Day 70, 71, 72 - Saint John, New Brunswick & Ellsworth, Maine

Finally some blogs again about where we have been and what we have seen. Sorry but we were staying at campgrounds with no internet for the past week or so.

Day 70 – Drive from Amherst to Saint John, New Brunswick

We again had a night without rain and wind, and sunshine again greeted us when we opened our eyes. After we posted our latest blog we packed up and left for Saint John, New Brunswick.

It was only about 2 1/2 hours driving so we got there around 2 o’clock and we were just in time setting up the trailer in the typical Saint John mist before the rain started again. According to the weather forecast tropical storm Hanna was not supposed to hit this area until Sunday afternoon (tomorrow) so we took the risk and went for a drive north of Saint John. We were going to visit a quilt store (http://www.rivergallery.ca/) which a lady had recommended to us on the ferry back from Newfoundland. This was not your normal kind of store: it was set up in a garage along highway 102 in a rural area kind of out of the way from ‘non local’ traffic. The location is along the beautiful and wide Saint John River which penetrates far into New Brunswick in what seems to be more a set of interconnected lakes. The lady who owns this quilt shop seems nevertheless to have a good business despite the location because she has an online store as well. Besides quilting she also specializes in rug hooking and she is one of the few suppliers for rug hooking materials for this area and for Eastern Canada as a whole. I caught the bug and bought a rug-hooking kit to get myself started in a new hobby (as if I needed a new hobby!).

As we drove away from the coast into the interior the fog cleared into sunshine and we really enjoyed our drive along the Saint John River. So we went further and then stopped in Gagetown, where we had supper outside on the patio of a little restaurant which you would pass by if you were not looking for it. We were the only guests and the food was superb. I would recommend going there if you are in the neighbourhood.

We turned again then for Saint John by further quiet back roads and by the time we got back to our trailer we were back in the fog again and it was time to go to bed, albeit with no pictures for the day apparently.


Day 71 – Saint John, New Brunswick
September 07, 2008

Saint John, New Brunswick (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_John,_New_Brunswick)
Tropical storm Hanna decided to come a little earlier than was predicted and she showed us what the after-life of a Hurricane can be: rain, rain and rain, and some wind. All through the night and morning it came down in buckets, I can’t remember ever having seen and heard this much rain. The whole campground was a swimming pool as the water just did not have enough time to soak into the ground partly because it was pretty saturated already with the previous rains of the last few days and also because this new rain just came down so hard. But one thing was nice: it was not cold. During the night the temperature never seemed to have dropped below 18 degrees Centigrade. Some areas in Saint John flooded and some cars became stuck in water up to their hoods as a result of which some roads were blocked off to traffic. I am sure this storm flooded many basements. All in all the storm exceeded expectations. The forecast had been for from 5 to 8 cm of rain to fall in the Saint John area, but in reality the weather office at the Airport recorded no less than 13.9 cm. That is almost 6 inches in the old imperial measure. When you consider that this represents ¼ of the total annual precipitation for the City of Calgary coming down in an 8 hour period you might get an idea of what an event this was for us.

Luckily the winds had largely subsided in Hanna before she hit Canada and we were only forecast to experience gusts in the range of 60 km per hour (although I am sure we had stronger ones than that at times). This low wind strength was much appreciated as our tent trailer can be buffeted in strong winds and our campsite was relatively open, even though we had chosen to strike down between two large RVs which offered some wind protection from the sides. The north offered some trees not far away, and the south faced to the open parking lot. But Hanna was nice and sent her eye to the east of us, which both lessened the strength of the winds (did I get that right Erik?) and also sent them at us from the north side where those trees offered us the best protection. And fortunately, our tent trailer was superb and did not show any water leakage at all during this storm.

