Arriving Shediac, NB (8/19/2015)

 I took a couple pictures this morning before we left our campground.  The sunrise picture was really full daylight, I must have just gotten in the shade, but it turned out pretty anyway. This was a pretty nice place.
 
This morning we altered our routine a little.  Marilyn had picked out a church in town that she wanted to visit, and Joe had picked out a McDonalds he wanted to visit, so he and I both drove in to McDonalds for breakfast, then the Brundiges came in their RV and parked at McDonalds, and we drove our car to the church, which was not open.  Anyway, by the time we were back at McDonalds and got our car hooked up and were ready to roll, it was 10:20.  We continued on our way along the Acadien Coastal Drive following Hwy 117 from Miramichi, but our roads today did not improve.  In fact, we passed an asphalt roller idle alongside the road, and Joe commented that they should have it out there working; in fact (he said), they should have every piece of road construction in Canada out working on the road we were on.  It was bad, then it got worse, so I guess we shouldn't have complained.

 We stopped for lunch along the shore of the St. Lawrence Bay and Joe and I walked the beach.  And I got to put my toes in the Gulf of St. Lawrence!

 And we found our very first sea glass.  Joe found 3 pieces, and the fourth one he found he showed to me so I could "find it."  But then I finally did find 2-3 pieces on my own.  We ended up with 13 pieces.

But that's not all Joe found.  He came up with lobster trap buoy on the beach, which he carried for a long time, and then he found a nice piece of driftwood that he threw further up on the bank and collected on our way back.  He was quite a sight with his haul.

I, of course, found lots of pretty rocks that I had to collect, and a few shells.  More things to try to store for the return trip.


And Joe also found a lovely, dead crab, which thankfully we left right there on the beach!

We continued on our way into the Kouchibouguac National Park about 1:40 p.m., and that is where the road got worse.  Every few feet was a strip of torn up roadway where they were putting in new culverts.  Then we got to the part where the entire road was torn up and we drove on gravel.  It was all bumpy and very slow going.  We finally cut over to Hwy 11 at Botictouche and the road improved there -- in fact, this is like an interstate so we were able to finally get up to speed.  We ended up in Shediac, the lobster capital of the world. This lobster sculpture is 35 ft long, 16 ft. high and weighs 90 tonnes (I think that is the same as tons). 

We are definitely in lobster country. The picture we took of the lobster traps are vintage, painted up as decoration, but we saw stacks of real ones just  stacked up again garages for the last two days, and we learned today that lobster season has just started again.  When we stopped for lunch, there were lots of lobster boats out not far off the beach, and they started coming in as we were walking back up to the RV.

We are camped right on an inlet or bay, and after we settled in we went for a short drive through town.  That is where we found the statute of the lobster, but we also found Parlee Beach, a very nice sandy beach with the water claimed to be the warmest north of Virginia.  And it was very pleasant to walk in.

We only drove 120 miles today, but we did get a late start and had slow going most of the day.  It was a brisk 61 degrees when I woke up this morning, and it just warmed up into the mid-70s, so it was a very pleasant day.  We had a side wind though, which was a little more work and probably affected our gas mileage some, but we were off the road about 3:45, and glad of it.

There's a Flintstones sign in the campground we are in here in Shediac that I really need.  I think it would look lovely in my yard at home.  (I don't know what it says but I recognize Fred and Wilma, and that's good enough.)