So. I was sorta counting on catching up online, doing blog posts, etc., while I was staying here on Prince Edward Island, but the place I’m staying has The World’s Crappiest WiFi [tm] (as in it was barely working last night, and not at all this morning), so it looks like I’m going to be out of touch until I leave.
I’m sitting in the parking lot of a fishing charter place that had a “free wifi” sign, which is how I’m online, but it’s not the greatest arrangement.
Yesterday was mostly a driving day, from Halifax to Cape Breton Island, and a nice relaxing afternoon at Cape Battery Provincial Park’s lovely waterfront campground.
Satin clouds over Nova Scotia’s north shore.The drawbridge section of the Canso Causeway (there’s what looks like a lock under that bridge).The view from across the road from my campsite last night.Purple loosestrife at the campsite. If it weren’t such a noxious weed, purple loosestrife would be gorgeous.
It was gorgeous and sunny and everything (although breezy and cool, not that I was complaining about the cool part, anyway), then, in the middle of the night, I heard rat-a-tat-a-tat on Merlin’s roof, and was suddenly really glad I hadn’t left anything outside, oh, like my folding camp chair, because when I woke up this morning, it was to the kind of rain I normally associate with a Pineapple Express in the winter back home. Well, it wasn’t that cold (although it never got above 62dF today, according to Merlin’s thermometer), but it was easily that wet. This is the kind of weather that words and phrases like “driving rain,” and “teeming” were invented for. Oh, and it was windy, too, so it’s been raining sideways pretty much all day.
I didn’t want to spend the day cooped up in the back of my van, so I went ahead and drove to the town of Baddeck, on Lake Bras D’Or (did you know that Cape Breton Island has a huge lake in the middle of it? I didn’t – although since there is a water passage from the lake to the ocean, I’m not sure it really qualifies as a lake, even though it’s named that way), where Alexander Graham Bell had a summer home, and where there’s a National Historic Site dedicated to him.
You can read the caption [g]. By the way, Bell got married the year before Charley did, and the same year as the Little Bighorn.The view of Bras d’Or Lake from the front of the Alexander Graham Bell Museum, taken the one moment today when it wasn’t pouring rain.
There was a visitor center/museum, which was very crowded because I wasn’t the only one looking for something to do indoors out of the rain, but it was still well worth visiting. I didn’t know much about Bell, except for the obvious that he invented the telephone and that he and Helen Keller had met several times (which isn’t as ironic as it, er, sounds – his wife was deaf, and one of his major passions was helping deaf people). I had no idea how much of an inventor he really was. Among other things, he was involved with early aviation and hydrofoils.
But the most arresting thing, at least sensorily, was the “try it!” display of an old-fashioned (omigosh, really?) dial telephone. The sound of it was just – wow, it was weird. I hadn’t heard the sound of a dial phone in decades. That seriously made me feel old. When I walked up, a woman was teaching her little kid how to dial it. So. Very. Weird. Sorry.
So. I really wanted to be indoors (not just in the van, but real indoors) tonight, and there were no rooms to be had in Baddeck (ba-DECK, not BA-deck), so I got a late lunch at a café with terrible service called the Yellow Cello (a 12” hot dog dressed like a Philly cheese steak, which was better than it sounds), and headed the thirty or so miles north to the Sydneys (there are three of them, Sydney Mines, North Sydney, where the ferry to Newfoundland leaves from, and just Sydney, which is the biggest city on Cape Breton Island), where I found a nice, warm, dry motel room.
The weather is supposed to improve somewhat, at least so far as the rain goes, by late tomorrow, but it’s supposed to stay windy and chilly, and that’s about what’s decided me to not take the ferry to Newfoundland. Four hours one way on the open ocean in weather like this (I get seasick unless the water’s pretty calm, and I should have realized long ago that it wasn’t going to be) does not sound like fun. Plus, the whole trip would probably take me at least a week, what with a day each on the ferry on either end, plus two days driving each way to get to L’Anse aux Meadows once I arrived on the island and just one day there. And that doesn’t even count seeing any of the rest of it (the other part I’d like to visit, St. Johns – Great Big Sea territory! – is clear on the opposite corner from L’Anse aux Meadows – probably a three-day drive one way, plus three more days back to the ferry). It seems like so much effort and time and money without as much return as seems reasonable. I’ve spent a lot of time driving through rather monotonous taiga in the last few days, and a lot of getting anywhere in Newfoundland is going to be 99% taiga.
So I’m afraid that’s just not going to happen. Still, I’m glad I got this far. Tomorrow I will probably go see Cape Breton Highlands National Park if the weather is improved enough, and I also want to see Louisbourg National Historic Site before I leave Cape Breton and head west, once and for good.
Although I do understand the climate can leave something to be desired [g].
Anyway, today I walked and museumed all day. First, I hiked up to the Citadel, an 18th century (reconstructed in the 19th) fortress in the heart of Halifax. I told you the hostel is in a great location – it was only about eight blocks, albeit most of them uphill.
The Citadel reminded me almost forcibly of Edinburgh Castle, and I don’t think it was just the bagpiper or the young men and women in uniforms including tall fuzzy things on their heads. The location, up on a hill in the heart of a bayfront city, the weather (cool and cloudy, at least in the morning), and the age of the thing (granted, not nearly as old as Edinburgh Castle, but much older than anything I’m used to at home), all made it seem similar, in a very happy-to-me way.
The very cheerful young man with a very fuzzy thing on his head who greeted me at the Citadel.The inside of the Citadel.A 19th century British naval sailor’s uniform. So natty, especially the straw hat!A peekaboo view of Halifax Harbor from the Citadel’s ramparts (the view is mostly obscured by high-rises, which is kind of sad, if understandable).Bagpiper and friend next to the flagpole on the Citadel’s ramparts.
The museum inside was – eye-opening, yes, that’s the word. Okay, I watched Canada: A People’s History when it was on the CBC (I get the Vancouver affiliate on my cable when I’m home) a few years ago, and I knew they have a completely and utterly different perspective on the War of 1812 than we do, but it’s still odd to view exhibits talking about the U.S. invading Canada (which barely even gets mentioned south of the border, even in school). Anyway, it was fascinating. Well worth the morning I spent there.
Afterwards, on my way to the waterfront, I stopped at a little sandwich place called As You Like It for lunch, which was cute, with a mural on the wall purporting to depict a scene from the play, and tasty, with a roast beef sandwich and a brownie.
I’m pretty sure this is about as quintessentially Canadian as it gets — seen on my way from the Citadel to the waterfront.
At the waterfront was the other main thing I wanted to see while I was here, the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, which is to Canadian maritime history what the Kansas Cosmosphere was to the space race. Which has pretty much become about the highest compliment I can give to a museum.
See, the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic pretty much had me when I first walked in the door. This is a *first order* Fresnel lens, from the lighthouse at the entrance to Halifax Harbor, right in the lobby where I could adore it up close.A miniature (about a foot long) replica of an Inuit kayak and accessories.Yes, that label says colored guano (as in bird poop).An actual deck chair from the Titanic (they re-caned the seat). They also had a replica nearby that you could actually sit in.
The exhibits were all over the place – arctic exploration, the ages of sail and steam, the Titanic (Halifax was the closest port of any size to the disaster, and they sent the ships that went to recover the bodies, or as many of them as they could), and the Halifax explosion.
What, you’ve never heard of the largest pre-atomic manmade explosion in the world? Which killed almost as many people as 9/11 did in New York, and leveled most of the north end of an entire city? The sound of which was heard hundreds of miles away? On December 7, 1917, a munitions ship loaded with thousands of pounds of explosives bound for the war in Europe accidentally collided with a Belgian relief ship, caught fire, and, well, you can imagine the rest. I’d known a little about the explosion, again thanks to the CBC and a historical movie about it a few years ago, but I don’t think the scale of it all registered until this afternoon. Apparently it did more damage than the San Francisco earthquake or the Chicago fire. Oh, and then the next day they had a blizzard. Those poor people just couldn’t catch a break.
My last stop of the day (so to speak) was at the ferry terminal, where I paid $2.50 to make a round trip across the harbor on a cute little passenger ferry, and strolled along the Dartmouth waterfront, where I had a great view of the Halifax skyline. That was fun.
