 8 a.m. Both tours were labeled “easy”.
The Great Onyx Lantern Tour was owned by a Miss Lucy until she sold it to the Park in 1960. She ran a hotel and made some of her guides spend the night so that any visitors arriving during the night could have a tour when they wanted. The original generator-powered lighting system was pulled out by the Park so all tours are now given the way Miss Lucy's guides took her guests through. We rode a bus to the entrance. Again, there are steep stairs twisting around formations and slippery slopes throughout the cavern. One woman had to return to the surface after we got down the first series of steps because she was dizzy. The brochures said not to be pressured by friends and family members to attempt a tour if the idea made you uncomfortable!


This tour required eight lanterns be carried scattered throughout the group in order to see the cave formations. One man insisted on holding his lantern at head height several times even when told by the guide and a visitor not to do so as it blinds others. Others were taking flash photos even though the brochure and the guide said this was not allowed! I had spots in front of my eyes for some time.
The Frozen Niagara Tour information said that it had 12 stairs, including an optional 98 to see the Drapery Room under the Frozen Niagara formation. These stairs were made of steel and went straight down so were easy to navigate. Even though some of the other tours said they were “moderate”, they had an average of 300 to 500 stairs so I don't think I could have gone on them. The Park offers other tours for spelunkers that are “strenuous” and “very strenuous” that I know for sure I wouldn't be able to take!
Because of the White-Nose Syndrome threatening the bats, be prepared to give a list of all caverns entered in the past five years and decontaminating your shoes to help prevent the spread of this disease.
From Thursday through Sunday, we listened as Austin, who was probably 10 or 12 years old, was being berated by his mother for every little infraction. She probably wonders why he's sullen! Unfortunately, they were in a tent, so they were all outside until time to go to bed. Of the five children, he was the only one in trouble for something except for his little sister who didn't hurry enough bringing her mother a damp washcloth.
Before leaving the area, we went to Guntown Mountain Theme Park in Cave City. This was billed as a 'wild west adventure'. We rode the chair lift up the mountain to arrive at the 'town' at the top of the mountain. Several different 'gun fights' were staged during the day. The medicine show as very entertaining as was the dance hall girls presentation. During this show the sound system blew the circuit breaker but they carried on anyway. It also knocked out the snack bar electricity. The country music show was more rock 'n roll than country. The sound system should have been adjusted so that the singers could be heard better; the instrumentals were way too loud and overrode the vocals. This was the last day that Guntown would be open until next spring.

Another Caverns Tour

Although we arrived at Florida Caverns outside Marianna, FL, in plenty of time to take the last cave tour of the day, it was too late to get a camp site for the night. Because Florida is mostly flat land, my thinking was that this cavern would be mostly almost flat, too. I was mistaken! We first walked down a rather steep trail to the entrance, then down some steep steps that twisted around some formations. The rest of the tour was very nice until we had to climb back up those steps in order to get out! When we came out of the cavern, it was by a different path that was very steep! The really great part was that there were only three people on the tour with the ranger.
This park was built by CCC workers in the 1930's.





That night we ended up going about fifteen miles further west on I-10 to get a camp site at Falling Waters State Park. The next day we toured this park looking at sink holes created hundreds of years ago. The waterfall that ended up in one of these sink holes and exiting though a cave was dry because of the drought.



What you're not seeing in the above photo is the waterfall! And this is the sinkhole it would disappear into if it were flowing.

The Step With a Mind of Its Own

Every time we opened the cabin door the step is suppose to come out when the switch is pushed up and retract when the door is closed. It is suppose to stay down when the switch is pushed up even when the door is closed. Frank had done some work on the step changing out some parts. It had been damaged last year when our son borrowed it for a long weekend (it failed to retract when the ignition was turned on). After Frank got it straightened out, more or less, it seemed to work just fine but then it is 15 years old and sits out in the weather.
We would open the door, the step wouldn't come out. I'd jump up and down a few times, Frank would jump out and give it a couple kicks, then it would come out. Some times we would just wait several minutes and it would come out. We decided it was being this way if we didn't retract it before turning on the ignition. Then one time after my jumping and his kicking didn't solve the problem, I gave the sensor a light tap with my foot and out came the step! The next few times it failed to deploy when the door was opened, one of us would tap the sensor, and the step would come out....must be the sensor, afterall!

