Summer 2019 Road Trip Canadian Maritime Provinces

 Oh how I love the Maritime Provinces!  They are seriously magical.  Everything I’d ever heard and expected to see was there.  Such an amazing part of our world!  So amazing I felt they deserved their own post, and as Paul and the kids are at the new Spiderman movie as a treat to them for putting up with all my nature stops, I have some time to myself where I can hear myself think without noisy kids butting in and the trailer constantly rocking from 6 big, moving bodies.  It’s a bit too quiet though, I’m used to everyone being around!

Before we arrived in Canada we had a hiccup in the planning.  Without double-checking the itinerary, we thought we had one less day there than we actually had.  So we stayed in Amherst, Nova Scotia which was kind of centrally located so we could hit a few things as fast as possible.  I think it was the night of the first full day there we realized our mistake, that we actually had another full day in Canada before we needed to return to the US.  So that changed things up a bit and gave us some breathing room. 

The first full day there was my birthday.  I’ve had some pretty good ones but this may have been my favorite so far.  We started the sightseeing in Lunenburg, a UNESCO World Heritage site due to the fact that a large portion of the city is still the original buildings from the early 1700’s.  It was a pretty city but I think the best part was the feel of how old it is.  As we drove down the very narrow streets with the windows down we decided it smelled old.  Like your grandma’s house.  Seriously.  It was pretty neat.  We followed the jagged coast east along the Atlantic Ocean.  The small fishing towns were amazing!  They were so picturesque!  Some were more contemporary with yachts moored in the harbor and gorgeous homes along the banks, while others were frozen in time and everything I was hoping to experience.  One of the more modern towns was Chester.  I was ready to drop everything and move there right then and there.  I seriously would love to retire there.  Or at least summer there.  Unbelievable!  Such a gorgeous place.  And then we got to Peggy’s Cove, the small village completely frozen in time.  The only thing missing was the old fisherman in his sweater smoking a pipe.  The lighthouse setting was so gorgeous and the weather was beautiful and it will probably forever be one of my favorite memories.  The fog started rolling in as we were leaving and even that added to how wonderful it was.  Such a great place!  Nova Scotia is amazing!  After Peggy’s Cove we went to Halifax, the capital city.  We felt so comfortable there.  The people all over Canada were so nice and respectful and kind and the city felt like that too.  We got in free to the Atlantic Maritime Museum because it was going to close in 45 minutes, and we were able to see the Titanic display.  The dead were brought to Halifax because it was the closest large port to the disaster.  The search and salvage operations were also centered there.  That was a sobering display, as they had pieces of the ship that sailors fished out of the sea, and also a little boy’s shoes. He didn’t survive.  We walked around on the waterfront and found a food court where I had poutine for my birthday dinner!  It was actually pretty good.  Fries and cheese curds covered in gravy.  Yum!  We topped it off with Beaver Tails, or as we know it, elephant ears.  We found the Halifax temple, which we had originally planned to do a session in before got our timing mixed up.  It was still nice to see from the outside.  Like I said earlier, definitely one of my favorite birthdays. 

 

Sunday we went to church at the branch in Amherst.  It was so good!  We were all squished into a room the size of the relief society room at home and we had to split up to find seats but what a service!  It was such a great experience to attend church outside of the country and have it be the same.  But it was so different in ways too.  It was just a very uplifting experience and we all walked out of there with huge grins on our faces.  What a blessing that was for our family.

After church we headed to Prince Edward Island to complete the Maritime Province trifecta.  PEI was beautiful red, rolling fields of potatoes!  I had no idea that’s what it would be like.  We headed all the way north to the PEI National Park in Cavendish to find a nice beach for the kids to actually swim.  We had made plenty of 2 second stops all along our route before, but never took the time to really swim.  It was amazing!  I even changed into my suit and was in the ocean for almost 2 hours.  The water was great and the weather was just warm enough that it was a perfect mix.  So crazy that we were swimming in the North Atlantic!  That was a great day too.  Though I’m convinced all days are great in Canada.  Though we never did see a moose the entire time.  So disappointing!  How do you travel all over Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, and Canada and never see a moose!?  We finished the day in Charlottetown, the capital, where we finally tried some lobster and had one more Beaver Tail for good measure.  Good times!

