ErnandJan.com

We interrupt this travel narrative with the exciting news that Ted and Jess are expecting a girl in December!  Jessica just had an ultrasound yesterday, and we got the news that it will be …… a girl!  Even better, we were camped in southern New Hampshire so we could visit with Jess’ parents, and we were sitting around the campfire yesterday when they called with the great news!  All four grandparents heard the news together, and we all cheered and wished our kids congratulations as we toasted the first grandchild for all four of us!  It was a wonderful moment.  Jessica has finished her fourth month already.  Almost half over, girl!!  We are tickled, well, pink!

On another note it’s such an unexpected pleasure to stumble into campgrounds in out of the way places that turn out to be perfectly maintained and beautiful.  That’s what we have found in the last two places, both in New Hampshire.  We are spending three days in the Granite State, one day to visit with our good friends, Karen and Jean Guy Gagnon, and two days in the White Mountains.  We are in a beautifully maintained KOA campground next to the White Mountain National Forest, from which come bears into the campground at night.  We’re at 1500 feet, but we will climb to 6288 feet tomorrow to the top of Mount Washington, the most dangerous small mountain in the world with the world’s worst weather and strongest winds.

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This morning we said good bye to Maine and moved down the road to New Hampshire.  We are camped out in the trees in south central N.H. to meet with family tomorrow.  Yesterday we had breakfast with Jan’s second cousin, his wife and little boy, then we took a trolley ride through Portland, and we finished up with a concert downtown. 

Portland is an interesting small city.  It is a peninsula, and the City includes seven islands as well.  The City has ferry funs as part of it’s public transportation.  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is its most famous author.  Can you recite his famous poem that begins with, “Under the spreading chestnut tree, the village smithy stands…?”  As part of the trolley tour we once again visited Portland Head Light, one of the most photographed lighthouses on the east coast.  Maine has over 60 lighthouses, but which state has twice as many? (see answer below *)

The concert last night was at the Merrill Auditorium, and it was by Ernie Haase and Signature Sound.  This gospel quartet is growing in popularity.  They performed at the Grand Ole Opry when we were there, and three thousand screaming fans were on their feet demanding more.  They are unusual for a quartet.  They don’t just stand behind the mikes.  They have a high energy yet inspirational show, and they are very smooth, performing old favorites and a new generation of gospel songs that appeal to all ages.  They work very hard.  Jan and I grew up with gospel ensembles, and they are the best we have ever heard, and we hope they continue to grow their success.  They are on tour and have concerts scheduled all over the country.  They may be coming near you!

(* the answer is, surprise, Michigan!)

Today we had a beautiful day to take a cruise along the Maine coast and Portland harbor.  We saw about seven lighthouses including one of the most photographed, Portland Head Lighthouse, that are in today’s photo album.  The harbor was very interesting.  We cruised past an oil tanker that was offloading crude oil in underground pipes that go all the way to Montreal, over three hundred miles away.  Portland is the second largest oil receiving port in the country.  There were a number of forts, going all the way back to the Revolutionary War, War of 1812, Civil War and both World Wars that were strategically located near the harbor.  The harbor is a real jewel on the Maine coast.   We came back to fish sandwiches on Long Wharf and some time in the eclectic shops along the waterfront.  It’s nice to see a downtown that is very alive and hopping.  It’s a very interesting town!

It was raining when we left and raining when we returned from Canada.  We have relaxed the past two days in Bangor, recharging, and we had a plan to have a scrumptious picnic this afternoon at the lobster shack, but we canceled that plan based on the weather.  I washed the car, and it promptly rained, proving once again that washing the car actually causes it to rain!  Our New England stay has been rained on steadily for the past four weeks.  It’s a lot of fun when camping to be able to lounge outside with the laptops, have a campfire, or play table games on the picnic table, but, oh well!  Tomorrow we move down the Maine coast to Portland for three days, and we have some things planned there.

It is SO GOOD to be back in the United States of America!!  The signage makes sense, the mileage numbers mean what they say, and I never thought I would enjoy seeing a McDonald’s again!  We cruised through customs  at Houlton with expired passports, and all we got was a big WELCOME HOME!  Now that’s our kind of country!  (We’ll get our passports renewed when we get home and are very happy we didn’t have to renew before coming across. We were worried because the rules were toughened on June 1.)  

We are camped about five miles out in the country near Bangor, Maine, at the Pumpkin Patch RV Resort.  It’s so nice, we’ll stay a few days and wash the coach if the weather cooperates before moving south through Maine.  Maybe we’ll look up our favorite lobster pound, since we aren’t that far from Bar Harbor.  Woohoo, we made it to Cape Breton and PEI, and now we’re headed back.  We feel like we’re halfway home and we’re just in Maine.  We have a lot of stops to family and friends on the way back, so it will stay interesting and fun.

We’re across New Brunswick and camped at Woodstock, a few miles from the U.S. border.  It was an easy day for travel across N.B. mostly just dark green forests with some views of the Saint John River. 

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.