Oddities

Stuff is expensive in Canada!
Milk is $7.47 gal; butter $4.17 a lb; gas $1 litre (multiply that by 3.8!); canned milk$1.79 ($.75 at Aldi every day); a small head of lettuce is $2.47 (usually $.88 - $1.29 at Aldi); couldn't find radishes;

People are super nice, a little too chatty at times.

Love:
Dollarama stores!
Maple crème cookies!

If you buy stamps at the post office, you will pay 5% tax on them; if you buy them anywhere else, you pay face value with no tax

Frenchy's or Guy's Frenchy's Used Clothing stores – mostly clothes sorted by size and are in large bins, jackets & dresses on hangers

thrift stores are very rare

a package of three 1-litre bags of milk

Mail boxes hanging by a chain or chains from a pole mounted on a 4x4

no-entry-possible front doors - some 3 or 4 feet above ground, one house had 2 stacked doors, even if at ground level they are without a stoop, steps, porch, no overhang or awning.

houses painted middle-of-the-road solid-line yellow or violent violet or royal blue, several houses painted dark purple with bright green trim; one new house had a bright yellow metal roof

On PEI, very few houses older than 1960 – or they are Victorian

In Quebec province, all the fire hydrants have two poles beside them and a tall pole with a yellow sign & hydrant in black shadow (so the snow plows can avoid them?)

Slaw is green: Dixie style is chopped very fine; vinegar I don't want to think about; regular is lime green colored and has pineapple & red pepper in it (it tasted ok but lacked enough celery seeds)

People back out of their driveways right out onto the major highway (think U.S. 1) even though the parking area and/or driveway is large enough to turn around in before getting onto the road.

Quite a few houses and some garages/barns wrapped in Tyvec with lathe nailed over it, some has been on so long that it is in shreds, most has been on more than a couple of years.

Back through Maine, Into VT, NH, NY Because It's Almost Over

June 15, 2010
Our parking space last night turned out to be behind a small shopping mall along the seawall next to the marina. During the night, the wind got up really high and several times it seemed as if it would knock us over. The windows on the sea side were covered with salt spray and this morning the wind is still up with the incoming tide.
After leaving this morning as we were headed toward Riviere-du-loup, we passed several places where crews were repairing the seawall along the highway. We also passed by a new house with a dandelion yellow metal roof.
We again had a time finding the correct route though a town; we saw the sign directing us toward Edmundston, NB, but without a route number, then we saw route directional signs without a clue where they would take us. We finally found it and got on our way. The GPS battery died and I had to shut it down.

June 16, 2010
We headed down the road to Woodstock, NB, to cross the border and get on I-95 without incident (getting off on the wrong road!!). We left I-95 at Newport taking US 2 west traveling through Skowheagan, didn't find the 62-foot wooden Indian said to be on the north side of the road behind a gas station. We ended up getting a campsite outside Stowe, VT, as I wanted to take a tour of Ben & Jerry's and we had gotten there too late.

June 19,2010
Lost a day or two somewhere again!
We took the 15-minute tour of the original Ben & Jerry's ice cream plant outside Waterbury, VT, down the road from the campground, which was a hoot! The tour guide assured us that he was going to milk the history of the company. We mooooved through the small plant after watching a short mooovie about the founders and how the company has grown, there's even a plant in Israel. The ice cream is only sold to retailers in packs of eight of one flavor; only one flavor is made a day, it's only made in half and pint sizes, employees get three pints of their choice every day they work, and the flavor graveyard was at the top of a steep hill.
My favorite 'tombstone'

When we stopped at a Walmart Superstore in Plattsburg, NY, I was surprised at how crowded the parking lot and store were. Turned out that many Canadians shop at that store and the surrounding shopping center about twice a month and that was one of the days. We spent the night at the store in Ticonderoga to get away from the interstate noise only to have a couple long-distance truck drivers ride around the parking lot several times in the middle of the night.
We decided to just take our time getting to Front Royal enjoying the scenery expecting to arrive there Monday around noon.