The Halifax skyline from the ferry to Dartmouth.An interesting exhibit on the Dartmouth waterfront. Those rocks in the exhibit case are from all over the world (including a piece of the Berlin wall from Germany).The MacDonald Bridge in Halifax, from the ferry. I can’t get over how much it looks like the old (as opposed to the new, and also as opposed to Galloping Gertie) Tacoma Narrows Bridge. It’s even the same color.Two of the lighthouses at the entrance to Halifax Harbor, taken with tons of zoom from the ferry. I had no idea until I opened this photo on my laptop that there were *two* lighthouses in this photo.
By the time I hoofed it the ten blocks or so back to the hostel (stopping at a needlework shop along the way) my feet hurt, but it was a great day. I enjoyed the heck out of Halifax. It was an awful lot of fun.
A mural I walked by on my way back to the hostel this evening. I love the colors in it.
Tomorrow, though, I’m headed to Cape Breton Island. I’ve been looking forward to that, too. And D-Day for my Newfoundland decision is getting awfully close here…
My Seahawks won their first pre-season game last night. 17-16, on a last-minute Hail Mary pass and a two-point conversion. I can’t believe it’s football season already, but Go, ‘Hawks! (no, I didn’t have the bandwidth at the campground to watch the game, but I did see and hear some highlights)
It was wet when I woke up this morning. Not raining hard, but the air was seriously saturated. I felt like I needed gills.
Along Highway 103 on the way to Halifax.
I drove north on the highway till I got to the turnoff for Peggy’s Cove. Peggy’s Cove is one of those iconic places you’ll recognize from the photos (I bet), supposedly the most-photographed lighthouse in Canada [g].
Along the road to Peggy’s Cove is a memorial to a plane crash in 1998, on a windswept bluff south of town. 229 people died in that crash, out in the Atlantic off of the coast here, and the memorial is lonesome and peaceful.
The view from the Swissair crash memorial, looking northish towards Peggy’s Cove.
Peggy’s Cove itself is tiny, with a visitor center (complete with composting toilets) that I suspect was built in self-defense. It’s also adorable, as is the lighthouse itself. The granite shield the town and lighthouse are built on is rather amazing, too. Anyway, it was very pretty, and very damp, and I enjoyed strolling around it very much.
Part of the Harbor at Peggy’s Cove.The lighthouse at Peggy’s Cove.Granite field at Peggy’s Cove.
I stopped at a farm stand somewhere between Peggy’s Cove and Halifax, and ate fish and chips from a food truck parked nearby. I bought blueberries and a cherry bar (a bar cookie) at the farm stand to round things out. Wow, those blueberries are good (I ate about a third of them, and put the rest in my cooler).
And so on to Halifax, where I’d called last night to make a reservation at the local hostel, so that I didn’t arrive there only to discover they were full up. It’s right downtown, within walking distance of everything I want to see in Halifax, which is great. I will be staying here two nights in order to see everything I want to see here.
The Old Burying Ground in Halifax, just down the street from the hostel. They *stopped* burying people here in the 1840s.A statue of Winston Churchill in front of the Halifax Public Library, which I passed while walking to the public gardens.
The first of which was the Public Gardens, which are about six blocks from the hostel. They’re supposedly the best example of Victorian show gardens in North America, and I’m willing to agree with that [g]. Lots of bright flowers in patterned plantings, a fancy gazebo where they sometimes have band concerts, several statues, and broad lawns dotted with huge trees. Fortunately, the air had quit being quite so soaking wet by the time I arrived in Halifax, so I didn’t get drowned wandering through them.
The entrance to the public gardens.Gazebo/bandstand and flower beds at the public gardens.A statue of the Roman goddess Ceres at the public gardens.The facade of the municipal/court building in Halifax, taken on my way back to the hostel.
I haven’t been sleeping well for the last couple of nights, so I suspect I’ll be going to bed fairly early tonight. Wish me luck for a good night’s sleep!
Today started out as misty moisty and cloudy was the weather. Also in the upper 60sdF, topping out in the low 70s, which was wonderful. Wisps of fog, too, which were beautiful.
This morning I bopped back and forth between stretches of what passes for freeway in southern Nova Scotia (one lane in each direction, but with onramps and offramps and the occasional passing lane), and the coast road. The coast road is also a two lane, but it also adds more than twice as many miles to the same point-to-point, so I didn’t want to drive it the whole way. I passed through Yarmouth, where I stopped to pick up a few groceries, and my next stop was one of those serendipitous things that make me so happy.
Cape St. Mary lighthouse, between Digby and Yarmouth.The beach below the Cape St. Mary lighthouse.
I saw a sign for an Acadian historic village, so I followed it. What it turned out to be was a living history village of buildings preserved in the oldest continuously occupied Acadian village in Canada (the inhabitants came back after twelve years of exile, and, finding their old lands otherwise occupied, settled in the Pubnicos (there are several of them, ranging from Upper Pubnico to Lower Middle Pubnico and so forth)). It was interesting, and there were some beautiful quilts and other handicrafts, but the amazing thing was that all of the interpreters/docents/re-enactors I spoke with (and even the cashier) were descended from the families who had originally inhabited the buildings for centuries. It was amazing. “My great-grandfather was the last person to live in this house before it became part of the museum.” Stuff like that. For someone who grew up in four major metropolitan areas, it’s sort of mind-boggling. One of my fellow visitors pointed out someone in a photograph in on of the buildings and told her friend that this was her grandfather when he was seventeen, too. Amazing.
Looking down at the water from the Acadian village.One of the houses at the Acadian village.A wool quilt, which looked like one my mother has described to me from her childhood.A very fancy baby carriage at the Acadian village.Notice anything unusual about this clock? It has the days of the month as well as the time of the day.That round thing is a butter churn, and the woman is one of the interpreters — and a descendant of the people who originally lived in the house.Dried cod, anyone?Low tide at the Acadian village.
That wasn’t the only time I had that happen today, either. After I left the Acadian village, I drove out to the very southern tip of Nova Scotia, The Hawk on Cape Sable Island. I’m not sure why I did it, but I’m glad I did. The views were amazing, out over the Atlantic, and I struck up a conversation with an older gentleman who was sitting on a lobster trap [g]. He told me about how he’d grown up there, like his parents and grandparents and so forth, but that his son had followed his job to Alberta, and was home for a couple of weeks with his own son, the next generation. The gentleman was concerned that the baby would not remember Cape Sable. Then he asked me what my last name was. I told him, and he told me his last name was Atwood. Driving back to the main highway, I saw at least half a dozen Atwood references – street names and so forth.
The beach at The Hawk at the tip of Cape Sable Island.The tallest lighthouse in Canada, at the tip of Cape Sable Island. It’s undergoing some restoration work, hence the scaffolding.
What it must be like to have roots like that is completely beyond me.
The rest of the afternoon was spent driving northeast towards Halifax, searching for a campground. I finally found one, and went to sleep listening to the rain fall on Merlin’s roof. It was a very pleasant sound.
Today was a very full day, even though I drove less than 100 miles for the entire day. I started my day at Grand Pré, which means Great Meadow in English. It’s one of the first sites of the expulsion of the Acadians, back in the mid-18th century. It’s a UN World Heritage Site as well as a National Historic Site, and the museum there tells the story of the Acadians.
Before today, my entire knowledge of the Acadians is that a bunch of them wound up in Louisiana and became the Cajuns. Now I know a lot more of the story, and it was moving and sad. I’m not sure what all to say about it without putting my foot into it, except that I kept thinking about what’s going on with the Syrians today.
The other two things were that I’d had no idea that the Acadians reclaimed lands from the Bay of Fundy in similar ways that the Dutch have in their country. It was fascinating to learn about how they’d done it over a period of over a hundred years, and so long ago. And then there was the Longfellow/Evangeline connection – yes, she was fictional, but apparently his poem brought a lot of attention to what had happened to the Acadians, and so she’s become something of a cultural symbol.
The gardens surrounding the memorial church, etc., were lovely, too.
Anyway, I learned a lot at Grand Pré, some of which I was not expecting to learn.
The Evangeline statue and the memorial church at Grand Pre.Part of the gardens at Grand Pre.The Longfellow bust at Grand Pre.Looking out over the polders/reclaimed land at Grand Pre, complete with the two red Adirondack chairs that seem to exist at every viewpoint in the Canadian national parks. ETA: I am informed that in Canada, those chairs are called Muskoka chairs.A view back from the lookout towards the memorial church at Grand Pre.
