Sunday, September 3, 2000

We decided that this would be a good day to visit the West Quoddy Head lighthouse, which is very pretty and candy striped. On the way, we visited the easternmost gift shop in the US. Did I mention that we visited a lot of gift shops? Took some pictures which unfortunately didn't make it online. Saw a minke whale at the lighthouse, as well as some seals. Took a little walk down to the water, where Amy climbed around on the rocks for a while, Megan & Taruna sat on the rocks for a while, and Steph sat on the stairs leading up from the rocks for a while. Saw a couple of guys in an inflatable raft who appeared to take a picture of us from the water. Drove around Lubec looking for a good place for lunch, and then settled on the place we'd been planning to eat anyhow. Everyone had seafood (mostly fried) of some kind.

Putting the "Cove" in Duck Cove

Next, we decided to take the bridge to Campobello Island, New Brunswick. A new province for me! Did you know that Franklin Roosevelt had a family home there, and used to spend summers there until he was stricken with polio? I knew absolutely nothing of this, although it is apparently common knowledge. The house is a lovely little "cottage" with "only" something like 27 rooms. It actually is one of those gi-normous mansions that is built to look more like a cottage, which somehow works in that part of the world. Took a self-guided tour of the house and grounds, and took a picture of dahlias as big as Steph's head, with Amy, Steph, and Taruna next to them for reference. Note to self: plant dahlias.

Drove from there to the East Quoddy Head lighthouse, stopping at only 2-3 gift shops along the way. This one is white with a red cross on it, and is actually on an island that we couldn't reach with the tide as high as it was. In fact, there's an island between us and the island where the lighthouse is, so the view is partly obscured. The pictures were neat, anyhow, and the light was really good. Those Quoddy Head lighthouses were definitely the prettiest ones we saw all trip. On the way back to America, we stopped at somebody's house/trailer so Amy could buy bird feeders that were carved/painted to look like the West and East Quoddy Head lighthouses. One for her, and one for someone else. After completing that transaction and arranging to have them shipped home, we decided to get a West Quoddy one as a thank you gift for her folks. Stopped near the bridge at around sunset to take some pictures and see the Mullholland lighthouse, a little white one with a red door. It's not really an active lighthouse any more, because they've moved the navigational lights to the bridge.

Taruna atop Mt. Acadia (days later)

Monday, September 4, 2000

Lazy day! At least, a lazy day for me & Steph. Two of us need more downtime than the other two. We got up in the morning and everyone lounged around for a while, reading, making breakfast, etc. The previous day was Jamie's b'day, so we started a group card for him. As Amy was writing her section, Steph started saying, "hey...hey...hey...hey!" from the kitchen. Amy and I looked at each other, somewhat confused, until Steph finally said, "Fire!" That got us out of our chairs. She'd lit the gas burner and it caught the fringe of a dish towel on fire. She put it out no problem, so Amy and I just explained that "fire" was really the key word in the noises she was making, for future reference. That made for an interesting little passage in Jamie's letter, anyhow.

Another Duck Cove intersection

Eventually, Taruna and Amy left to go get rocks at Jasper Beach and evidently to visit several gift shops. Taruna did come back with a great raku-fired clay pot from Connie's Clay of Fundy. By the time they got home, Steph and I were ready to move around a bit, so we had dinner at Melanie's, which is this tiny, home-cookin' kind of place. I had great seafood linguine. Then we repaired to Helen's for some of their "mile-high pie".

Tuesday, September 5, 2000

Tuesday was another big day...very big. We had decided to take what is supposed to be a high-speed Cat boat to Nova Scotia. Unfortunately, it left at 7:30 a.m. and they neglected to tell us that one of the engines (out of four) was broken, so the crossing would be four hours instead of three. And it left from Bar Harbor, which is nearly two hours from Machias, so we had to leave the cabin at 5:30. Finally arrived in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia (another new province for me), where they neglected to tell us the boat would be leaving later than usual, too. So we wandered around town until we picked a place to eat lunch. I think I was the only one who had no problems with the rough crossing, so people weren't sure eating was such a good plan on the boat, but they felt okay to eat lunch. We also called and arranged for Enterprise to pick us up from the restaurant so we could rent a car. Steph's 50% off deal was pretty great. We rented a Jeep Cherokee.

Sunrise from the cabin (you know Amy must have taken this one!)

After lunch, we went to the health food store so Amy & Taruna could buy ginger pills and candied ginger to soothe their stomachs for the trip back (thank god I don't get sea sick!). Then we got the car. Jason, the manager of the Yarmouth store, seemed a bit nervous about having someone from HQ there, or possibly he was overwhelmed by the four of us. Either way, his hands were shaking. We decided to drive the "Evangeline trail", which basically takes you up the west coast of Nova Scotia. Stopped at a gorgeous sandy beach, which revived me a bit. Stopped at several gift shops. At one antique store, Steph found a tin type that looked exactly like Ian (her fiancé), so she bought that (after not buying it and driving down the road a ways). We had an interesting talk about reincarnation, wherein Taruna said that if that picture was Ian, Steph could be happy to know that it looked like he'd done pretty well for himself.

Along the trail, we saw the largest wooden church in North America. It was large. There were several large wooden churches, in fact, so it took us quite a while to figure out which one was the largest. We felt it was sufficient to see it from the highway. Since we didn't know the boat was leaving late, we thought it was time to head back, so we took the non-scenic route most of the way. Amy remembered a promising-looking gift shop, though, so we cut over to the scenic road in time to go there. It was called the Sign of the Whale, and they really did have some nice stuff by local artists. I got a silver fish necklace & spiral earrings, in fact.

Ate a fairly bad light dinner in Yarmouth (incredibly bad chowder), and visited a couple more gift shops. Some of our number are very impressive shoppers! Wandered around, ate ice cream, and sulked about the ferry being so late. Got back to Bar Harbor at about 1:30 a.m. (fortunately, I slept the whole way on the boat), and home at about 3:30.

Duck Cove, with lobster trap

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last modified: November 5, 2002