But later in the morning it stopped and we ventured out to do some sight-seeing around the city in the afternoon when we even received some sunshine. We drove around the harbours for a while, visited downtown Saint John and ended up at the Carleton Martello Tower. This is a National Historic Site (http://www.pc.gc.ca/lhn-nhs/nb/carleton/index_E.asp) as we could tell by the signs around the city pointing to how to find it, but we had no inkling of an idea about what the heck it represented. It turned out this was a fortified observation tower built in 1815 on a height above the town as a way to protect Saint John from potential future overland attacks by Americans. I found it a very interesting building as to how it was constructed and how the soldiers’ quarters were set up.

The main floor was one big round room with a massive central pillar, 2 fireplaces and 12 beds set up around the perimeter of this round room. The beds were folding ones so they were folded up in half during the day to give more ‘living’ space and unfolded when they slept. Below this was a lower floor with gunpowder storage and peep holes through which the defenders could fire guns at approaching enemy. The roof originally supported two cannons which could be pointed in any direction, but these were subsequently removed and a new ‘lookout tower’ structure built during the Second World War to offer a high view of the Bay of Fundy, and thus to help defend Saint John harbour.

We had a most knowledgeable staff member explaining the history and workings of the building. Apparently the British were very fond of this type of fortification and built several hundred of them throughout the empire. A few others are to be found in Canada including two in the old city of Quebec. These towers were very strong with their circular construction of walls up to 8 feet thick, a massively thick roof and that central pillar to support it. They were very proof against artillery fire from the old smooth-bore cannons, but the invention of rifled-bore cannons instantly made them obsolete. Fortunately, the Saint John tower was never attacked and hence is superbly well preserved.

From here we went to look for a road which would lead us to a causeway to an island with a lighthouse on it but we got lost as we were trying to find a road that was not there. Instead we ended up on a very nice rocky beach where the tide was just coming in so we got to enjoy surf breaking on rocks again.

I think Leo’s pictures will tell you a bit more and they can be found here.

Day 72 – Drive from Saint John, New Brunswick to Ellsworth, MaineSeptember 08, 2008

Today we will be leaving New Brunswick behind us, a true sign that we are nearing the end of our holiday, as this will bring us closer to home again. We decided to cut across the northeastern United States to get back to Ontario as it is shorter than going the Quebec way. And that is exactly what we were asked at the border going into the States. Other than that they let us in, surprisingly, without any waits or inspection so were nicely surprised as we had heard the stories of the long waits at the border crossings elsewhere.

We stopped at the visitor’s information centre to pick up a map and campground booklet for the State of Maine and off we went on a new adventures. We had not quite decided as to where we wanted to camp the first night so during a picnic lunch we studied the map and picked Ellsworth as our destination. It had 2 campgrounds so we thought we should be able to find a spot in one of them. But our first concern was to find an ATM machine as we had no US money on us and we could not even buy a coffee or ice cream anywhere. Do you know that is cost $2 to use such a machine and then you also have a bank fee on top of that! Serves us right not to stop at a bank to pick up some US money before we crossed the border.

We had chosen a so-called scenic drive but we must have missed it somehow as we really did not see a lot of nice scenery. We saw lots of road construction though as tropical storm Hanna had done her damage here as well and washed out some of the roads in this area, and in particular many sections of road shoulders. We finally arrived at our campground and got a nice, dry spot to set up our trailer. It was 5:30 p.m. local time already and when we tried to pull out one of the sides of our trailer it jammed. A bolt in one of the rollers had come loose and was stuck in the track which prevented it from moving past the end stop as it normally should do. But after much patient fiddling my mechanic, Leo, got it fixed and working again but for a while we were thinking that we would have to use the bed in the car and pull the trailer to a RV repair shop again to have it fixed. This would have been a problem because it is a long drive back to our favourite shop, Hilltop Trailers, in Cape Breton!

We had a simple supper and decided to catch up on our sleep, again. Tomorrow we hope to do some sight-seeing around Acadia National Park on Mount Desert Island: that is, if the weather cooperates. Otherwise we will move on closer to home. Sorry, but the roads again did not allow stopping very much so there are no pictures for today.