And so it was on to Annapolis Royal.
I drove past this today, something else I’d never known about before.
Annapolis Royal is about fifty more miles down the road, where I visited two National Historic Sites, Port Royal, which was supposed to be a living history site about a French fort, but which, according to a fellow visitor who went on about it for quite a while, was no longer what it was because Stephen Harper had eviscerated the National Parks. The site was still there, but the re-enactors are apparently no more. It was still really interesting, though.
The reconstructed fort at Port Royal.Inside Port Royal, which was sort of the Canadian French version of Bent’s Old Fort.Those window panes are made of animal hide.My first turned leaves of the trip. Holy cow.
Then there were the historic gardens in Annapolis Royal, which were really lovely. No Longwood, granted, but then I expect not many gardens could stand up to Longwood. These were smaller, and have been there since the 1930s, and were absolutely filled with glorious flowers.
The perennial borders at the Historic Gardens.Unlabeled (I wish I knew what variety these were!) oriental lilies at the Historic Gardens.A reconstructed Acadian house at the Historic Gardens.
My last stop of the day was at Fort Anne, right on the river in Annapolis Royal. It’s the oldest National Historic Site in Canada (so now I’ve visited their first national park, Banff, last summer, and their first national historic site today), but what struck me as funny was that they were refurbishing the officers’ quarters/museum in the fort, and at the moment it’s all covered with modern-day waterproofing plastic film.
The tyvek-wrapped officers’ quarters at Fort Anne.The powder magazine at Fort Anne, built in 1708 and the only entirely original building at the fort.The view from Fort Anne, down the Annapolis River.
Fort Anne is a classic on-the-waterfront star fort, just like Fort McHenry in Baltimore, although it’s considerably older and there aren’t as many buildings. The redoubts definitely looked familiar, though. The museum had an absolutely gorgeous needlepoint tapestry inside. I never did find a date when it was done, but apparently it’s fairly recent. It’s spectacular, too.
Half of the dropdead gorgeous needlepoint tapestry at Fort Anne.
By the time I left Fort Anne, I was pretty tired, so I drove the last 25 miles down to Digby, where I’m ensconced in a very nice hostel, with wifi and showers. I will continue on around the coast tomorrow, and probably wind up in Halifax in two or three days.
I can’t believe it’s been eleven weeks today since I left home. Criminy.
What a name. It’s on the northern shore of Nova Scotia. And no, I didn’t notice the historical site part of the sign until I was looking at my photos this evening. Oh, well.
I drove past a lot of mudflats today [wry g]. But first, I needed to come back down from the northern shore (not all that far from the Confederation Bridge to Prince Edward Island, which I am sorta saving for last before I start heading west for good – and I can’t believe I just wrote that) to the town of Truro, where two things happened. One, I stopped at a Tim Horton’s for hot tea (I miss being able to buy unsweet iced tea at McD’s so much — Canadian McDs only do sweet tea, blast them), and burned my tongue on it so badly I ended up putting ice from my cooler in it to make it drinkable. And two, when I started Merlin back up after getting the tea, one of his dashboard lights came on.
The stupid manual didn’t explain what it was, and it took me a few minutes to figure out that it was simply a reminder thingy. The thing was, it was trying to remind me that Merlin needed an oil change, except that he’d just had one yesterday. So I drove on into Truro, found a Ford dealer, and threw myself on the mercy of a young man who just happened to be walking out of the service department (he did have a Ford service uniform on). He said, oh, the place you had it changed must not have known to adjust the reminder thing after they changed the oil, and then less than three minutes later, he’d done it. I didn’t know Merlin had a reminder thing, because apparently it comes on at 5200 miles post the previous oil change or something. At any rate, he didn’t charge me, and I was on my way.
I missed my turn once I got back on the freeway, too, and ended up taking a slightly different route back over to the Bay of Fundy. Which turned out to be a cool thing, because I drove by a tidal bore interpretive center that I would have missed otherwise. The tide being completely out, I didn’t get to see the actual bore, which is supposed to be the biggest one in the world, something like nine times as tall as the average man, but the exhibits were very interesting, especially the one about a storm a century or so ago that combined with high tide and basically wiped a lot of the communities along the bore off the map. The exhibit panel was titled, “why is there an ocean in my living room?”
The bridge over the tidal bore at the place the name of which I apparently didn’t make a note of, sorry!This is apparently what one does during low tide at the highest tidal bore in the world. It’s called mudsliding. This photo is from the interpretive center there.
Once I got to the actual bay again, the tide was still really low, and that far up into the bay, you could actually walk clear across it from Nova Scotia to New Brunswick (or the reverse), if you could walk the whole distance in less than four hours. Which, of course, is impossible. But it’s so weird.
Looking out over the mud flats of the Bay of Fundy to New Brunswick.
This was the view from the first lighthouse, which I apparently didn’t get a photo of [smacks head a la V-8].I saw two lighthouses along the way. One, at Burntcoat (a weird name, but apparently a corruption of something French), was a reproduction and not a functioning lighthouse, but the second one, at Petit Riviere, still had its Fresnel lens, which was very cool. The ladders/staircases to get up into the lens room of the second lighthouse were built for people with considerably longer legs than mine, though. Other than that, and the glimpses of the wide mudflats that are the Bay of Fundy at low tide, the scenery was bucolic and hilly, and the road was a bit rollercoastery, which was fun.
The second lighthouse of the day.And the view from the lawn around it. The flowers are just thistles.And its sweet little Fresnel lens. Are you tired of photos of Fresnel lenses yet?
I arrived in the town of Windsor about 3:30, and decided to stop because a) there was an inexpensive campground on what I think is the county fairgrounds (it’s called the exposition grounds) and b) there was a laundromat nearby. The last time I did laundry was about ten days ago, on Cape Cod, and things were getting kind of desperate [wry g]. Anyway, I now have clean clothes again. Important details, as my ex used to say.
Since I’d picnicked at lunch, I ate dinner out tonight, pan-fried flounder, a baked potato, and mashed turnips and carrots mixed together, all of which was very tasty (I’d never actually had turnips before). Oh, and caramel ice cream for dessert.
Then I made a reservation at a hostel in Digby, about 100 miles down the coast, for tomorrow night, because it’ll be Friday in high season and I was a bit worried about them having room for me. On the way tomorrow is Annapolis Royal, and a whole bunch of history about a time and place I know very little about. I can’t wait.
The sticky bun wasn’t as good as I’d thought it was going to be, but that’s okay. Today wasn’t a stellar day for food all around, alas.
However. I saw some really unusual scenery, and that part was great. After I left Alma this morning, I continued north on the coast road until I reached the turn-off for Cape Enrage, which has got to be one of the more unusual place names I’ve run across (says the woman from Puyallup [g]). It’s apparently got to do with the area’s French heritage, although why the French were so angry there still escapes me.
Anyway, it’s a very winding, very narrow road (when I was coming out, I saw a motorhome coming in, and I did wonder how they managed some of the “I’m going to rear-end myself” turns, or if they had to turn around, and wouldn’t that have been fun). The road led to a very windy bluff overlooking the Bay of Fundy, and, as the tide was headed out this morning, I got to see quite a bit more land than I would have otherwise. When the tide goes out here, it goes OUT. There’s also an adorable little lighthouse (no Fresnel lens, alas), and a gift shop, and a zip line, and a few other attractions, all for the grand price of $6 Canadian (about $4.50 U.S. given the current exchange rate, which is one of the reasons I could afford this part of the trip to begin with). No, I did not ride the zip line. I have no desire whatsoever to ride a zip line, let alone one that runs over a rather steep cliff.
A beach on the road to Cape Enrage. See the high tide marks on the cliffs?The lighthouse at Cape Enrage.From the deck at Cape Enrage.And another view from Cape Enrage.Fireweed! Just like at home.They’ve been taunting me with these signs ever since Maine — and I have yet to see a single moose.