Cavendish, New Brunswick, Again, and Gaspe

June 9, 2010
Last night about dusk, Frank saw a fat fox run across the grassy parking area we were parked in for the night.
By 7 a,m. we were sitting on a cliff overlooking the Gulf of St. Lawrence watching the fishing boats pulling their nets behind them. Just before 9 a,m. we left to go to the Green Gables complex where it's 'all about Anne' and her creator Lucy Maud Montgomery. I did get some photos of the inside of the house (below is "Anne's" bedroom)

It was modeled after her cousins' home for the “Anne” books. I walked the whole (1 K) Balsam Hollow Trail and understand why she loved those walks in the wooded areas around the site. It's very quiet except for the birds and has several foot bridges back and forth across a stream. Off the trail a short distance, I discovered a beavers' dam.
After lunch we arrived in Summerside to refill the propane tank, the gas tank, and visit another Dollarama, my very favorite Canadian store. After I cleared their shelf of my absolute favorite cookie that can only be found in Canada!, we went across the street to take a look around the County Fair Mall – which was touted as being “a country fair every day!” It had a Zeller (a Target like store), a Sobey grocery store, a medical clinic, and about a dozen small boutiques, and a narrow middle corridor. Nowhere did I see anything that resembled a 'county fair'!
That evening we stopped at the Red Shores at Summerside Raceway where we watched the first five of twelve harness racing events. My first pick came in first by a mile, and my second pick came in dead last after breaking stride about ¾ of the way around the track. Then a driver was thrown and had to be taken to the hospital so we left as it was getting dark anyway. We returned to the Walmart we had seen on the way there to park for the night.

June 10, 2010
After I got fresh bread and eggs, and several other items, we didn't need, we followed Rt. 12 north around the North Cape tip of the island, stopping to visit the Wind Farm Interpretive Centre and the lighthouse. We started noticing that all the churches have huge spires, only a very few had none, three or four had four stubby spike like spires on the four corners of the tower.

This museum is dedicated to the history of the potato and how it changed the lives of the pioneers to PEI. The kitchen where all kinds of potato recipes are shown was closed. I did get a recipe for potato fudge, though. Just on PEI the farmers grow more than a dozen different varieties.

THIS IS MY DOLLHOUSE!!!! Why is it in their museum????
We worked our way around the west side of the island until we arrived at the Potato Museum in O'Leary. As it was getting to be 5 p.m. we headed for the closest provincial park to spend the night. It was getting hot, the wind died down, and the mesquites were swarming.

June 11, 2010
We left the campsite this morning and headed down the road to Cap-Egmont to see the Bottle Houses created by a man during his retirement years, now his son and grandson maintain the buildings.

Then we went on to Summerside again to do laundry and then to the Confederation bridge to get back over to New Brunswick to follow the Acadian Coastal Drive. We stopped at the Irving Eco-Centre, La Dune Bouctouche which has a wooden walkway that snaked along the dunes for miles (so it seemed) and I only managed about a half or maybe a third before turning back.

Planning to stop in Miramichi for the night, I used the GPS to find the place we wanted only to have it tell me to make a left turn then it said, “Make a legal U turn as soon as possible,” taking us right back to where we should have made a right turn like the map said to do; then further down the road it told us to make a right turn on the wrong side of the river! We finally made it to our overnight parking place.

June 12, 2010
While we were sitting in the hardware store parking lot waiting for it to open this morning at 8:30 a.m. (on a Saturday!), a former long-distance truck driver stopped to ask if we needed help thinking we had broken down. Then he tells us that we can park in his yard with full hookups for several days if we would like!
After we got the metal washers and rubber things needed to fix the front end of the RV, we headed on up the road to stop at the Acadian Historical Village outside Caraquet only to find out it didn't open til the next day. Nothing that I saw or read anywhere said that it was only open from June 13th til whenever this year.
We did stop in Bereford to check out the beach boardwalk and it was somewhat disappointing. It's not nearly as long as the one at Bouctouche. Plus the beach is very rocky, littered with broken shells, tree limbs, and sea weed. I think they brought in about three cubic yards of sand to make a 'beach' for children to play on and run in and out of the shallow, waveless water.
Hardly any English is spoken in this area of New Brunswick....we're crossing into Quebec tomorrow morning to tour the Gaspe peninsula and that's about all that's spoken in that province!

June 13, 2010
Spending the night in the Sobey's parking lot in Campbellton, NS, we left at 6 a.m. for Perce to go whale watching. Once we crossed into Quebec province, we noticed a definite difference in the terrain! It suddenly became mountainous with steep hills and many curves to slow us down. We were taking our time anyway.
We arrived in Perce just in time to catch the 1:30 p.m. cruise...in fact the ticket seller called the boat to return to the wharf to pick us up.

