Month: July 2011

Made another 500 miles today so should be home sometime tomorrow. Usually I don’t spend a lot of time on the Interstates. I prefer State roads and a more casual drive. In the last three days I have driven more than 1200 miles of interstates and have refined my opinion of them.  When I used to drive them about fifteen years ago they were mostly numbing. To be driving at a constant speed for hours at a time was deadening to the senses.

But I have a different opinion of them now. It seems there are two modes to today’s Interstate. Those who go 50 mph and those that go 80 mph! I think many of those who go the slow way can’t help themselves. They include some pretty old RVs that just can’t climb more than a two percent grade without coming to an almost stop. And then or course the fully loaded semi-truck, which those of us in the mid-section of the country are more than familiar with, also slow going up hills. If you try to go the speed limit in the slow lane there seems to always be one of these guys just ahead of you.

The other lane of the highway is populated by those going mostly 80-85 mph or at least trying to. They seem to almost dare anyone from that slow lane to creep over into “their” lane. When you do that are always about 1.2 inches off your rear bumper trying to intimidate you back to where you came from. When I used to drive regularly on the interstates it wasn’t like this. There were a few crazies that seemed to have a death wish but they soon got pulled over by the many State police cars who patrolled the roads.

That is the biggest difference between years ago and now. I think in my 1200 miles of driving I have only seen two police cars and they were behind stranded motorists. There is just no one out there now to keep the crazies in line and their speeds down.  The funny farm has taken over the interstates! Being a truck driver must be the most stressful job in the world right now.

Before I close this post I want to also make another statement about the past beliefs. I think we all know the statistic about 50% of the U.S. population lives within 50 miles of the coast. I personally evidenced that fact yesterday. There are about six different interstate loops around Boston. I took the one the farthest away from the city. I must have been at least 50 miles from the downtown area. I came into the area in the early afternoon on Friday. Almost as soon as I hit the loop so did about 10,000 other cars we all proceeded down the eight lane wide highway in an astounding 5 mph or less. After two hours of that I finally made it the 30 miles or so to start heading west, away from the coast.  It was still bumper-to-bumper for another two hours or so before it started to thin out.

Having had this experience I am hereby declaring that the 50% of the population can have their 50 miles. I won’t be impinging on their territory anytime again soon..

And the journey goes on….

Here I am banging on the keyboard in Bangor Maine. We made about 500 miles today which is the most for one day on this vacation. Unfortunately I had to do almost all the driving. My wife started feeling poorly yesterday so we cut our time in Nova Scotia short and started heading back this morning. She wants to rest and try to get a good nights sleep and then see how she is in the morning.

We may just make a dash for home from here. It is about 1250 miles and will take about 23 driving hours.  I should be able to do that in a couple of days unless her condition deteriorates. Her condition is not life threatening but it does put a definite damper on any sightseeing. She really wants to go to NYC and see Ground Zero while we are this close but I told her we can do that on another trip if necessary.

Given that her health was not that good when we started it’s almost amazing we have made it as far as we have. But even without this latest event her endurance has continued to go down daily throughout the trip. It might be wise to just call it quits here.

And the journey goes on… or doesn’t…. more on that tomorrow…

Since I had a laid back  few days of letting my wife savor her view I thought I would pen some of my closing thoughts about Canada and the people we have met here.

