Continuing Acadia Coastal Drive (8-18-2015)

On the move again today.  We left Bathurst about 9:00, and continued on the Acadian Coastal Drive on Hwy 11, which took us around the Acadian Peninsula.  This road is marked with a symbol of a sea star, representative of the sea and a symbol of the Acadian culture.

About 30 miles up the road, we found the Historic Acadien Village, a compilation of houses and shops representing this area in the 1800s and early 1900s, with people in costume in each building to explain the history of it.  That bad news is that it was a mile and a half walk, with lots of homes and shops, and it was hot and humid.  We spent about 3 hours walking it, and it was all very interesting, but we have seen similar villages like this elsewhere, especially Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan.

Village:

The one thing that didn't occur to us was to put on mosquito repellent.  None of us did, and we all got nailed.  Even inside the homes (which were open air) the mosquitos were bad. 

Gardens were in evidence outside several homes, as well as fields of grain and we saw a small field of flax seed planted between two of the homes.  Also farm animals were around:  pigs, white turkeys, cattle, sheep, we didn't see any horses or oxen though. 

Some of the ladies were "working," spinning wool into cotton, flaxseed into linen, and was was knitting a sock.  Many of the homes had spinning wheels set up either in the front room, or in the bedroom if they had bedrooms.  The earlier homes only had one or two rooms, and everyone slept in the same room, usually on the floor -- sometimes there was one bed for the parents, or in one case, the grandparents, and these were pretty large families -- 6-8 kids were pretty common.

And there were all the other typical buildings:  General Store, Church, School, Grist Mill.  Shops included a blacksmith, cobbler and tinsmith.   There were a couple general stores, with some "period" items on display.  One "clerk" told us they would offer credit for essentials, but you couldn't buy dishes on credit because they were not a necessity. 

Something we had not seen before was a Fold-out beggar bed.  This was a long bench in the front room that folded out and had a small bed (probably a straw mattress) inside.  They had this to offer to roaming beggars because there was never anything else to give them -- but a place to sleep and a slice of bread and butter was all the help they could offer, and it was appreciated.


We crossed a covered bridge to cross from the 1800s into the 1900s.  This is where the gas station, hotel, and railway station were, as well as the tinsmith and cobbler.

Once we finished our tour, we fixed a quick lunch in the RVs and headed on around the peninsula.  Today's drive wasn't as interesting as yesterdays, but the road was better, and we were all glad to find our campground.  Our walk in the Village wore us out.  Just before we reached our campground in Lower Newcastle, just outside Miramichi, we had a few raindrops, but it stopped when we went into the office to check in.  Joe stayed out, unhooking our car, and it started pouring, so he ran in and got umbrellas to keep us women dry.  We gave Marilyn one, and he escorted me to the car with his big, manly umbrella.  However, he left me there while he drove the RV to our spot, so I was stranded.  But not to worry, we happened to have ponchos in the glove compartment, so I was able to get back to the RV and remain fairly dry.

 I immediately laid down to take a nap.  Joe waited out the rain, then went out to hook up our services, and even wiped down the car which had gotten a lot of road tar on the front yesterday.  Marilyn came over about 5:45, so we got ready to head into town for pizza (my idea).  She had read in the literature that there was street music here, so we got directions at the pizza shop and drove there to enjoy that for about an hour (until we froze out -- who knew we would need jackets!)  She even got Collins out on the dance floor.  This was all right along the water, so there was a nice view and some shops.

Joe and Collins got ice cream cones to share with us ladies, and there was a gift shop here with some of the sea glass that I have been looking forward to finding.  So I bought a little (very little) pouch of it for $3.00.  You can see from the pen in the picture how big the pouch was.  But at least I have some sea glass if I don't find any on my own.

 

Our final stop was the grocery store, which is always an excursion.  It takes lots of circles inside the store to find everything on our lists, so by the time we got out of there and back to the campground it was almost 9:00.  A long day. Our campground is nice, grassy, right on an inlet of the bay.  We are about 10 miles out of Miramichi.  We only drove 114 miles today, with our 3-hour stop at the Village, but that was enough for today.  We found fuel for $1.095 ($3.316 U.S. I think) so we were glad to see it had dropped a little.  Since you have to convert the price by a multiple of 3.785, a one-cent different adds up quickly.