Acadia Nat'l Park/Bar Harbor (8/28/2015)

Today was our day to "do" Bar Harbor, Maine, a town I've read about in many books.  The Acadia National Park sort of surrounds Bar Harbor, as well as covering an area at the tip of the inlet just north of the island that Bar Harbor is on.  I woke up early and got some pictures of the lobster boats going out right beside our campsite. 

It was supposed to have gotten down in the 50s last night, but the cloud cover must have kept us a little warmer.  It was 64 when I got up before 6:00 (not adjusted to new time zone yet).  I coaxed Joe out of bed early too, so we got a good start on our busy day.  I checked phone messages just before we got ready to go out the door and found out that we did have to move to a different campsite, so we pulled up stakes and drove up by the office to our new campsite (and away from the water), got reestablished and took off for Winter Harbor, the Schoodic Peninsula, Prospect Harbor and Corea.  Since I didn't have anything to fix for breakfast (I had boiled the rest of my eggs to cross the border (probably unnecessarily), and we had run out of cereal and bagels, we opted to find breakfast on the way.  We found a place in Winter Harbor so we got that taken care of, then headed on our drove to Schoodic Peninsula, where we spent the next hour or so clambering over rocks on this breath-takingly beautiful rocky coast. 

The water was freezing!!!  But it was all very beautiful, and the slabs of rocks made you want to just keep walking over to the next viewpoint.

We even investigated some tidal pools in honor of Bridgette and John.

I finally drug Joe off these rocks (actually, I couldn't see him any more and figured he had fallen between the rocks and broken something, but he was fine and eventually worked his way back to the car).  And we continued on our drive around this part of the Acadia National Park. We passed some scuba divers taking lessons in the shallow water.  I don't know how thick their wetsuits were, but I hope they were pretty warm because that water was really cold.  I read on one of the placards that the water temperature was in the 50s, I'm not sure if that was year-round, but I would have guessed it was 32, (freezing)!

As we came around the point and exited the Park, we came upon the tiny harbor of Wonsqueak Harbor, a picture of which is on a cup I purchased later.  And we passed lots of lobster traps -- we couldn't figure out why they weren't all in the water because the sea was just dotted with different colored buoys marking either lobster traps or crab traps.

.  Joe pulled into a gas station looking for his soda -- not luck, but I did get a photo of "Lobster Joe" here.

"Prospect Harbor is home to the last sardine cannery in the U.S., signified by the iconic "Stinson Man" sign.  The factory is being reborn as a lobster processing facility."  No surprise.

Next up was the Village of Corea.  We drove to this one little wharf that was just loaded down with lobster paraphenalia.  Lobster is big business in this area.

Along the road we found two interesting sights -- a very attractive, wooden woodpecker stuck on a telephone pole, and a huge bird nest, either an eagle or osprey.

We had driven back over to Winter Harbor and picked up a few items at the IGA store, so we stopped back by the RV and dropped them off, paid for another night here, then headed to Bar Harbor.  Along the highway we spotted a little flock of wild turkeys.

The town of Bar Harbor was really hopping when we got there.  Cars lined every street, traffic was barely moving.  We lucked out and found a parking spot right across from a Mexican restaurant, so we had our Mexican fix, then walked through the shops for a little bit.  Then we headed out to drive the Park.  We missed a road to the Sand Beach, and ended up on the one-way loop road for about 10 miles before we could get headed back in the right direction.  Pretty views all along the way.

  We then stopped at the Visitor Center (52 steps), got a parking pass (free with our American the Beautiful cards), and headed to the beach with all of our "stuff" (lawn chairs, binoculars, camera).

Kites are popular along this windy coast, and there were a couple of pretty ones flying here.

Reluctantly, we left the beach.  However, I found a treasure just before I got to the steps -- a piece of authentic sea rope, and 2 little pieces of driftwood.

We continued on our loop drive (again) and went up to the top of Cadillac Mountain, which is only 1,530 feet, but since it is right on the coast, it provides a lovely 360 degree viewpoint of the Atlantic Ocean, the town of Bar Harbor, and lots of little islands.

Joe took a couple of panorama shots up here too.

Picture-postcard-perfect.

And then the camera battery died (and I forgot to charge the extra) so that was the end of the pictures for the day.  We headed out of the Park, stopped for pizza in Ellsworth (I was too tired to mess with cooking or cleaning up), and got back to came about 8:30, worn out from a very good day.  The weather was perfect, sunny, probably in the low 70s but crisp from the sea air.  We will now have a vision of Bar Harbor when we hear anything about this area in the future. 