• Canada has a complicated history – It is hard to believe that Canada was not Canada until almost 1860. Before that they were just a conglomeration of territories. They seemed to only come together because they thought they would be overrun by the United States after their Civil war. In some ways they are much like us in that they seem to be equally divided on many issues not the least of which is the French/English one.
• I can’t understand the French Canadian thinking —  In my cursory view French Canadians seem to be very much as I envision Frenchmen in general. They seem to be a rather pompous bunch who view everyone who is not French with some skepticism. It seems that most of the rest of Canada accommodate them by providing all their road signs and other things (menus, history signs, etc) in both languages. But when it comes to the French Canadians they don’t seem to be willing to do likewise. The English word is almost entirely missing in the Province of Quebec. How the rest of Canada let them get away with that is a mystery to me.  Don’t the Quebec citizens realize how much they stifle their tourism by this attitude?
• With some exceptions Canadians like their food pretty bland – As we are near the end of our trip through Canada I am going to stick to an early observation. Although we occasionally came across food that was well seasoned as a general rule there is just not much flavor to their fare. We had a pizza that I think was supposed to have pepperoni on it but it tasted much more like bologna than pepperoni.  What they call link sausages taste again like bologna and has a consistency of liverwurst. Those of you who have read my past posts know that one restaurant’s rendition of Mexican food  that we visited was an abysmal failure due to lack of spices.  Of course there are exceptions to this general observation. One was the pub in Ottawa and another was an Chinese restaurant in New Brunswick. And finally there were the blue mussels in Prince Edward Island; those were the best mussels I have every tasted. They were in a very well seasoned with cream and tarragon sauce. In fact they were so good  I ordered a second pot after I finished the first one. I will savor that meal for sometime to come.
• Most of Canada looks pretty much the same – I know you can probably say this about just about any place so I may be getting myself in trouble here. But there certainly is a lot of pine trees in Canada and a lot of water in the areas we visited. The most notable exception to the pine trees, not the water, was on Prince Edward Island. It reminded me more of the pictures I have seen of Ireland than Canada. I think PEI will become my favorite province we visited.  But one thing I am very thankful for on our visit here is that we escaped the 100 degree temperatures of our home area. I kind of dread heading south from here as we will probably be getting into that heat. Our tour guide on PEI said that many affluent Americans come and buy homes there and live there for five months a year to get away from the heat. The Canadian summer are wonderful but I’m sure the winters are pure dread!
• Most Canadians are surprised to hear how much we spend monthly for our healthcare – When we tell them that our personal healthcare bill exceeds $1200/month they are totally astounded. They, like most of the rest of the developed world take for granted that healthcare as a right that is regulated by their representatives in government. One lady said that she sometimes gets upset because she has to pay more than the usual $5 for her prescription medicine but given what we pay she will not be doing that any more.
• Things are just more expensive in Canada – Sales taxes in Canada is generally 13% except for food from grocery stores. Gasoline is costing us about $5.20/gal here and hotels are generally the same as in the U.S. Two #1 meals as McDonalds will set you back about $20.  From what I have been able to discover income taxes on the middle class are generally a little higher in the U.S. and property taxes are about the same. So, it seems to be generally more expensive to live in Canada. But, given that Canadians have universal healthcare they do not have the average $6,000 per person in healthcare costs (which is about $10,000 for seniors) that we have in the U.S.
• Canadians think that we in the U.S. spend too much and borrow too much – They pride themselves as have much less government and personal debt than we do. They seem to value relationships over material goods. Since they are so tied to our economy (tourism is down 30% in Canada due to less visits from the U.S.) they are suffering much of the same consequences as we are. They are rather resentful of that fact and I don’t blame them.

Since this post is getting much too long I am going to quit here. I think generally life is better for Canadians than it is for us in the U.S. especially with all the political insanity going around us now in the States. Canadians just seem less stressed than we are and that is a good thing. But I don’t envy those in the desolate areas that must cope with the bitter winters! I wish we could learn some of the good things our neighbors to the north could teach us. But as pompous as most of us United Staters are I doubt if we ever will.

And the journey goes on…..

Not much to report today. We did wander into town for about four hours yesterday for lunch, shopping, and picking up food for our in-room supper tonight. Lunenburg is a very picturesque town as shown in this picture I bought. It was set up by the British in the early 1700s so establish an English foothold into the French dominated territory.

Spent the rest of the day lounging around the motel room. We had dinner in our room consisting of some kind of lunchmeat of which I didn’t recognize and oreo cookies.  We will be going into Halifax today for sightseeing. Right now Yvonne is on the fence as to whether to move to a motel around Halifax or do the two hour round trip to here and back again tomorrow. One thing I have learned about my wife’s decision making is that it is a very last minute thing.

And the journey goes on..

