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Our impressions today have to be about the Confederation Bridge that links New Brunswick to Prince Edward Island.  We left PEI today and crossed the longest ice water bridge in the world, at eight miles long.  That is an unbelievable man- made structure, a very nice two lane highway that goes up and over the Strait of Northumberland.  I can’t imagine how they possibly got all the supports into the ocean for eight miles.  Jan took lots of pictures as we approached and crossed, and now we are in Moncton, New Brunswick, again.  We drive across N.B. tomorrow and camp near the American border. 

We leave with fond memories of beautiful and charming Prince Edward Island.  It was raining when we arrived and when we left, but, in between, we enjoyed the landscape of pine, birch, spruce, fir, and maple trees.  It is so beautiful it looks like a landscape architect designed the whole island!  I did have to get out and jog through the maple trees, so that Jan could say that she saw the sap running in the maple trees in Canada!  The dairy farms, the shoreline, the little highways, the oyster farms, the white farm houses, the lakes, the valleys, and Anne of Green Gables, well, it’s a great place.  The intrusion of big government and the exchange rate are annoyances to every day living, but that doesn’t detract from the natural beauty of the place.  We took the Northumberland Ferries over and the Confederation bridge back, and we’re glad we were able to spend a few days there. 

Prince Edward Island is certainly one of the most beautiful islands in the world.  Today we drove a portion of the southern coastal drive and ended up in Charlottetown for an appointment with a vet clinic for Pepper and then a nice dinner at Merchantman Pub, an award winning restaurant in Charlottetown that specializes in fresh fish and has a wonderful chef.  While we were eating our fish, the heavens opened, and we had such a thunderstorm that the streets in downtown were quickly flooded, and the hotel down the street was sandbagging around their basement parking lot.  We drove back across the island to our park, and it hadn’t rained at all on the north side of the island. 

It’s hard to accurately capture the essence of PEI.  All of the houses and structures are perfectly maintained with huge yards, all perfectly cut.  There is a lot of pride in keeping everything looking perfect.  Most of the houses are craftsmen in style and painted white, set back from the highway.  It reminds me of the Dutch community of Lynden in Washington where they take such pride in the appearance of the community, and all properties are beautifully maintained.  Certainly they have much pride in their heritage and history here.

While the properties are beautiful, the affect of government and the attitude of the locals is a little different.  The price of milk is three times what it is in the U.S., because the government is involved in setting quotas and dictating  price and production.  It’s a management system that smacks of the heavy hand of government intervention, and it translates into ridiculous prices for a basic commodity of daily living.  Their taxes are are well over 50%, and then they think certain benefits are “free.”  We don’t like that we have been consistently cheated on the exchange of dollars, and they claim the computer cash register dictates a certain exchange rate that is about half the going exchange rate of 15%.  Who can argue with the computer?  Gas is four dollars a gallon, and that’s if you find a lower priced station.  So, while this is beautiful country, the culture isn’t that beautiful, and we will welcome getting back to the U.S.  We leave PEI tomorrow and make our way back through New Brunswick, across the Confederation Bridge, which is 13 kilometres (8 miles) long (the longest ice water bridge in the world).  While you are enjoying the Fourth of July in the greatest nation on earth, we will be on a Canadian highway.  Have a wonderful Birthday Party in the greatest nation on God’s green earth.

We looped through PEI National Park today; it’s mainly a narrow strip of the beach along the north side of the Island.  Today is Canada Day (142nd birthday), so admission was free.  The shoreline on the island is what we would call in Washington a “low bank” shoreline; you might see a huge wheat field run right up to the water.  Prince Edward Island has beautiful rolling fields and has been called “Canada’s million acre garden.”  It does have a lot of fields in agriculture, but even they are just idyllically beautiful.  You see meadows, rolling hills, beautiful lakes, picturesque valleys and white farm houses, and everything laid out in the most beautiful way.  Then the shoreline is the same collection of beautiful small fishing villages, and we will have some photos on line. 

Finding all the little home grown specialty shops and businesses is like a huge scavenger hunt on the island.  We went from the national park to finding businesses of interest in various small towns: goat milk soap, gouda cheese, PEI Preserve Company, and there are many other small business enterprises to be found all over the island. We picked up some fresh potatoes and strawberries along the road. Plus, it’s beautiful just driving around.  Tonight we drove into Charlottetown to see the musical, “Anne of Green Gables: The Musical” which has been running for 45 years and has been seen by 2.25 million people.  It was very professionally done with actors from all over Canada who have impressive acting credits.  Then we stopped for Cow’s Homemade Ice Cream before heading back across the island at night. 

We are camped in the Green Gables part of the island, because we’re just a mile or so from that original house (great story, but don’t plan to visit the house, which is a little too touristy for us).  Things are expensive in Canada.  Milk here is six dollars a gallon, gas over four dollars, and everything, just ordinary things in the U.S., are top dollar.  Plus, they don’t usually offer to give a fair exchange for the value of the dollar, so we have to overlook a lot of little things to be the nice tourist.   On the other hand, it’s just an amazing feeling to know we’re on a beautiful island in the middle of the Gulf of St. Lawrence.  They get a LOT of tourists here.  The family on one side of us is from Newfoundland and on the other side is up from Florida. 