Only about twelve people were on the boat, one man in a wheelchair. Off we went into 20 kph winds in a large bass boat! It took about 20 minutes to get about eight miles off shore to start looking for the whales....we were being raced by three or four dolphins just before we caught sight of the first of many whales spotted. Unfortunately, two of the women got sick from the rocking, rolling, and tossing about we did most of the time we were out. Amazingly, I didn't get the least bit sick.

June 14, 2010
Leaving the Fort Ramsey campground this morning, we continued following Rt 132 around the very end of the Gaspe peninsula. We stopped at several picnic areas along the coast to try to spot sea creatures without luck. The scenery is spectacular!! We would top a hill and look down on a picturesque seaside village. We are seeing actual ocean waves again; before the shore line was like the Gulf of Mexico – little or no waves at all, now we can see actual swells.
Around dinner time, we arrived in Matane, and as we had been seeing a restaurant called 'Dixie Lee' in just about every town along the way in the other provinces too, we decided to have dinner there. As luck would have it, not one person in the tiny store we finally found could speak English. It was a fast-food restaurant serving several versions of chicken, seafood, and only pepperoni and cheese pizza or with everything on it so we ordered the everything-on-it pizza which turned out to be pepperoni, cheese, mushrooms, and green peppers! It was really, really good, though.

Prince Edward Island

I just realized I've lost a day somewhere! Maybe I should keep using dates! Although some days are just spent traveling down the road with nothing but beautiful scenery....and the usual horrible road conditions.

June 6
Leaving about the time the sun came up, we picked up the Sunrise Trail in Nova Scotia following the coast line back down the island until we arrived at the Confederation Bridge. This is an eight-mile long two-lane span from New Brunswick to Prince Edward Island. Thank God it was a foggy day so I was unable to see just how far up we were or how long that bridge really was. Fifteen minutes is the average travel time....luckily, traffic was light. We stopped at the Visitors' Centre complex to have a look around and pick up some brochures and a map. We only went a few miles further and found a campsite for the night.

June 7
We were late leaving the campground because of needing to get some laundry done. We then traveled east on Rt 1 then picked up Rt 4 after leaving Charlottetown. We had fresh lobster with baked P.E.I. potato, slaw and a drink for dinner in Montague then spent the night in the parking lot of the Atlantic Super Store.

June 8
My GPS says we are currently 1,918 miles from home.
From Montague we followed the Points East Coastal Drive around the eastern tip of the island. At Souris, we suddenly came upon a detour because the main street was completely torn up for several blocks. We were directly into the parking lot of the Home Store and had to guess where the detour was. We got lost and ended up on a dead end street. Danny lead us out the back way (still unmarked) to our route.
We continued on around the end of the island to Priest Pond where the bridge was completely gone and had another detour! This detour sent us right back to the other side of the island, down to Souris and back across the island to Hermanville, about a 40-mile detour and ended up only about five miles further down the right road.
Feeling we were finally on our way this time, we tried to make up some time but the route was terrible....missed turns, travelling down a road to discover we were on the wrong one, AGAIN!!

The highlight of the day was seeing the little fox bopping down the road in front of us. We stopped, she stopped, and I got some photos.
We finally ended up in Cavendish which is all devoted to 'all things Anne'. After checking out the location of what I wanted to see the next day, we decided to spend the night at the Visitors' Centre parking lot.

Nova Scotia Part 2 - Digby & Peggy's Cove

31 May 2010
The wind started howling early in the evening and continued into the next day. It looked like a strong storm was rolling in but it never rained.
From the tidal chart we could tell that the Fundy Tidal Bore event wouldn't happened until about 2 p.m. We decided to head for South Maitland and the Tidal Bore Interpretive Centre and just look around until then. Again, the GPS couldn't find the address nor the name given in the brochure. Again, because of poor signage, we probably went about 20 miles out of our way before we got onto the correct route to the place. And what a rough, narrow, messed up paved potholes road it was for about 50 miles and the wind was still howling and pushing the RV back and forth. When we arrived, the sign was bland and gave a different name for the place! One day soon, we're going to figure out how to trick the GPS into giving us the correct directions for where we are trying go to without it taking us back into the US or in the opposite direction.
A tidal bore event is when the incoming tide pushes the outgoing river back up the river bed, usually can only be seen where the river is in a narrow channel. Today we noticed a thin, small crest of water coming up the river; as it continued up river, the water level started to rise and continued to rise for about twenty minutes. Several rafts full of people raced along with the crest and stopped under the bridge before heading back down river to the staging area. We saw signs posted warning of coyote activity in the area with instructions on how to avoid an attack. We left a little while later and found a campsite for the night outside Aylesford.