{afternoon addendum}

I was unable to post the above in our previous motel room due to the wifi going down so I will update our day to be included here:

My wife did decide to leave the motel in Lunenburg and to head to Halifax. It was about an hours drive east. We went to the Citadel and the Public Gardens in the city and then tired of the urban environment decided to leave Halifax and head further east. We ended up about an hour east of the city. This was basically the first motel we came to on a very desolate road. Fortunately there is also a restaurant here that doesn’t close until 8pm so we are set for dinner. I couldn’t tell you the name of the town; we passed through scores of them. Each named town typically had maybe five or so houses and nothing else. The town we are in now does have this motel with restaurant and a gas station so it is a major hub in the area .  But most importantly as far as Yvonne goes it does have a view of a cove off the Atlantic Ocean although she won’t admit that it is actually better then the one we left this morning.

So here we are again in the sticks for tonight but at least I think I have internet access (I will know as soon as I try to upload this post).  Tomorrow we will likely head north to the mainland access for Nova Scotia and then down into Maine. It will be nice to get back to the U.S. and to our de-valuated dollar.  One good thing about this trip is that the money we converted to Canadian dollars two weeks ago has actually increased 3% in value since we left (that is the Canadian dollars that we are holding are actually worth three cents more than when we exchanged them two weeks ago). It would have taken more than five years to have gained that much value in our savings account!

And the journey goes on again…..

I am sitting in a small motel room in Lunenburg Nova Scotia writing these words waiting for my wife to wake up to tell me what she has planned, or maybe doesn’t have planned for the day. Lunenburg is on the “South Shore” of this province. Two days ago I told my wife that she was going to be in total control of our time in Nova Scotia. I would offer no comments or suggestion and would agree to everything she decided. After the fact she seems to always say that I was the one who decided everything so I was not going to allow that comment any validity this time.

We left Prince Edward Island yesterday morning and came across the ten mile bridge back to the mainland. Nova Scotia was just a few miles south of the bridge. We stopped at the first welcome center here and Yvonne spent the next hour working with one of the greeters there to find the “perfect” cabin!  She wanted something on the water where she could sit and look at it for a few days. This motel was supposed to meet all those needs. When we got here after driving 250 miles in Nova Scotia we found that it does have an ocean view but it is about one hundred yards away and has a road between us and the water. Unfortunately the only place to park the car is between our room and the water thus somewhat blocking the view.

I am going to try my best in the coming days here (I don’t know how long she want to stay) and put on a happy face for her. Sitting and doing nothing is just not my thing but I will do it for her. I have internet access from the room although it is very spotty and sometimes very very slow so I guess I should be content. She wants to leave the world behind; I want to take at least a part of it with me.

We did go into town last night for supper and it was pretty nice. Hopefully she will decide to at least spend a few hours there touring the area today or tomorrow. It is a small (probably 5,000 people or so) fishing town that has turned more into a tourist area lately but still has a great deal of charm. As Sarah Palin said if I had binocular eyes I could see Maine from here as it is only about 50 miles west of us. I am getting a little anxious to return to the U.S. even with all the total nonsense that is going on there now.  When we leave here it will be down into Maine and our New England part of our adventure.

Depending on what is on the agenda, I have no idea on what it might be right now,  I may spend some time today wrapping up my thoughts about our neighbors to the north and telling you some of the conversations we have had with them.

Here we are already beginning our third week of our Canadian adventure. Today we did something that we don’t often do and that is take a tour bus. We decided instead of driving the 100 or so miles around the island we would let Graylines do it for us.  It was a very pleasurable trip. Our driver/guide is a lifelong resident of Prince Edward Island (PEI) who told us much about the local history and how the island has changed during his lifetime. The bridge we went over is several times longer than we have ever encountered and several times for expensive (about $45 toll).  He said it was finished in 1996 and has somewhat changed the face of the island as now PEI gets about 30% of its economy from tourism.