Monday the 8^th was Darcy’s birthday and unfortunately, it was mostly just going to be a very long driving day.  We did, however, see the Hopewell Rocks on the Bay of Fundy in New Brunswick.  The highest tides in the world happen there.  It’s a 40 foot swing from high to low tide!  We were there at exactly low tide because I didn’t want to miss a thing, and we were able to walk on the sea floor and find little hermit crabs everywhere.  That’s about all the life we found because I think it gets too dry off and on for anything else to survive.  Bree was having a field day teaching us about the plant and animal life because she just finished a huge ocean life lesson at the end of the school year.  She was our guide and totally in charge!  Love that girl.  We walked around a bit and got our shoes muddy but I thought it was a beautiful place.  The water pretty much hits the tree line at full tide.  We didn’t stick around to see the tide rush in but someday when I’m at my summer home in Chester I’ll make the drive over to see it from empty to full.  That’s a promise!  After that we high-tailed it to Augusta, Maine for the night.  It was hard to leave Canada.  And I mean that figuratively and literally.  We were stopped at the border crossing and they searched our trailer and gave us a warning because I forgot about the tomatoes in the fridge so I never mentioned we had them.  Sorry!  We have tickets to the White House next week and I hope we aren’t flagged now for getting stopped at the border.  They may not let us in!  For dinner that night Darcy chose McDonalds (gross) and she got a chocolate milkshake while the rest of us went without a treat.  Happy Birthday Darce!  She actually celebrated her birthday at home on June 8^th and got a bunch of gifts so she really had 2 birthdays but she was still disgruntled that we didn’t throw another surprise party or something for her.  Oh its tough to be 11!

 

 

So I would go back to Eastern Canada in a heartbeat.  Throw in Newfoundland next time.  And there was so much more to see and do, especially in Nova Scotia, that I can’t wait to go back.  Paul felt that New Brunswick overstated its beauty though.  To be fair, we mostly were on the freeway in NB except for the Bay of Fundy, which wasn’t as accessible as the brochures and websites lead you to believe.  It was mostly forested, rolling hills.  Pretty tough on the Expedition some of us have named Han (Chewy was our last vehicle).  Others call him Max.  For some reason we can’t come up with a good name yet and we’re over a year into owning him!  What I do know is that he had hauled us around 5984 miles by the eastern-most part of our trip.  My guess is we’ll break 12,000 miles by the time we get home.  That’s a lot of togetherness!

Things I have learned this week:

. 1.  Taco Bells are few and far between in “The Maritime.”  (I sound like a local!)

  2.    You have to be really good at Pictionary to follow the road signs in Nova Scotia.  They never say anything, just pictures.  Like a weird long black thing with a yellow background that I think was to warn us of bumps in the road?  Which really, their touristy roads on the coast felt like one huge, long, bumpy, road system.  It was pretty awful.  The freeways in all 3 provinces were wonderfully smooth though.  And who knew there were freeways there!?  I guess I didn’t give them enough credit for being contemporary before I got there.  Preconceived notions were quickly squashed.   There was another sign I never figured out.  It was a tipped square black thing with a red crossed out circle.  No idea what that was for.  And then there was the really shaggy moose and the animal that looked like a leaping cow with dear antlers.  Thankfully we never saw any of those in real life.

.  3.   There are no wild blackberry bushes on the side of the roads in the northeast and Canada.  It was kind of disconcerting once I noticed what was missing.  I guess its nice though, they’re a torment in the Pacific Northwest.  But the northeast makes up for torment in the form of mosquitos.  They are so disgusting and it gives me the willies thinking about them!  They are so vile and they are everywhere!  Darcy counted over 20 bites at one time.  And the grossest part of all is when you kill them and there’s blood everywhere.  Whose blood is all over my hand!?  Who were they just eating!?  SO DISGUSTING!

4.   I could totally live in Nova Scotia.  I will someday.

Erickson Road Trip 2019 Week 3

Week three started with us waking up in Ohio.  Paul, Drew and I had seen the stops on our agenda before, but Drew was only 1 so it was pretty much all new to her.  Also, since she was only 1 last time, we skipped the hikes at Cuyahoga National Park and focused on the Erie Canal locks systems.  This time, since we have grown our hiking legs, we found the amazing Ledges Trail.  It was a 2 mile hike around gorgeous rock formations covered in green moss and algae.  So beautiful!  Its crazy how happy rocks can make me.  Bree, too, as she is constantly picking up rocks from every stop we make to add to her collection.  Its probably ruining our gas mileage!  I got way more out of this park this time around.  Its actually a very nice one to explore.

 

The same day, June 30th, we went to Kirtland to see LDS church history sites.  Once again, we three oldest had already seen the temple but it was nice to see again.  We also saw the Newel K. Whitney store where Joseph Smith lived in the early days of the church and received many revelations.  That was actually way more interesting than I thought it would be.  It was nice to have experienced it.  The temple is gorgeous inside and out, but the feeling just isn't the same walking through there as you get in the active LDS temples.  It is no longer owned by our church but its till a great place to visit as far as church history sites go.   

July 1st found us in New York!  I love the western side of the state!  After our last trip I decided that after seeing all 50 of our great states, the only place I'd choose to live other than Oregon is New York along Lake Erie.  Gorgeous place!  We didn't make it quite that far north this time but we still saw a lot of beautiful NY.  Of course we hit up Niagara Falls, which we had all seen before, but this time we took the Cave of the Winds tour so we could be at the bottom of Bridalveil Falls.  It was so cool!  Literally!  Well, it was hot under our awesome yellow ponchos but once you got hit by the mist, or stood on the Hurricane Deck in the torrential downpour of the falls,  you cooled off a bit.  It took me most of the day to dry out.  We got soaked!  But it was a great way to see the falls.  And we got to keep the ponchos and the cool deck shoes as souveniers.  I'm pretty sure some of us are now using them as shower shoes in all these questionable showers we use in the RV parks. Niagara Falls a place you never get tired of seeing.