1 June 2010
Today was spent going to Annapolis Royal and trying to locate Fort Royal Habitation 1605 somewhere in the area. After getting directions from two different people about the location of the visitors' centre and getting two different locations, we finally found out that it is called Fort-Royal and Melanson Settlement and are on the same road but two separate places with a third part called Fort Anne in town. We walked around the Melanson Settlement reading the plaques then continued down the road apiece to the fort.


This is similar to the Jamestown Settlement in that it is a complete reconstruction made from records.
Then we decided to drive down Digby Neck to watch for whales (as advertised in the brochures).
We arrived several hours before high tide, said to be the time they travel through this area, and parked beside the car ferry from East Ferry to Tiverton on Long Island. The ferry
went back and forth, mostly carrying pickup trucks, for about two hours as the fog slowly crept in, hiding the small lighthouse on Long Island. High tide was to be around 4 p.m. but we didn't see any whales or seals, just gulls, the ferry boat, and some fishing boats in the harbor.
We returned to Digby to find the Fundy Restaurant to have a seafood dinner...parking on the main thoroughfare where it is located was too tight for our RV so we went to the restaurant recommended by the woman at the visitors' centre. After a great meal and a very friendly waitress, we returned to the visitors' center to park for the night.

June 2, 2010
We found Peggy's Cove just before Halifax and took the detour to view this famous village and lighthouse.

This place was very rocky and I mean boulders every where with almost no grass, narrow winding street, steep hills, to the lighthouse and restaurant & gift shop. After about an hour we continued on to Halifax.
The less said about our attempts to find parking in Halifax....the better. And getting out of town was awful...signage here is terrible and you never know when the route numbers are going to change! We ended up spending the night at the Atlantic Super Store parking lot along with two tour buses, a tractor trailer and another RV, when we took a wrong turn off the 'freeway' and ended up going back the way we had come because we couldn't read the signage in the dark. Even though the signs were lighted, the part where the route numbers were at the top of the sign was in shadow making them hard to see clearly.
The next morning, we traveled up Rt 7/107 and then Rt 211 to the ferry dock (which was closed) not realizing that was the only way to continue onto Rt 316. We had to backtrack about 20 miles and return to Rt 7 to Melrose, using Rt 348 to Country Harbour Cross Roads to get to Rt 316. Still heading east, we took a right onto Rt 16 to Canso to get a campsite. Canso has a sign at the only road in or out saying it was established in 1604! It's clearly a fishing village. Our campsite was on the dockside. The roads getting here were horrible; we think worse than the Alaska Hwy ever was!
We noticed a strange sign while on the 100 series controlled access highways around here: a sign would say “No turn at the intersection” which usually turned out to be a gravel road, sometimes a paved one, which cut across the road.
June 3, 2010
From Canson we traveled up into the Cape Breton highlands stopping in Cheticamp just west of the national park. We had been taking our time getting that far, stopping often just to take advantage of the overlooks along the route. Our first stop was at the Visitors' Center which was closed. Directly behind the building was an arena with a huge parking lot so we spent the night there.

June 4, 2010
Today was spent traveling the Cabot Trail, the highway that loops around the Cape Breton Highlands National Park. This route features many overlooks and grades as steep as 13 percent. We stopped often and I took lots of photos. Near the eastern most point of the park, we saw several patches of snow in the ditch along side the road. We kept seeing signs for whale watching cruises but exited the park realizing we hadn't seen any of the businesses! The one we did see was closed until June 19th.

Are We There Yet??