Of course there were the usual local battles about whether to build the bridge or just continue to rely on the 2+ hour round trip via the ferry. Some say the bridge wrecked the lobster fishing on the south end of the island; some say it was never that good to start with. The lobster population, despite severe government regulations has continued to decline but the blue mussel population has more than replaced it. PEI ships their mussels all over the world including a very substantial amount to Japan.  So, I have decided to try the blue mussel for dinner tonight and reserve our lobster dinner for Maine later in the week.

Our tour today took us to the north side of the island to the Cavendish National Historic Site of the famed novel “Anne of Green Gables” by Lucy Montgomery. A PBS series about the novels played in 1986 (I can’t believe it has been that long ago!!)about the story of Anne Shirley of Green Gables PEI is still rather fresh in my mind. As usual the story was a fiction but based on the experiences of the author. Above is a picture of the house that inspired the novel.  I looked into getting a set of DVDs of the series but they were priced at about $120 Canadian (about $140 usd with taxes). Fortunately there was wifi in the shop so I checked out the cost on Amazon and found it to be about $50; so I will be ordering the series when I return.

From the historic site we went to a beach on the north shore. There was a front that came through the area last night that cooled the temperatures from the mid-70s yesterday to the mid-60s today. Evidently that also brought some rare white caps on this beach as shown in the picture here.

We are now resting in our hotel and getting ready for dinner in a few hours. This will be our last dinner on PEI. Tomorrow we will tour a couple historic sites and then head down to Nova Scotia.  I have decided to let Yvonne do 100% of the decision making of what we do and where we go in Nova Scotia. This will be a very interesting couple of days for me to see what she decides to do.  After NS it is down into Maine and to NYC.

And the journey goes on.

Today we spent the day meandering around the city of Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. The island is much bigger than I thought. I expect it is 50 miles or more long and 20 or so wide. It is a separate province (State). We spent quite a bit of the day walking its mile long boardwalk along the bay and collecting a few souvenirs in the shops that lined it.

After lunch (I had haddock with lobster sauce, Yvonne had a cheeseburger) we went to Confederation Hall which was where the original Canadian confederation was formed in 1867. The museum there covered the times between 1800 or so and 2000. Canada has a pretty complicated history in forming the country we know today. There were the usual regional disagreements along with the French cultural issues and the allegiance with Great Britain.  It seems that one of the main reasons all the different areas wanted to come together in a union was the fear that now that the U.S. Civil war was over they would be invading Canada in an attempt to take over the territories. This was a big deal to the Canadians, particularly those in the maritime provinces. I seem to remember someplace that mentioned a possible Canadian invasion but it is just a small subtext to our overall history.

Tonight we will have an exciting dinner and after dinner event. Actually they both will likely take place at the same time.  We found a small establishment down by the bay that has a grill and a laundromat combination. So, we will be doing two plus weeks of laundry and eating grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner while watching our laundry spin in the dryer. What more exciting night could you ask for. 🙂

We stopped by the Grayline tour place near Confederation hall and discovered that they have a couple of opening tomorrow for the northern tour of the island. It is four hours long and covers the area mentioned in the famous book “Anne of Green Gables”.  I must admit that I enjoyed that series when it was on PBS many years ago. So, instead of driving it on our own we will be on a tour bus for four hours enjoying the scenery and hearing the French then the English versions of what we are seeing.

Tomorrow night I am going to have to convince Yvonne to have a lobster dinner before we leave the island on Monday.  PEI like Maine, not too far to the south, is proud of their lobster catches. Yvonne enjoys lobster as long as they remove the head before presenting it to her. She is such an animal lover she can’t stand to have something watching her as she devours it. Even if it is long since expired.

And the journey goes on…

We had a wonderful day at the Acadian village yesterday. We got there just as it opened at 10am and spend the next four hours experiencing the Acadian life of the 19th century. We had a little rain but not enough to put a damper (pun intended) on the day.

There are about fifty building in the village and most of them had an interpreter to tell us about the person who owned the building. All of the interpreters were bi-lingual and I guess they got their clue for your first words as to whether they would talk in French or English. Here is a picture of one of them.