 
 

That same day we traveled east to Palmyra to experience even more Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saint sites.  This is where the restoration began.  The Sacred Grove is always a peaceful, spiritual place to visit.  I would love to live nearby and spend all the time I could there.   This go round we were also able to climb Hill Cumorah to see the monument of Moroni.  That was pretty special too.  We also toured the Grandin printing press where the first 5000 copies of the Book of Mormon were printed.  It was cool to see all that went into printing books in the old days.  After a long day we stopped at a mom-and-pop place called Chill and Grill, along with every other Mormon family in the area.  They gave us HUGE amounts of ice cream and we only ordered small!  It was a great way to end the day though.  

 

July 2nd we drove east, as always, and made it across Vermont and half way into New Hampshire.  Both new states for Darcy and Bree which brought them up to 42.  Unfortunately, Vermont wasn't very memorable.  Just a bunch of deciduous trees that are probably gorgeous in the fall but not that amazing right now.  Same with New Hampshire.  Not very memorable but I'm sure sticking to the freeway system doesn't help you catch the real feel of the state.  In 2007 we were in the very north of both states and we found quaint, stereotypical Ichabod Crane towns, but not this trip.  Looks like we'll have to plan another!

A few months before we left on this trip, Paul assigned  us all states to research so we could find all the fun things to do there.  Well, Bree was assigned Maine and she did a thorough job on finding us activities.  She was so excited about her 43rd state that she saved her money along the way so she could purchase a Maine t-shirt.  And she found a great one in Freeport, where we stopped to shop at the flagship L.L. Bean store.  I love the clothes there but they are way expensive so we just browsed.  And got our picture taken with the big boot out in the front of the store.

 
Next up, Acadia National Park!  weeks ago when we realized we'd be in Acadia on the 4th of July we figured we'd watch fireworks in Bar Harbor.  Until I looked into it a few days ago and saw that the Bar Harbor 4th of July celebrations are ranked top 5 in the country!  We weren't sure if we'd get into the city, or out of it after the fireworks were over since its on an island with only one way on and off, so we packed up a ton of food and blankets and everything we thought we'd need for the whole day at Acadia and later that night.  Acadia was stunning, as always.  We got to the top of Cadillac Mountain (the highest peak on the east coast at just around 1.2 thousand feet) early in the morning and the view was spectacular.  We continued on the park loop and made just about every stop we could and spent over 6 hours there.  I love that place.  So many cool rocks to see!  I love the Maine coastline in that area.  And it was the first chance for us to dip our toes in the Atlantic on this trip.  Still pretty cold.  After we left the park we checked out Bar Harbor which was over-crowded and too busy for our tastes.  We couldn't even get to the waterfront to see the nice part of the city so we went back to our campsite and the kids were able to finally swim.  It was 92 on the 4th in Maine!  What!?  I was hoping for some drizzle and 60 degree weather!  I won't really complain but I seriously did not expect that heat in Maine.  That evening we went to the west side of the island to South Harbor to watch the less-touristy fireworks display.  But it was still pretty amazing.  We stood at the harbor looking out at the boats and the fireworks were lit just beyond them.  Pretty cool.  But even neater was the display that happened prior to the real event.  For some reason right next to us in the water they were shooting off a ton of them.  It was noisy and beautiful, thought Drew didn't think so, she's never been a fan of the noise, and then all of a sudden Bree was crying and neither Paul nor I was paying any attention to her because we were enjoying the show.  But I guess when the wind shifted the pieces of the fireworks started to rain down near us.  Or in Bree's case, on her finger!  I think is shocked her more than hurt her but she wasn't thrilled with the entertainment for the rest of the night.  I thought is was great and didn't mind not being in Bar Harbor.  The best part was that the show started at 9!  On the west coast its not dark enough till after 10 so that was a nice treat.  I must be getting old.

 

 

 

 
Today we crossed into New Brunswick, Canada, something I've been waiting for the whole trip!  I've so been looking forward to the next couple of days to see the sites of the maritime provinces in the North Atlantic.  Once again, I'm stunned by the weather.  It was 96 today in Nova Scotia!  I'm so excited to get out tomorrow and explore Nova Scotia and all the things I researched.  I sure hope they are as cool as Bree's L.L. Bean find!

Thing I have learned this week:

1.  Firewood is called "camp wood" in Maine.

2.  Maine towns along the coast reminded me a lot of Astoria, OR.  But the roads aren't nearly as busy.  Except for the 18 minute slow down as the highway was clogged with people trying to get to a tiny little lobster shack in nowhereville.  I'm surprised they haven't come up with a traffic solution for that one.  Needless to say, we didn't stop for lobster rolls.  in fact, we haven't eaten lobster at all yet.  We're not very adventurous with our eating.

3.  There is an Atlantic Time Zone!  I'm in it right now.  Its hard to think that home is 4 hours behind right now.