Once we left I-81 in PA and got on I-84 heading east, the construction nightmares began. For several miles all we saw were the orange and white striped construction barrels in our lane with no workers or equipment in sight. We also had to cross over a long toll bridge while following escort vehicles going very slowing because a crew in a pickup truck in front of them was filling in potholes in the far right lane.
This Paul Bunyan statue was in a small park in front of the civic center just off Main Street in Bangor.
We left Bangor, ME headed down Alt. US 1 to Ellsworth not realizing it was under major reconstruction from the roadbed being regraded to complete realignment with repaving. This was for miles and miles. after lunch we continued on to Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park.
This park was not what we expected: the major scenic twenty-seven mile route was inaccessible because of low height restrictions where the road went under overpasses. Clearly the founders and designers of this park in the early 1900s got exactly what they wanted: no auto traffic. the route is also a one-way ten-foot wide road. We ended up taking the less scenic route following Rt. 3 then returning to Ellsworth thinking we would go north on Alt. US 1 to Calais to cross into Canada.
I attempted to use the new GPS to get us on that route and on our way. It took us almost all the way back to Bangor through all that construction and off onto a short cut to Rt 9 into Calais where we did cross over into Canada. We were instructed to pull over to a covered multilaned area for a search by an inspector.....the RV would not go under it and after the search we had to back out. We continued on to St. Stephens where the GPS instructed us to go around a route that was not showing up on the screen and we found ourselves at a tiny crossing back into the US. About 15 minutes later we had returned to the Calais crossing and got back into Canada and told to turn the GPS off and to stay on that highway to get to Saint John.

We found the Reversing Falls viewing site without a problem as it was well signed. When the tide rolls in, it creates whirlpools and causes the 'falls' to appear to reverse going up river.
Getting back on the road going in the right direction was a biggie! The signs are confusing and took us through downtown crossing over the route we wanted but without on ramps. We took the one we thought would get us on only to find out we were going back southwest. The next exit then carried us way, way down a road without any place to turn around. Finally we were able to see up on the on ramp enough that we could take a left turn and get back on that road and return to Saint John going northeast and Hopewell Rocks.
We traveled to New River Provincial Park to get a camp site for the night. The next day we traveled through Fundy National Park to get to Alma and Hopewell Rocks. We were way too late to get on the beach for low tide but I decided to stroll down to the viewing area just to take a look and some photos at high tide. The steel staircase was about 8 levels down to the ramp onto the beach. By the time I climbed back up, I was so winded I had to take the shuttle up to the parking lot. We decided to return the next day for the low tide event.


Stopping in Alma, we bought a lobster for Frank and a half pound of scallops for me at the Lobster Shack. It was really, really good. I couldn't finish that many scallops so Frank ate a couple.
Our campsite that night was in the only open campground in the National Park not far from Alma, one pump gas station/quick stop. We think the entry pass and campsite of $48 CA is way too much when the provincial park campsite was $22 CA.
We got to Hopewell Rocks just as it opened and walked down to the beach. (photos to be posted later!)
Leaving Hopewell Rocks, and using the GPS, I tried to locate either a RBC or Scotia Bank ATM without success. We got turned around in Moncton, then were able to get onto the correct route to Sackville where both banks had ATMs. Then we were back on the road to Truro, NS, to visit the Glooscap Heritage Centre that closed before we got there so we went on down the road to a private campground where we could not get leveled up as much as we would have liked. So far the weather has been clear but it certainly is cold: down in the 40's at night and only about 65 in the day.
We decided to remove Newfoundland from this trip as that would eliminate a little over a 1,000 miles and a week of time plus it's taking longer to get from one point to another and the price of gas here in Canada is at least $1 more than in the States. Plus taking these side roads is also eating into the mpg.

Off to Nova Scotia & Newfoundland, hopefully!!

We're on the road now headed toward the Atlantic provinces of Canada by way of northern Virginia to see relatives first.
So far: the backup camera screen is way too small (2.5 inches) and occasionally very fuzzy; and the passenger side mirror vibrated off again; the cruise control was not working, even when he tried, tried, and tried yet again over the past three days. Found out it helps to plug it into the thingy under the dash. The mirror is fixed again with the help of his plumber brother. The backup camera is a wireless variety and was borrowed from a neighbor, so we will purchase a hard wired, LARGE screen version when we return from this trip if we can't find one in a store along the way.
Our RV does have a large rear window, and with the help of a magnifier thingy on it, the driver can see out of it. On a hot day, though, we put up a cardboard shield behind the front seats and into the cabover in order to have a/c which blocks the mirror so having a backup camera is a real upgrade and especially nice when the passenger mirror comes loose or falls off.
Except for the first day, the weather has been cool with colder nights. Today can't seem to make up it's mind to be sunny or rainy. My sister's church is suppose to have its annual picnic today at 4 p.m. Or maybe not.