The only clue that we weren’t actually back in the 19th century were the tire tracks in the muddy road from the service vehicles of the night before. I know it is in the triple digits in much of the U.S. right now but most of the buildings here had fires in the fireplaces to take the chill of the early morning air.  It did get up to the middle 70s later in the day. The lady shown here was actually making a very robust looking stew (not a fake one!). It smelled so good I told her I would be back for lunch.

Here is another picture of a resident of the village. He stood with his head out the door  eyeing us the entire time we were there. He seemed friendly enough but kind of stand offish.

After leaving the village we headed south for Prince Edward Island, or PEI as the Canadians call it.  It ends up that the distance traveled was quite a bit further than I had anticipated so we didn’t get into our hotel until after 6PM.  The hotel we are staying at here was built in 1913 as part of the chain of hotels that hosted the trans-Canadian railroad in that period.  More on that in tonight’s post.

I apologize for not posting yesterday. After we got into our hotel and got settled we went to a popular pub just down the street for seafood chowder. It seems every place on PEI claims that their chowder is the best. It was pretty good where we ate but seemed to lack some of the necessary spices. This has been the usual here; Canadians just don’t seem to be very friendly with spices.  But their local brew was very good. In fact I had two pints and thus the reason I didn’t post here last night 🙂

Today we will be investigating the sites. There is a 3 km board walk along the harbor here in Charlottetown that will be one of the first places we visit. I will let you know more about that this evening. That is if I don’t overindulge at a local pub again.

And the journey goes on….

We Moved from our hotel this morning about 180 km to Riviere-du-Nord to visit a historic Acadian village. Unfortunately the weather did not cooperate with us today. We spent most of the morning and afternoon in constant rain. We found a motel close to the village and checked in. It is another pretty inexpensive motel so I did check out the bed before making the accommodations. 😉 After checking in we headed for the village and managed to go through about 20% of it before finally surrendering to the rain and heading back to our room. The rain is supposed to pass through tonight so we should have a good day tomorrow. Here is a picture of a couple of the inhabits of the village who didn’t mind the rain at all.

Let’s get a short story about the Acadians for those who are not familiar with them.  They were a pretty rough bunch of french men who populated much of the New Brunswick coast during the early 1700s.  The French ceded this territory to the British in 1713 and in 1755 the occupants of this territory were told to make an unconditional oath of allegiance to the British King.  Of course these contentious French mean refused so their land was confiscated and they were deported to American colonies. Many of them ended up in New Orleans and formed the basic character of that city.  Over the years many of those who were deported have returned to the area and now make up a sizable population of french speaking Canadians living outside of the Quebec Province.

The village, which we will see the majority of is an accurate reproduction of various times between 1700 and 1900. Most of the buildings have re-creators that will tell you about their story of the time.

We will finish up our visit with the ancient Arcadians and then will head for Prince Edward Island, otherwise known as PEI tomorrow. We have a three day reservation at a historic Canadian railroad hotel that was built in the mid 1800s. That will be our down time for this portion of our trip. We have been motel hopping for almost a week now so this will be a restful time for us. Tomorrow I will tell you some more about our visit to the village and my initial reactions to PEI. Hopefully over the weekend I can sit down and try to asses our trip so far.

And the journey goes on….

This will be a short post as I have already done one today.

Here we are at the end of day 10 of our Canadian adventure and we are now in New Brunswick Canada. As I had hoped Yvonne agreed to skip the rest of the peninsula trip and to move on to another English speaking province.  Coping with french only was becoming tiring to me.  We drove about 350 km today to get to Campbellton New  Brunswick which is the gateway to Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. I’m sure the New Brunswick folk don’t consider themselves a gateway but many vacationers probably do.

Tomorrow we will see an historical site that has been restored around the Acadian history. From the literature it looks like a Williamsburg type event.  I am looking forward to it with great anticipation. Since we were on the road for the most part of the day no unexpected events happened.  We even managed to find a pretty good restaurant that allowed us to eat our lunch at a table inside. But, of course, that was located in English speaking New Brunswick. 🙂

And the journey goes on….