Side note back to St. John, Joe thinks our "river otters" may have been seals.  He read a sign at the Tidal Falls yesterday that there were seals in the area and they were not close enough for us to see very well, so one or the other.

Crossing Back into U.S. (8/26/2015)

We got another early start this morning to leave St. John, since we got to see both tides yesterday.  We were on the road about 8:30, heading on Hwy. 1 to St. Stephen, then crossed the border and picked up "Coastal 1" in Maine.  As we drove out of the campground, I took a picture of the best moose we saw in Canada; this one lives right here in this park where we are camped.

As we crossed the River in Saint John, we saw a Carnival cruise ship in port, Splendor we think was the name of it.

It started sprinkling just as we were leaving the campground, and then set in and rained just about all day.  We were going to stop and fuel just before we left Canada to use the last of our Canadian cash, but it was raining and just nasty outside, so we just kept going.  We even had the heater on in the RV.  It stayed in the 60s all day.

We got to the border crossing about 10:15 (9:15 Eastern time).  We didn't have any problems crossing the border, although the guard did board the RV, asked us some questions and looked in the refrigerator and back in the bedroom.  Took about 5 minutes.  I think he just wanted to come in out of the rain.


As we drove through the little town of Mathais, Joe spotted twin waterfalls on his side, so he pulled into a parking lot for us to take a better look.  We were actually looking for a soda stop, but he never found that.  We did see a few other small "roadside" waterfalls along the way, I'm sure due to the rain.

We found a campground about 25 miles from Bar Harbor, right on Frenchman Bay.  We pulled in there at 12:10 EST, got set up, and were in for the afternoon.  Or at least for a while.  I got caught up on the computer now that we are back in the U.S. and I can use my hotspot, then I took a nap.  Joe spent the time on his Notebook, checking out the area.  Once I got up from my nap, we took a little drive (of course).  Our campground, Mountainview Campground, is also an antique store, so we walked around in it and talked to her about extending another night.  We may have to change sites, but she was waiting to hear from someone coming in today so we never did find out.

Finally, we left there and headed out for a short drive.  We didn't take Lucille with us (Joe said, "we didn't have out get out of jail free card with us") so we only went about 10-15 miles in each direction.  We drove back one road that said "Tidal Falls," but I think it was another one of those reversing rapids areas.  We did see some river otters again. 

We also walked the rocky beach, looking for seaglass.   No seaglass, but I picked up another couple of rocks and a few seashells.

 It was misty rainy and very foggy.  On the way back, we stopped at Tracy's Seafood, right next to the campground, for some chowder for dinner (seafood for Joe, corn for me), and by the time we got back to the RV it was so foggy on the Bay that we could hardly see the water.  We were in for the night this time.  Joe defrosted the refrigerator, and I started on this blog.  We may have to turn the furnace on tonight, it's supposed to get down in the 50s.

We are glad to be back in the U.S., where our $$ works, gas comes in gallons, not Liters, and our phones are back to full use.  But Canada was good, and we saw a lot of very interesting places and things.  We enjoyed it and are very happy that we made the trip.

Back to New Brunswick (8/25/2015)

We had a bit of a slow start again this morning, Joe wasn't ready to get up at 7:30, so I took the opportunity to walk the beach again.  Still no sea glass, but I found 2 more rocks I needed.  And I checked to make sure Joe's addition to the cairn survived the night.

I really like this campground.  There is something pretty special about camping at "Seafoam Campground" in a town named "Seafoam."   There are a lot of "seasonals" in here, and the ones on the front row have quite a view.

We got on the road about 9:30, finishing this coastal drive, heading into Amherst, then crossing back into New Brunswick about 11:30.  I did see another eagle this morning.  We had camped one kilometer from a lavendar farm that I thought we might go back to, but it didn't open until 10:00, and we were on our way by then so we missed it.  We skirted around Moncton on Hwy. 2, then picked up Hwy. 1 into Saint John, where we spent the night.  Our destination here was the Reversing Rapids, aka Reversing Falls.  There was a tidal chart in the many brochures we've picked up, and when I found out low tide was at 2:21, we picked up our speed a bit and headed straight for the viewing area for this.  We arrived about 20 minutes late, but we watched the water in the St. John River continue to drain into the bay here.