We have just arrived at the third of Canada’s maritime provinces, Prince Edward Island.  We left Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, with their flag in our window, having had it presented to us by our friends in the campground, the Cape Bretoners.  They seemed to think it was pretty special for us to drive 5500 miles to visit Cape Breton and have fun talking to them as well.  And, it was fun to hear their accents, but their laughter sounds just like ours.  This morning was the first day we drove west on this entire trip!  We are heading back, but we detoured up to P.E.I. first by putting the RV on the Northumberland Ferries to cross the Northumberland Strait.  They don’t charge to get on the island - just to get off.  The way they put it is you have to pay “if you decide not to stay!”  So, we wanted to take the 75 minute ferry ride over and then we will drive over the Confederation Bridge (and pay) to get back to New Brunswick. 

It has been a very wet and stormy day, and the crossing was a little rough, but we had live entertainment to enjoy.  A musician played his guitar and fiddle as part of the “music on deck” program for the ferries (or, in this case, inside and out of the rain).  He was good!  They are great fiddlers up here; lots of Scotch, Celtic, Irish, and other great combinations.  The musician was Scotch-Irish.  He said, “Half of me wants to get drunk, and the other half doesn’t want to pay for it!”  After getting off the ferry, we drove across the island to the north shore, and we are camped in a very nice campground on the Gulf of St. Lawrence.  Charlottetown, the capital, is in the middle of Prince Edward Island, and we are north, at Cavendish, along the coast. 

We will explore and drive the Prince Edward Island National Park, which is along the north coast here, and we’ll probably drive more of the coast to see lighthouses (there are fifty), see some of the stuff about Anne of Green Gables, and pick up some of the fresh produce.  This island has a lot of farmland to go with all the water on the island and around us. It has a population of 140,000 with about 40,000 in Charlottetown, so it doesn’t have the big, busy metropolitan feeling I expected, which is nice. It’s small and rural.  This entire stay in these three provinces of Canada has felt like we are stuck in the 80’s.  Everything seems so dated and old fashioned, including peoples’ attitudes.  It’s as if time has passed them by here, and they haven’t modernized in lots of ways (and don’t want to) that we take for granted in the U.S.  We have gotten up close to the local culture, and it is very local.  Charming, simple, and old fashioned but a little out of touch with the modern world.  

Part of that, I think, is the economy.  That, too, has passed them.  The fishing industry has totally collapsed except for small fishing for lobsters and clams.  The coal mines have closed, and they get their coal from the U.S.  The next generation leaves home to find careers in the big cities or in the oil sands of Canada.  These provinces are charming and full of tourists, but they are like some small towns in the U.S. that have depopulated with just the older generation surviving on the land.  Quaint, but sad in a way.  The older traditions are kept alive and are even more meaningful to the locals to make sense of a crazy world.  Like a famous pottery maker in North Carolina said to me, in the middle of making his pots, “This is a crazy world.”  I don’t know exactly what he meant by that, but these people must feel like the tide has gone out and left them stranded, and they are comfortable staying with what they know and understand, but, perhaps they feel they are missing something, like the opportunity to make a choice.  It’s covered over in the culture by a great sense of humor and self deprecation, but, under it all lies a sense of plaintiveness. 

We are sitting out one more day in misty Cape Breton.  I think for each nice day, they get weather for two!  We are cleaning up and getting ready to move over to Prince Edward Island tomorrow, by ferry.  It is gray, overcast, foggy and misty.  We are working hard to keep the fleas and ticks off Pepper, with special baths, meds, shots, the works.  The Cape Bretoners are very friendly, and we can understand MOST of what they say.  If not, just nod and laugh, and they’re good with that.  In the meantime, the purple lupines are everywhere, and the lighthouses are all along the coast for those who want to see them, but it won’t be us today.

We started early for the John Cabot Trail, which is one of the most beautiful drives in the world, that loops around and through Cape Breton Highlands National Park. We encountered a lot of fog in the morning, so we have a variety of photos, but be sure to check out the album from this trip. The drive is 300 kilometres, and it took six and a half hours; it is spectacular, from sea level to mountain drives around the northeast portion of Cape Breton. It was not disappointing. A drive like that reminds us that planet Earth has some unbelievably beautiful areas. This corner of Cape Breton is a wonderful conclusion to traveling from one corner of the continent to the other. From Olympic National Park in the corner of the Pacific Northwest to Cape Breton Highlands National Park in the northeast corner of Nova Scotia, and all the national parks in between, this is one beautiful continent.