A few more miles farther down (or up, I guess, since I was headed northeast) the road, I came to what looked to my skeptical eyes like another Trees of Mystery (my standard for tacky roadside attractions). But I’d seen pictures of what they were showing off here, and I wanted to see it, whether it was as hokey as the admission gate and gift shop made it look, or as magnificent as the photos of it I’d seen. The reality was closer to magnificent than tacky, I have to say. The Hopewell Rocks are the famous “flower pot” rocks of the Bay of Fundy, and I do mean famous – I’d heard of them even over on the west coast before I left home.
I was lucky – the tide was just before its ebb, so I could actually see them. Apparently they’re almost completely covered with water at high tide, which is pretty impressive when you get a good look at them. They’re huge, as you’ll see in the photos (lots of people for scale – the place was seriously busy). Anyway, you walk down a ½ km trail to a series of metal staircases that lead you down to what’s billed as the ocean floor [g], and you can actually walk around among the huge formations. It’s really pretty impressive, if a bit hard on your shoes. I had to wipe mud off of mine when I got back up – there’s a setup at the top of the stairs made for it, complete with water sprayers and boot scrapers.
The Hopewell Rocks at low tide.And more of them. They are so odd-looking. Oh, and that gray stuff is seaweed.The metal stairs going down to the “ocean floor” where you can stroll among the flowerpot rocks.A view of the “ocean floor” at Hopewell Rocks.
I’m glad I went to see them, and I’m really glad I landed there at low tide so I could see them.
After that, I drove on up towards Moncton. I found a really awful hamburger along the way (there wasn’t a whole lot of choice, I was hungry, and I didn’t feel like picnicking), then filled Merlin’s tank once I got to Moncton, for the first time since I crossed the border. The gas station did not have pay at the pump, which was weird. And gas cost me about $5 U.S. more than the same amount (about 8 gallons) would have south of the border, once I did the calculations from liter to gallon, and factored in the exchange rate, so it isn’t bad, all in all. The lady where I went to pay was very helpful when I asked her about where I could take Merlin to get his oil changed, and even produced a city map and marked my route to the place on it for me. The fellow at the oil change place also took the map and marked my route to the highway on it for me. Nice people!
And so I drove on east to Nova Scotia, and stopped at the welcome center to ask about campgrounds. The upshot of that is that I’m in a very nice provincial park campground a bit north of the town of Amherst, not far from the northern shore, in a lovely quiet wooded site. It’s windy as heck, but the trees seem to be keeping the worst of it above me. Very pleasant, and there are showers, too!
Self-evident [g].There are almost as many Baptist churches in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia as there are in Texas, but they’re much bigger and older and fancier here. This one’s in the town of Amherst, NS.
I finally crossed the border from Calais, Maine, to St. Stephen, New Brunswick, early this morning. No problems, even when I told the nice gentleman manning the station that I planned on being in Canada for a couple of months [g]. He just told me to have a good time and waved me on.
Success, success, I did it, I did it! I finally made it to Canada.
I stopped at an ATM and got myself some usable money, then headed north on Highway 1 towards then through St. John, on my way to Fundy National Park. No, not that kind of fundie, but the Bay of Fundy. Anyway, it’s one of those places I’ve always sorta wanted to see, and the park seemed like a good place to do it.
I saw another one of those weird UFO thingys again today. About 1 pm local time (I’m now *four* hours ahead of home) at Fundy NP.
I got here about lunch time and found a little bakery in the hamlet of Alma, just outside of the park, to eat lunch. I may have to go back there in the morning for a sticky bun for breakfast, though, because they looked delicious. I then went looking for a room for the night, even though it was so early, because a) it’s a third night, and b) I wanted to spend the rest of the day in the park. I found one here in town, next door to the bakery, actually [g].
Then I went exploring. I like Fundy National Park. It was low tide when I got here, and all the fishing boats at Alma’s harbor were kind of tilted on their sides in the mud. But I went walking in the park, to see a waterfall (which a lady on the trail described as stunning, but well, I think that was overstating it pretty hard – it was a cute little fall, though, even though I couldn’t get a decent photo of it), and to get some views of the bay with the water surging in. It was a great way to spend the afternoon. But when I got back to Alma just now? The boats in the harbor were afloat! That tide really is pretty impressive, actually, which I suppose it should be given that it’s the greatest tidal change in the world or something.
The motel is right on the water, and they have a bunch of Adirondack chairs overlooking the bay, and I think I’m going to spend an hour or so out there this evening. It looks like a great place to watch the stars.
But I’m going to have to get my jacket out. Believe it or not, the high here today was in the low seventies (F)! With a breeze! It’s so wonderful. It truly is.
A view of the bay.Bunchberry berries. They’re a kind of dogwood that’s a ground cover as opposed to a tree. I saw these blooming in the Canadian Rockies last summer.A replica covered bridge (built 1992 to replace one built in 1910) near Wolfe Point in Fundy NP.The Bay of Fundy from Herring Cove, Fundy NP.And another view of the bay from the same place.
Anyway. Today I drove up the Maine coast, through a lot of very northern-looking forest. Much more northern than it should have looked, given that I passed the 45th parallel today (second time on this trip), which also runs through Oregon not all that far south of Portland. I also passed through the town of Machias (pronounced MaCHIus (the ch as in church and a long I), which had the only iced tea dispenser I saw today [g].
Then I went to the easternmost point of the United States, which, logic aside, is called West Quoddy Head (East Quoddy Head is in Canada). Quoddy, I’m told, is short for Passamaquoddy, which is the name of the local Indian tribe. It has an adorable little lighthouse with an intact third order Fresnel lens. There’s also a gift shop about half a mile back down the road that claims to be the easternmost gift shop in the U.S. I bought another magnet and a little cross-stitch pattern there. They had items made from some nifty quilt fabric there, but they weren’t selling the fabric itself, alas. I’d have loved the fabric with the puffins on it.
It wasn’t until I saw people out picking them that I realized these are blueberry plants.West Quoddy Head lighthouse, Lubec, Maine.The beautiful 3rd order Fresnel lens at West Quoddy Head.The stone says that this is the easternmost point in the United States. Which sounds impressive until you look at a map and see how much further east Canada goes.Looking out over the ocean at West Quoddy Head.
The countryside around West Quoddy Head made me homesick, though. Except for the lack of mountains and the fact that the ocean’s in the wrong direction, it looks so much like the Olympic Peninsula (esp. around Aberdeen and Forks) that it forcibly reminded me of home. I don’t normally do homesick, but it got to me, just a little.
Then I went to Canada, at least for the afternoon. Campobello Island is sort of the Point Roberts of Maine, in that it, like Point Roberts, Washington, is only accessible by going into another country. The reason I wanted to go there was that it was where FDR’s summer home was. They have a nice museum, and the cottage (not nearly as much a misnomer as calling The Breakers a cottage was, but it was still a pretty good-sized cottage) is open for visitors. It’s a lovely place, and there were flowers planted everywhere (that seems to be a Canadian thing, to plant flowers at their historic sites and in their national parks).
Flowerbeds at FDR’s cottage at Campobello, with the cottage itself in the background.Inside the cottage.
Apparently honey locust blossoms make bees drunk [g].I also drove out to the end of the road on Campobello because there’s a lighthouse out there, but it was high tide (Campobello’s at the mouth of the Bay of Fundy) and the lighthouse is only accessible at low tide. It was rather disconcerting to see the two metal staircases, one going down from where I was standing, and the other on the island with the lighthouse, leading down into the rushing water.
The stairs going down to where you can cross to the lighthouse at the tip of Campobello Island — when the tide is low.The lighthouse at the tip of Campobello Island.
After crossing back into the U.S. I headed towards the town of Calais (no, not pronounced the French way – CAL-iss – Cal as in California — is the local pronunciation, at least as I heard it on the radio).
But on the way I saw a sign for the St. Croix Island National Historic Site. It wasn’t on my map, and it was a tiny place, just a visitor center and a three-hundred-foot trail leading down to a view of the water across to the island itself. But it commemorated a settlement that was even older than Jamestown by three years, when Samuel de Champlain and company landed on that island to create a settlement and claim the land for the king of France. As the very enthusiastic ranger lady in the visitor center said, the French part of our history tends to get ignored here in the States. The fact that the settlement only lasted one winter (a very bad choice of location, mostly) before they moved it up into what later became Canada may have had something to do with it, too. But still.