  Joe had a rock he was using to measuring the changing tide as the water flowed out to the bay.

They offered boat rides on the river, and we watched one circle close to the whirlpools.  We talked to someone later who was on this particular boat, and she said it was a really good tour, and the narrator gave a lot of good information.

We walked across the bridge and viewed the River from the other side.  They had the bridge all torn up so we couldn't see upriver very well, but we stayed about 1 1/2 hours and watched the whirlpools form as the water continued to recede.

We left here and drove to the campground to get checked in.  It was about 4:00 by now, but we had actually gotten to the river about 2:45.  After we got things set up, we went for a drive, first down to the City Market, and then around the harbor where we found 2 ships in port and 3 offshore, either waiting for high tide or for room in the harbor since there were already two ships in.

We stopped back by the RV for a bite to eat, then headed back to the River to watch high tide.  We got there about a hour before high tide, so again Joe kept an eye on his rock.

We also saw some river otters cavorting in the water.  But now, the water that was dumping into the bay heading east when we were here at 3:00, was now heading upriver west or north.  The water level was rapidly moving up on the rock.  I wouldn't call them "reversing falls," but the rapids we had seen at low tide had either disappeared or the water was crashing over them heading the opposite direction.  Quite an amazing phenomonon!  Maybe when the tides are higher at full moon, it is more of a falls than a rapids.

The big rock is almost completely submerged now.

There was another viewing area upriver that we drove over to and watched the tide slow, but we didn't wait around for it to actually stop or reverse.  There were 4 small fishing boats over in front of a paper mill right here at these rapids, and we saw the river otters again, this time chasing fish.

 

One of the locals said that would take another hour or so, and it was pretty chilly out there by now.  So we called it a night and headed back to camp.We caught the sunset here, very pretty.

If all goes well, we should cross the border back into the U.S. tomorrow morning.

Cabot Trail - Day 2 (8/25/2015)

It is now 9:00 a.m. and Joe hasn't made a peep.  We had decided we might push the check-out time and have a sleep-in day, so it looks like that is working for him.  Actually, I woke him up at 10:00 a.m., so we got a late start this morning (11:10), to finish our Cabot Trail drive.  Today we did mountains.  Way, way up, then way, way down.  And we had some fog to begin the day.

We passed a few little waterfalls on this drive through the mountains.

And stopped at one viewing point above a pretty little coastal town.

Here, we saw some wildlife -- our first eagle of the trip.

It actually flew pretty low right over our RV, but I couldn't find it in the camera quick enough to snap a picture. 

We have been seeing lobster traps all week, sometimes stacked pretty high.  I finally got a picture of a few out by the road.

We came off the island and back across the Canso Causeway about 3:00.  We had been looking for a lunch and fuel stop since about 1:00 but could never find a place to park at either, so Joe just kept driving.  We fueled at Auld's Cove, just across the causeway, and had a late lunch here.  Joe decided to check the oil in the RV too, since it had hard pulls today, so that stop took a little over an hour, but we had a nice lunch.

However, just as we got to the causeway, we spotted more wildlife -- a red fox!  Things are looking up (but still no moose).  And just before we stopped for the day, Joe also spotted 2 deer (a momma doe and her fawn) too, so this was our best wildlife day of the trip, I think.

We had watched a dark cloud for a while, and it finally started raining on us, and it rained until just before we stopped for the day at -- are you ready for this -- Seafoam, Nova Scotia.  And the campground is Seafoam Campground.  And it is right on the sea!  It was after 6:00 before we quit driving for the day, and we had the full gambit of weather -- fog, clouds, rain, and finally sun -- just no snow.

 As soon as we got checked in and set up, we put on our rubber shoes and walked down to the sea.  The water was cold at first, but we quickly got used to it.  I picked up a few more rocks, but we couldn't find any seaglass.  Joe found a cairn on top of one of the big rocks, and decided to add to it.

We both walked the rocks, but he actually fell in, halfway. 

It was great just getting to walk the beach, look at the views, and watch some kids on an air mattress (hope it dries by bedtime).

There was even a place to wash the sand off our feet!

This is a lovely, well-kept campground, with tent sites right on the bank above the water.  A nice play area and playground for the kids.  And they sell ice cream at the office! We walked up to the office for ice cream cones (that was our dinner) and saw a beautiful sunset!  What a nice end to the day.