On another note, we are in a nice family campground, with kids all over, friends partying, a live band tonight, and surrounded by Cape Bretoners. They regard themselves as Cape Bretoners first and Canadians second, moose are called “swamp donkeys,” and they pronounce Bretoners as “Brighteners”! They aren’t fond of “mainlanders,” and are proud of their heritage as islanders first. Nova Scotia is an island, connected by a causeway to New Brunswick, and, as far as the islanders are concerned, they would be happy to see the causeway cut in half and be allowed to drift off on their own away from Canada! They feel if the French Canadians can talk about secession, so can Nova Scotia!

We are at the end of the line at Cape Breton in Nova Scotia.  The weather is fine, if a little humid being surrounded by ocean.  There is lots of beautiful water, hills, valleys, coves, and mild climate.  Tomorrow should be perfect for driving the John Cabot Trail (named after Giovanni Caboto, an Italian explorer who touched on these shores in 1497) which loops around and through Cape Breton Highlands National Park.  For now, we are in a campground in Baddeck, Nova Scotia, a good point from which to travel the Trail and visit the little town of Baddeck.  Baddeck was the home of Alexander Graham Bell, and we visited the Bell Museum this afternoon. 

Yesterday was a long drive across Nova Scotia; it was very quiet, and the occasional license plates read: “Nova Scotia, Canada’s Ocean Playground.”  I’m sitting at a picnic table where the WiFi signal is stronger and enjoying the light ocean breeze and the Acadian accents!  Our neighbor just locked herself out of her beautiful fifth wheel, so they are taking her window apart to get inside!  Her accent just got a little stronger with quite a bit more emotion!

Oh, yes, the sun is out in New Brunswick!  We missed Costco so much, we had to take a day and go to Costco and WalMart here in Moncton.  Time to restock before we head to Nova Scotia tomorrow.   

Today was all about the Bay of Fundy, along the coast of New Brunswick.  From Monckton, we took Hwy 114 to Cape Hopewell to see the The Rocks.  There are a number of beautiful rocks that can be viewed at both high tide and low tide from platforms built out for that purpose.  The coast is a vertical rock wall one hundred feet straight up, so it’s impossible to see this beautiful coastline any other way unless in a boat, and we haven’t seen coastline like this.  It is very photographic.  Then we moved on down the coast to Cape Enrage where there is an old lighthouse still working at the tip of the Cape.  And, finally, we ended our tour of the coast at Fundy National Park. 

The Bay of Fundy has the highest tide in the world, at up to forty feet.  One can walk along the “bottom of the ocean” and be forty feet under a few hours later!  (The tide surprises some people, and they have to swim for it or worse!)  One hundred billion tons of water flush in and out of the Bay of Fundy twice every 25 hours!  That’s more water than all the rivers on the planet put together!  The Bay is one of the most awesome and interesting marine areas in the world.  We drove along about sixty miles of it, taking in the rocks, lighthouses, cliffs, coves, and capes.  New Brunswick is very beautiful, from the farmlands and rolling hills to the heavy forests, and everything is green.  We took a lot of photos today, and I think we got some good ones, because the scenery provided the rich material!

We left Bar Harbor, Maine, this morning and made our way up Hwy 1 along the Maine coast, enjoying some water views but not enjoying bumpy sections of highway.  We crossed the 45th parallel, and we are now closer to the North Pole than the equator.  We crossed into New Brunswick at Calais and drove up to Monckton, N.B., near the Bay of Fundy.  We will spend at least a day checking out the Bay, which has the largest tides (40′) in the world.

Along the way, a good sized moose crossed the highway just ahead of a long haul truck ahead of us.  We admire speed combined with grace and strength in America.  Think football tailback, Indy 500, running, skiing, drag racing, you name it.  We love to see speed in all its forms and evaluate the measures of coordination, grace, strength, endurance, etc., that accompany it.  So when I saw a bull moose trot across the highway at a steady clip just ahead of a long haul truck ahead of us, I had one foot on the brake, not knowing what the truck was going to do, but not to worry.  It was a beautiful combination of steady and amazing speed combined with a grace you look for in the great athletic events!  The hooves and long legs flashed along, and the back and head didn’t move any direction except straight ahead.  It was steadier than a horse with no wasted motion.  It had to be going around thirty miles per hour, not top speed but just enough to cross the highway in between long haulers without being road kill and without expending huge energy.  It was a green machine, fuel efficient, all parts working together in a display of perfect coordination and grace.  (Jan was so worried about the trucker’s reaction, that she couldn’t move!  Consequently, no photos!)  So, why did he cross the road?  Because he’s a bull moose, he’s in his playing field,  the highway cuts across his own back yard, and what a bull moose wants, he gets! 

We are visiting the three Canadian Maritime Provinces: New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island.  The big attraction in New Brunswick is the Bay of Fundy, then we will visit Cape Breton Highlands National Park in Nova Scotia, and then we will visit beautiful Prince Edward Island.  Of course, when we get to Cape Breton, we will run out of continent, so it will be time to turn around and head back!