A closeup of one of the bronze statues at St. Croix Island NHS.One of the statues at St. Croix Island, NHS.A model of the settlement at St. Croix Island.Looking out towards the island itself. It’s the sand bar-y looking thing at the center of the photo, not the big piece of land behind it.And the back of another of the statues.
I think it was the statues along the trail that enthralled me, though. Well, that and the whole concept of forgotten history. But I was almost afraid to touch the statues, because I swear it seemed like they would come alive. Which would have been equally scary and thrilling, I think [g].
Anyway, I need to read more about this, and I got several good suggestions from the ranger, which was good.
Then I drove on to Calais, where I spent the night just across the St. John River from Canada!
I had to make a list to get an accurate number for that second one [g].
The night of the fifth I saw a very strange thing from the LL Bean RV lot. The photo I managed to get of it makes it look more like a cloud, but I swear it looked more like a meteor or a comet when I first saw it, and its movement was visible to the naked eye. Very strange.
That odd thing in the sky.
I didn’t take much in the way of photos on the sixth, which is why I’m combining the two days. AAMOF, the only photo I took on the sixth was of the Maine state capitol building in Augusta, and that’s just because it was next door to the Maine Museum. It was about an hour’s drive up from Freeport to Augusta, and I spent the morning and early afternoon in the museum before I decided to stop there for the rest of the day. I got a motel room and caught up on stuff, and read, and that sort of thing for the rest of the day.
The Maine state capitol building.
The museum was great, but I wasn’t allowed to take photos, unfortunately. It covered things by topic rather than chronologically – economic, social, political, and natural history and archaeology, for the most part. The museum itself was older, like the Kentucky state museum was, but it was done very well, and they had a huge collection of artifacts. I particularly loved the working waterwheel that made the little sawmill go.
A view from the Penobscot Bay Bridge.The bridge itself, which was odd in that it had the tall supporting structure between the lanes, instead of on the outside of them.
This morning I got up and out pretty early for having spent the night in a motel, and headed for Acadia National Park. I’ve been to Acadia before, on my 1997 flying-into-Boston trip. Also, I was pretty sure it was going to be crowded on a sunny August Sunday, and I was right, unfortunately.
That said, I still had fun. Like Yosemite and Zion, Acadia now has shuttle busses (sponsored by LL Bean [g]), which are free, and that made getting around much easier. I parked Merlin in the visitor center parking lot, and rode the bus to Bar Harbor’s village green, where I ate a lobster roll for lunch. You can’t go to Maine without eating at least one lobster roll (unless you’re allergic to lobster like my friend Loralee). I’m pretty sure they’ll ticket you at the very least if you try. A lobster roll is lobster chunks dressed in a little mayonnaise, tucked into a toasted hot dog bun. Yum.
Flower bed at the Bar Harbor village green.
Then I got on another shuttle and rode around the main loop in the park, getting off and back on here and there. My first stop was at Sieur le Monts, where volunteers maintain a wonderful native plant garden. One of the volunteers, a young man in a kilt, with a braid, and a very complicated molecule diagram tattooed on one arm, told me the names of several plants I did not recognize, so now I know what their friends call them.
Harebells. I associate these with late summer at Yellowstone and Mt. Rainier. It can’t be late summer yet, though, can it?Hobble-bush, according to the nice young man at the Wild Garden. It’s a kind of viburnum.
My next stop was Thunder Hole. Unfortunately it was low tide, so I didn’t get to hear it actually thunder the way I did the last time I was here, but it was still cool. Basically, what happens is that the waves get forced into this narrow slot in the rock and splash way up high, making this loud booming sound. I took some video of it, just for kicks. One of these days I’ll learn how to upload it — I have the software now, just not the time.
Thunder Hole at low tide.And another view.
After that, it was getting on in the afternoon, plus the busses were getting crowded, so I decided to go on back to the visitor center, because the one place the busses don’t go is Cadillac Mountain.
Cadillac Mountain is in no way, shape, or form an actual mountain (it’s only 1500 feet high), but it’s the highest point on the U.S. eastern seaboard, and you can see pretty much all the way to the curvature of the earth from the top. I drove up to the summit, and was actually lucky enough to find a parking place, so I walked the half-mile trail around the summit and took lots and lots and lots of photos [g].
From Cadillac Mountain.And another view from Cadillac Mountain.Looking down on Bar Harbor.And a glacial erratic on top of the “mountain.”
If it hadn’t been so crowded, I probably would have stayed at Acadia for a couple of days, but it was really, really crowded, and campgrounds were problematic, too, so I decided to go on.
I’m camped about 40 miles north of Acadia, in a county park in the woods on a point sticking out into Narraguagus Bay. Anyway, it’s beautiful here, even if the mosquitoes are about to carry me off.
Tomorrow will be my last day in the States until I’m almost back to Washington. Here goes…
Anyway. I started my morning by navigating the c/o/w/p/a/t/h/s/narrow, winding, one-way streets of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, trying to find Strawbery Banke. I did, after less travail than I expected, and actually arrived before they opened (I tend to get up with the sun and go to bed with the sun when I’m camping).
Strawbery Banke is another living history site, but this one’s different. Instead of concentrating on one era the way Williamsburg and Mystic Seaport did, it covers almost all of the almost four hundred years Portsmouth (whose original name was Strawbery Banke) has been a community, concentrating on the old neighborhood of Puddle Dock, on which the modern Strawbery Banke now sits. So, from the mid-1600s to the 1950s.
Each building, from the oldest one, built in the early 1700s, to one that had most recently been remodeled just after WWII, represented a different time period and a different level of wealth and social class. And there were gardens! No one (ahem, Beth!) told me there would be gardens! Everything from a Victorian greenhouse and bedding garden to another adorable Colonial dooryard garden to an herb garden. There were stores and craftspeople, too. I got to try my hand at a loom, which was fun, and wander into a WWII-era grocery store, complete with ration points as well as the price marked on each item.
Victorian bedding garden with a greenhouse in the background.The parlor of the Victorian house that went with the garden. A future governor of Maine lived here.Elderberries. Wine, anyone?This wallpaper looks like it was inspired by a kaliedoscope.I covet this bed. Also, I really want some quilt fabric that looks like that bed curtain fabric (sorry, Loralee [g]).Another gorgeous cottage garden. I want a garden like that so badly…Mrs. Shapiro, a Jewish lady from 1910, talking with some visitors.A shipping jar from 1700-1750. The rope netting is to help minimize breakage.Food for sale in the WWII era grocery store. Note that Campbell’s soup hasn’t changed a bit, that Aunt Jemima is seriously politically incorrect, and the ration point numbers next to the prices. Also, my mother had some spice containers that could have been about that vintage.The WWII era Victory Garden, complete with chickens in the coop.One of the houses was set up so that you could see what it looked like before and during restoration, which was quite amazing.
I spent a good chunk of the day there, and had a wonderful time.
Then I drove on north on I-95, because it was getting late and I wanted to get to my stop for the night – plus I’ve been to this part of Maine before, and I want to spend most of my time that I’ll be on the coast northeast of Acadia since I’ve never been to that part of the state before.
My destination for the night was Freeport, which is basically a factory outlet town surrounding the original LL Bean store. Not that I’m a huge fan of factory outlets, but LL Bean has a free overnight parking area for RVers (which I count as, since I don’t pitch a tent or anything). It was nice and shady and cool(!), and I ended up parked across from someone from the Tri-Cities (southeastern Washington) of all places, which was kind of hilarious.
So that’s where I am tonight. Tomorrow I’m going to Augusta, the state capitol, to visit the Maine State Museum, and then it’s on to Acadia National Park and Down East to Canada (yes, that’s the local turn of phrase, and no, that doesn’t sound right to me, either).
Starting to worry about Canada, for some reason, not sure why. It’s not like I haven’t crossed the border before. But I’ll never have spent that much time there before, either. And Quebec’s got me just a tad freaked out because of the language thing, too. Oh, well. ‘S good for me. Builds character.
Well, and a listee who is also my copy editor and a friend.
Anyway, I got a late start this morning, since I only had about an hour’s drive and only had to be there by noon. It wasn’t a bad drive at all, although there was a slowdown just before I crossed over from Massachusetts into New Hampshire. It didn’t last long, though.
I stopped at a welcome center just after I crossed the border to ask about campgrounds. The gentleman behind the counter was very helpful and told me about a state park about half an hour from Portsmouth, which is where I want to go tomorrow. After crossing over into New Hampshire, though, I started seeing the weirdest freeway signs I’ve ever seen.
The sign reads NH State Liquor Store and Lottery Tickets, exit one mile. Is this bizarre or what?
My copy editor lives in Dover, New Hampshire, just before you cross into Maine. She had asked me to meet her in the parking lot of a local ice rink, because a) convenient, and b) free parking. I got there a little early, and sat and read for a bit until she came up to Merlin’s window.
Dover, New Hampshire’s city hall.Dover has mounted police officers!
We went out to lunch at a nice little café, where I ate veggie quiche and salad, with a piece of the excellent blueberry pie for dessert. New England blueberries are better than blueberries from just about anywhere else, including home (we have better blackberries, though [g]). Beth also insisted, once she found out I’d never heard of such a thing before, that I take a whoopie pie with me for later. Whoopie pies look like Oreos on steroids (about four inches around and an inch thick), except that the cookie part is more like cake, and apparently they are a New England thing. Although our waitress at the café appeared to be surprised that I’d never heard of them before.
Beth and I had a nice long lunch with lots of conversation, and I enjoyed myself very much. She’s my last person to visit until I get to Ontario. Afterwards, I headed just a bit west to the state park, the name of which starts with a P and is centered on a swimming lake. The campground is huge, and heavily wooded, and the site I was assigned to has this long driveway, down a slope between trees. I thought I could turn around at the bottom, but I couldn’t, so I ended up backing up all the way to get out of it this afternoon when I couldn’t find my bug dope and had to go buy some at the park’s little store. I know it’s in the van somewhere, but it’s nowhere to be found, and there are mosquitoes here.
Anyway, when I came back, I backed down into the site, so at least I won’t have to back up again first thing in the morning. It was easier backing down the hill into the site than backing up out of it, too.
I got here about the middle of the afternoon and just read and kicked back in the pretty woods, until about an hour later, the lady in the site next to me exclaimed, “Turkeys!” I was like what? until I looked up, and lo and behold there was a whole flock of wild turkeys strolling through our campsites. I literally could have reached out and touched some of them. I don’t think I’ve ever seen them so close up before. I grabbed my camera and took a bunch of photos, which was fun.
Turkeys! In my campsite!
And probably the best bird photo I will ever take [g].Tonight there seems to be a party going on a ways off, including music. I hope they obey the quiet hours that are supposed to begin at ten pm (they did, about fifteen minutes after i wrote this).
Other than that, this is just about the perfect campsite. Oh, and I ate about half of the whoopie pie for dessert with supper. It’s tasty.
Tomorrow I’m doing more living history at a place called Strawbery Banke (yes, that’s the correct spelling) in Portsmouth, which is one of the oldest towns on the eastern seaboard (why is it the west coast, but the eastern seaboard? just curious). Then across the border into Maine! I keep saying that, but this time I mean it [g].
Today I left Cape Cod. It was a lovely couple of days, but time to move on. Before I did, though, I stopped in Hyannis and went to the JFK museum, which wasn’t, as I’d thought, his presidential museum and library (which turns out to be in Boston), but is about his connection to the Cape – among other things, he signed the bill creating Cape Cod National Seashore (thank you very much, Mr. President!), and of course, his whole family has had homes here for generations (his father bought their first house here).
This used to be the post office in Hyannis.
And so back over the Sagamore Bridge and north on I-495, which is a pleasant if monotonous drive (lots and lots of trees and gentle hills, but not much else). There’s really no other efficient way to get around Boston, though, and that’s pretty much what I’d decided to do at this point (I have been to Boston before, honest).
This was sorta surreal to me, kind of the symbolic halfway point in the trip (probably not quite the actual halfway), because almost 3000 miles west on this interstate and I’d be at Snoqualmie Pass.What most of I-495 looked like. In the over 8000 miles I’ve driven so far, I’d say about 800 of that has been on Interstate.
I did turn off the highway once, though, and that was to go to Concord, to see Walden Pond. I’d been to Concord once before, and had gone to Louisa May Alcott’s house and the Minutemen Museum, but I’d somehow missed Walden. Not that I’m a huge Thoreau fan or anything, but I just wanted to see it. Turns out Walden Pond is now a state park primarily used for its swimming beach, which I found rather amusing. But there is a trail around the pond which leads to the appropriately-marked cabin site. Most of the people visiting it seemed to be young Asian men, for some reason. There was also a replica of the cabin next to the park’s parking lot.
Where Thoreau’s cabin once stood.Walden Pond.The replica cabin.
Back on the freeway, I was only a few miles from my destination for the night, the town of Lowell, Massachusetts. Lowell was one of the places where the industrial revolution got started in the U.S., with the Merrimack River giving it water power for textile mills. It has a very interesting multicultural history, and the visitor center downtown has its own free parking lot (a rarity in New England in my limited experience [wry g]).
A patent model of a loom in the visitor center at Lowell National Historic Park.A statue outside the visitor center.
And then there’s the New England Quilt Museum just down the street, which had some gorgeous quilts, as well as an exhibit of presidential wall hangings.
One of the presidential wallhangings, this one of Jefferson, of course. There was one for each president, up through Obama.The hand quilting on Grant’s wallhanging was pretty amazing.My favorite quilt in the New England Quilt Museum. It’s supposed to evoke the Maine coast and succeeds amazingly.
Unfortunately, the Textile History Museum had closed due to lack of funding, but the rest of the neighborhood was fascinating.
This evening I met Ann, another listee, and her husband Ben for dinner at a little place called the Eggroll Café in Lowell. It wasn’t easy to find – Lowell does not appear to believe in street signs – but the food was good and the company was fun. I enjoyed myself very much, and when it was time to go, Ann rode with me to my motel (no campgrounds nearby and I didn’t want to go searching for one in the dark) to help me get back out of Lowell, and Ben picked her up there.
Tomorrow I get to have lunch with my copy editor (who lives in Dover, New Hampshire), and then it’s on to Maine!
This morning I got a fairly early start, and, after a quick stop at a grocery store, I headed back north along U.S. 6 (the Cape’s backbone highway). The advantage of getting up and out before eight in the morning is that the roads aren’t crowded.
My first stop was at Nauset beach and lighthouse, the parking lot of which was full by the time I got to it yesterday. The sky was gorgeous this morning, and while the lighthouse itself wasn’t open to visitors, it was still pretty, perched up on its cliff where it had been moved back not once, but twice in its 150 years of existence.
A whale’s jawbone gate and a weird-looking house near Nauset Light.Salt marsh and water at Nauset.More cool skies over the Cape.Nauset Lighthouse.
I then went for a hike at Great Island, on the bay side of the cape, which looks very different from the ocean side. The trail was about four miles long, but I don’t think I went more than a mile and a half or so one way. Part of the trail crossed a huge dune, and it’s really hard to walk on all that loose sand. On the other hand, the sand is this lovely golden color and the views were pretty amazing.
Salt marsh and water at Great Island.
The next thing I knew I was back up in Provincetown, where I ate a picnic lunch. It started to rain just as I finished up, which was good timing, and I thought I’d like to go and see the Pilgrim monument and its associated museum. I didn’t count on everyone else thinking that would be a good idea on a rainy day, too, and it was impossible to find a parking place within a reasonable walking distance, so I had to bag that. I did manage to get a picture of the monument, which is by far the tallest thing in Provincetown. This is where the Pilgrims landed before they decided it probably wasn’t the best place to start a colony and went on to Plymouth.
The Pilgrim Monument at Provincetown.
Provincetown is also the gay mecca of New England, and is famous for its drag queens and nightlife and so forth. All I can really tell you about that is that there are rainbow flags everywhere there. I liked that. The Pilgrims are probably spinning in their graves ululating at high pitch, to quote Lois Bujold (she was talking about Beta Colony and John Knox, IIRC), which amuses me vastly.
My last little hike for the day was at Pilgrim Heights, a few miles south of Provincetown, which, in good national park tradition, was a nature trail with plant labels. I saw bayberries and Virginia creeper and oaks and pines – and a little red berry with no label! I’m going to have to look that one up. The berries look like currants, but the foliage looks like plums. I’m wondering if it’s beach plum, but if it is, people make jam out of it, and, wow, it would take a gazillion of those tiny things to make just one pint.
Whatever this is, it doesn’t look like Googled photos of beach plum.Bayberries, the stuff they make candles from.The trail at Pilgrim Heights.
After that, I was chilled (yes! really!) and damp, so I came on back to my campsite and read for a while.
Tomorrow I will say good-bye to the Cape, after stopping in Hyannis to visit the John F. Kennedy museum, and drive up and around Boston to Lowell, Massachusetts, which has some history I want to explore, and to meet up with Ann from the Bujold list at an eggroll restaurant for dinner.
For those who don’t live on the rainy side of the Cascades, that means I’m getting an ocean breeze, aka natural AC, and I am so expletive-deleted happy about it I could spit. It only got to 75dF where I am today, which, admittedly, is on Cape Cod, which means I’m surrounded by ocean, so that may have something to do with it [g].
I got kind of a late start this morning, trying to decide which direction to go, and wound up heading down to the Cape, as they say locally. Distances are so short in this part of the world that looking at a map makes me feel like things are much farther than they should be. I’m used to looking at a map of, say, Washington, all on one page, but putting something 400 miles across on one page is way different than putting something only about 150 miles across on one page.
The Cape Cod Canal, from a viewpoint on the Cape side of the Sagamore Bridge.
Anyway, so I arrived at the Sagamore Bridge about eleven in the morning, and crossed the Cape Cod Canal (which technically makes the Cape an island, but whatever). First I took what was marked on the map as a scenic route along the edge of the bay, but I never did get a glimpse of the water from it (I mean, why else would it be marked scenic? – mostly what I saw was a lot of trees and little shops and stuff), so after lunch in Hyannis, I got onto the main highway and made time to the “real” Cape, which to me is Cape Cod National Seashore.
I stopped at the visitor center at Salt Pond and got myself oriented, as well as asking where to camp. Turns out the National Seashore does not have campgrounds of its own, and the private campgrounds on the Cape are expensive. I’m paying considerably more for a campsite here than I paid for my motel in Williamsburg. Which is just Wrong. It is a nice campground, though, with showers and laundry facilities, among other things.
The ocean side of the Cape, from where Marconi sent the first wireless transmission between the U.S. and the U.K.I’d never seen white wild roses before, but they were all over the place at the Marconi walk.This is knapweed, which is lovely and all over the place on the Cape. Too bad it’s considered a noxious weed.One of the beaches on the ocean side of the Cape, with lots of sunbathers.Cape Cod Lighthouse. There are over half a dozen lighthouses on the Cape, but this was the first one — or, rather, this is the one they rebuilt in the 1850s after the one from the 1790s burned down or something.This small Fresnel lens was inside the keeper’s quarters of the Cape Cod Lighthouse. The original — first order! — lens was destroyed!!! when the lighthouse was automated, which was a horrible crime, IMHO.
This afternoon I drove all the way to Provincetown, stopping at a couple of places along the way (although I intend to do some more exploring in that direction tomorrow), including a lighthouse and another visitor center, as well as several beaches and the place where Marconi sent the first wireless signal from the U.S. to the U.K. (yes, I know he sent a signal from Canada to the U.K. before that, but still [g]). I really love this place, in spite of the summer crowds, and in spite of the fact that swimming in the ocean is not my thing (it seems really weird to me, AAMOF, but then I’ve been living for 23 years in a place where swimming in the ocean without a wetsuit, no matter what time of year it is, will give you hypothermia).
It’s so beautiful here. The dunes are a surreal landscape, the lighthouses are charming, and even the busy little tourist towns are cute. I’m glad I decided to stay two nights here, and I’m looking forward to doing some more exploring tomorrow.
The sky from the Province Lands visitor center near Provincetown. The skies are amazing here.The Race Point Lighthouse at the very tip of the Cape, taken with all the zoom my little camera could muster.
This morning I left out fairly early, and was across the state line into Rhode Island almost immediately. I’ve wanted to go to the town of Newport for a very long time. As it turns out, it’s a major production to get through the town to the part I really wanted to see, but I did make it eventually. It didn’t help that I had to arrive the weekend of the Newport Jazz Festival, but oh, well.
First I drove out and around the scenic ocean drive, which reminded me of nothing so much as Seventeen-Mile Drive in Monterey, California. Big fancy expensive houses right on the waterfront, interspersed with parks where us normal people can get out and enjoy the views, too.
The bridge over Narragansett Bay onto Rhode Island (the island itself as opposed to the state name).A funny sculpture in downtown Newport.A view of the shoreline.Cormorants perched on the rocks.One of several egrets I saw.
Then I went in search of a mansion I could visit, so I picked the biggest one I could find. Cornelius Vanderbilt had The Breakers built in the early 1890s as a summer “cottage” (and then only got to live in it for one summer before he died). It’s almost 140,000 square feet (no, that’s not too many zeroes) of Italian inspired architecture and more gilding and carving and fancy furbelows than you can shake a stick at. See for yourself:
The front of The Breakers.The Great Hall at The Breakers.One of the chandeliers in the dining room. I thought this was a cool shot — just don’t ask me to manage a photo like that again [wry g].A doorway carving. Note the signs of industry (a railroad, etc.) behind the cupids.That silvery stuff in the background of those goddesses is *platinum.*One of the many, many, many hand-carved details.That bathtub was carved from a solid chunk of marble, and had to be refilled with hot water several times before the marble warmed up enough not to soak up all the heat and leave the water cold. Oh, and the four taps? Hot and cold fresh water, and hot and cold salt water.Even the stove is huge at The Breakers.The back facade of The Breakers.
It came with an audio tour so I didn’t have to follow a guide with a group of fellow lemmings, which was nice.
But once the tour was over, I realized I really didn’t have much else I actually wanted to do in Newport, and it was still way early in the afternoon, so I called and cancelled my hostel reservation and headed east (yes, east, not north) to Massachusetts, and the city of New Bedford, with its National Historic Site devoted to the ships that sailed around the world in pursuit of whales.
And my third state of the day (I didn’t get a good photo of the welcome to Rhode Island sign, alas).
It was interesting, although I could have done without the re-created cobblestone streets (I like my teeth, and I’m sure Merlin didn’t much care for being bounced around like that, either), but by then I was ready to find a motel (the rule is still two nights camping, third night in a motel, and I’m so glad I can do the former now!).
I had to drive up into Massachusetts a ways to find one that wasn’t way overpriced, but I did, and now I need to decide what I want to do in Massachusetts, whether I want to go into Cambridge to see the maps exhibit, or go to Cape Cod, or Emily Dickinson’s house in Amherst, or Old Sturbridge Village, or any combination of the above. It doesn’t help that I’d be pulling a Kentucky (zigzagging across the entire state, not that it’s all that big to begin with) to do them all. I guess I’ll see how I feel in the morning.
Last night was fine, and this morning I got an early start and arrived at Mystic Seaport just before it opened at nine a.m. I’ve got so many photos of the Seaport that I’m just going to put them all at the end.
It was just as good as I remembered, although I have to say I don’t remember a lot about it. The highlight was the Charles W. Morgan, which is the oldest whaling ship left in America. She just turned 175 years old a few days ago, according to the docent who told me. It was built in 1841. I got to board her and look around, and watch a crew launch one of the little boats they actually chased the whales in. That was fun.
I also went through lots of reconstructed period maritime businesses and a couple of homes (one of which had a garden I fell completely in love with), and went through a really wonderful (and air-conditioned – while the temperature is only in the low 80s, it’s even more ridiculously humid) exhibit on whaling history. It sorta took Moby Dick as a jumping off point, but aside from that (Moby Dick is one of my least favorite books I ever had to read in college) it was enthralling. Some of the technology they used for the exhibits was stuff I’d never seen before, too, which fascinated me, too.
Oh, and I got to see the one thing that made an indelible memory for me the last time I was here, which was the exhibit of ships’ figureheads. They were so cool.
I finally left Mystic Seaport about the middle of the afternoon, and came back to the Indian casino camper lot, where I decided I’d go check the casino itself out. Why not, right?
Well, it’s the biggest casino I’ve seen outside of Nevada (and presumably Atlantic City, although I’ve never been there), and certainly the biggest Indian casino I’ve ever seen (which is saying a fair amount as we have a number of them in Washington). I thought I’d check out the outlet mall attached to it, just for the heck of it (since I’m not a gambler and also because they don’t believe in smoke-free casinos the way they do at home). It was the biggest outlet mall I think I’ve ever seen, too, and it was only one small part of the casino. Anyway, I was really glad they had a shuttle running out to the parking lots, because my feet were dead by the time I was ready to leave.
Tonight I’m camped here again, but tomorrow night I have a reservation at a hostel in Newport, Rhode Island. I’d have had one tonight, but the Newport Jazz Festival is this weekend, so lodging was hard to come by. So I’ll go drive around where all the mansions are, and tour one or two (I’m thinking of Cornelius Vanderbilt’s The Breakers, in particular), which is something I’ve always wanted to do, then I’ll spend the night and head north in the morning.
I will also have knocked off one more state (Rhode Island), probably the last one that I’ve never been to for this trip, since the only two left after that will be Oklahoma and Hawaii [g].
Then it’s on to Massachusetts, and New Hampshire, and Maine. And Canada!
A cigar store Indian standing in front of the grocery store.Appropriately enough, the quilt on the bed in one of the homes I toured is a Mariner’s Compass pattern.Calling Dan Reilly. This is just like the police lantern he used in Sojourn!Did you know they used to make sewing machine lubricant from whale oil???A chunk of ambergris, which is a whale product. One of my favorite fictional characters is described as smelling faintly of ambergris, and this is *not* what I was expecting it to be!That globe is a projection screen, believe it or not. You could choose one of three documentaries to watch on it.The Charles W. Morgan, 175 years old, and the oldest whaling ship in existence today.Crew’s quarters in the Morgan. Can you imagine spending several years straight sleeping in there???Another view of the Morgan.Lowering a whaling boat from the Morgan.The garden I fell in love with. It’s the mishmash of flowers, the whole dooryard thing, and the picket fence, I think.Aren’t these the most beautiful rose hips you’ve ever seen?Figureheads. One of the few things I really remember from the last time I was here.Tiger lilies! Blooming full blast with all the stops out.Part of a whole display of miniature figureheads. The biggest ones are about six inches tall.
As my mother would quote at me whenever it rained. Which it did, most of last night and well into the day today, although it had stopped – and cooled off, down to around 80 for the high, amazingly enough – by mid-afternoon.
I left Irene’s around nine, and headed southeast towards the Connecticut coast and New Haven. It was a pretty drive, which could have used more pullouts for photo opportunities. New Haven itself was something of a rabbit warren. I’d had sort of vague ideas (not terribly concrete ones because DC sort of museumed me out) of stopping at the Peabody Museum of Natural History and the New Haven Museum (local history), but parking was a pain in the rear so it just didn’t happen.
The river I followed from Danbury to New Haven. It’s very inconsiderate of my map not to have its name marked.An interesting building in New Haven, crouched down amongst the skyscrapers.
Once I got to the coast, I kept trying to get off of I-95 and onto U.S. 1, but wow, were the roads badly labeled. At one point I was so lost I wound up flagging down an extremely nice FedEx driver, who let me follow him out of the labyrinth of backroads – and back to I-95 instead of U.S. 1 [sigh]. So I pretty much gave up at that point and didn’t try to get back off of the Interstate until past New London, where U.S. 1 was labeled, and went on to Mystic.
The only real reason I wanted to go to Mystic is for the Mystic Seaport Museum, which I’d been to once 35 years ago, on the same trip that I saw Washington Irving’s house. I had good memories of it, and I love maritime history, and I wanted to see it again.
I didn’t arrive in Mystic till the middle of the afternoon, though, so I parked Merlin (who parallel parks much more easily than you’d think) on a side street and walked the touristy little downtown, where I also got to watch the drawbridge over the harbor entrance go up. Which was kind of cool.
I haven’t seen the movie, but I’ve driven by the pizza place, does that count?One of several painted submarines in downtown Mystic.A tribute to my alltime least favorite fictional character. If someone behaved like that to me, he’d get a knuckle sandwich.
Then I went looking for a campground, because it was, hurrah! cool enough to camp. Well, barely. And my rib is finally healed enough, too!!! I ended up in the RV lot of a local Indian casino with everything from huge fifth-wheelers to one family with a tent trailer, and at least two other vans, of which mine was the smallest. I fit right in, thanks much. It was either that or pay forty bucks for a campsite, and I’m sorry, that’s ridiculous. I paid less than that for my motel room in Williamsburg, and it was the principle of the thing.
Last night, Irene and I walked around her neighborhood, which has houses built over 200 years ago. That was fun, if a bit hot and sweaty, and dark by the time we got back. We also ate Thai food for supper, which was another first for me. I’d always thought Thai food had to be really hot and spicy, so I’d always avoided it. Turns out I was wrong. I had pad thai with shrimp and lots of bean sprouts, and it was quite delicious.
This morning I was looking at my map and noticed a state park named after Franklin Delano Roosevelt that was only about thirty miles away, so I decided to go check it out. Irene tells me that it’s only a ten minute walk to the train station and a two-hour ride to go into New York City, but NYC intimidates the heck out of me. Someday I’ll fly into JFK and actually stay in the city somewhere, but for now, no. By the time I got there I’d only have four hours or so to do stuff before I’d have to turn around and come back.
Anyway, so it turns out because the roads are so twisty and turny and go through so many little 30 mph towns, thirty miles took about an hour. And when I got there, it turned out that it wasn’t a historic park at all. In which case why name it after him? Oh, well.
I came back and went to the Danbury Railway Museum, after getting a recommendation for the diner across the street where I ate a huge Italian grinder for lunch. Grinder appears to be the local term for a sub sandwich. Anyway, it was good.
And the museum was fun. It had four working model railroad setups, and lots of railway artifacts, and, outside, at least twenty vintage rail cars, engines, and cabooses, some of which you could go inside of. I went in a couple of them, but my nemesis the weather drove me back inside, which was fine.
The Danbury Railway Museum.A whole rack of antique railway brochures. The one fourth from the right in the fourth from the top row is for the Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroad [g].One of the four model railway layouts, each with a button to push to make it run.Some of the many antique railway cars in the museum’s yard.I’m not quite sure what the purpose of these pink pigs is, but I thought they were cute.A slightly more than 100 year old steam engine.
I came back to Irene’s and now I’m catching up on things and figuring out where I’m heading tomorrow and where I’m going to spend the night. It’s supposed to be cooler in general tomorrow, and cooler on the coast than here, so I’m going to see about camping for the first time since I fell out of the van. We’ll see how that goes.
Heading east by north. It’s funny how the coastline runs east-west in this part of the world.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![You can read the caption [g].](https://p2.dreamwidth.org/8aa0f2dfc353/318020-548540/mmjustus.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/5-14.jpg)
![This was the view from the first lighthouse, which I apparently didn't get a photo of [smacks head a la V-8].](https://p2.dreamwidth.org/ceef09ed10c7/318020-547139/mmjustus.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/5-9.jpg)
![Self-evident [g].](https://p2.dreamwidth.org/d2c9fe00cc54/318020-546932/mmjustus.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/11-4.jpg)
![Apparently honey locust blossoms make bees drunk [g].](https://p2.dreamwidth.org/4b26e099e7d2/318020-546348/mmjustus.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/8-5.jpg)
![I covet this bed. Also, I really want some quilt fabric that looks like that bed curtain fabric (sorry, Loralee [g]).](https://p2.dreamwidth.org/845e63e45bed/318020-546038/mmjustus.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/6-3.jpg)
![And probably the best bird photo I will ever take [g].](https://p2.dreamwidth.org/f9f52cedd2fc/318020-545645/mmjustus.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/5-3.jpg)
![One of the chandeliers in the dining room. I thought this was a cool shot -- just don't ask me to manage a photo like that again [wry g].](https://p2.dreamwidth.org/90c2b3e65a3a/318020-544668/mmjustus.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/8-16.jpg)
![A whole rack of antique railway brochures. The one fourth from the right in the fourth from the top row is for the Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroad [g].](https://p2.dreamwidth.org/2c47b3b502e1/318020-543867/mmjustus.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/2-20.jpg)
