Acadia National Park

Between seeing Dana and Charlie in Portland and Andrea (Meg's university roommate) in Lebanon (New Hampshire) we had a few days. Charlie had spent a few summers teaching sailing at Acadia National Park in Maine and had some good suggestions on activities to do in the park so we headed up there.

The park had kind of a interesting history with most of the land in the park being donated by private donors early in the 20th century (rather than being set aside public land). One of the neat features of the park are a series of carriage roads throughout the park (50 miles in all) set up by John D. Rockefeller Jr. in order drive his carriage around, away from motorized traffic. It is now an excellent series of paths for biking and Meg and I spent one of our days cycling the paths as well as cycling to the tallest point along the north Atlantic Seaboard, Cadillac Mountain.

Meg looking for me on the trail... she won't find me though. I am behind her.

We also spent one day doing a really fun little hike which Charlie suggested (that guy really came up gold for us). It was called the precipice hike and pretty much just had us hiking up the mountain in the steepest way possible, but it had rungs set up anywhere where any gear might be required. It is not suggested that you descend the hike so we made our way back to the car through a more circuitous route that unfortunately ended up with us climbing down a smaller cliff with rungs (I guess having a topo map would have paid off there). Since neither of us died, it was a really great day.

The "Meghan is Radical" Triptych

Following the Cairns

Meg and I before our descent to the sandy beach (in the background)

Vacationland...a visit in Maine

After escaping the rain in Halifax we spent a quick night in Fundy National Park in New Brunswick (sadly, we didn't have enough time to catch any exciting tide action). From there we headed down to Portland, Maine to spend a long weekend with Dana and Charlie (that's right we were lucky enough to see Dana for a third time this trip). Charlie's grew up in Yarmouth just outside of Portland, and his folks still live there.

We had a wonderful visit with Dana and Charlie and got to spend a bit of time with Charlie's friends from back home. We also got to hang out with Charlie's grandmother, Butter, for a night which was really nice. Meg got a few knitting tips from Butter which was good, as she had run out of yarn on the scarf she was knitting and had no idea how to wrap it up (I guess they call it casting off), so the finished half-scarf had just been sitting there on the needle for three days.

A major highlight of the trip was a day spent on a Charlie-guided tour of the Portland area which included a beach walk, a delicious bakery snack by a lighthouse park, and a lobster roll on a dock downtown all on a really sunny day. A few pictures of that day are included below.

Rocky Beach outside of Portland on a super sunny day.

Meghan looking at Dana looking at Spain.

Meghan, Dana and Charlie's hand. We had to walk above the beach a little as the tied came in while we were exploring. (Fun fact: Dana's shoe is wet in this picture as she lost a race with a wave a little earlier)

Welcome, DJ Flashy Fish

DJ Flashy Fish.

DJ short for Derby Junior.

Flashy Fish to honour his home, Nova Scotia, and our time in the Atlantic provinces.

Born: 2010

Birth to us: Wednesday

Kilometres to date: about 300

Kilometres to go: thousands!

DJ, in all his glory

As fate had it, we found a perfect first addition for Flashy Fish himself

Look how much room we have!

A Memoir

RIP Derby

We loved you. You served us well. We will miss you, and we thank you for the adventures.

Derby, after tiring himself out having made it to Cape Spear, the most eastern point in North America, only a few days earlier

A Few Days in Halifax

The ferry brought us back from Newfoundland to Nova Scotia, and we made our way to Halifax for a few days of museums and music. The Maritime Museum of the Atlantic was good, with many small sailing boats, an interesting display on treasure hunters (they get 90% of the non-artifact treasure they find and the government gets 10), and an exhibit on the Halifax explosion , but was far out done by Pier 21, Canada's Immigration Museum. We had a great tour guide who told us alot about the history of the immigration site but more interestingly told a few touching stories about immigrants who had passed through the port on the way into Canada and come back years later to visit and tell their stories...a must see for this city.

We've had a couple nights of great music in local pubs, and spent one night with a musician we had first seen in Celtic colours. We got to hear inside stories of life growing up in Cape Breton, as well as stories about Irish stick fighting. That was a really great night!

Of course...can't be here without having some lobster!

Cameron, about to eat him some lobster... Unless the lobster eats him first!!! No it won't as it has been boiled to death.

We had decided to move on from Halifax to head to Yarmouth, where, aside from having once in a lifetime flooding, there was meant to be a Nova Scotia music festival going on. Before heading out of town though we popped by a Honda dealership to check out what used Fits they had. This was just a precautionary measure as we were starting to think about getting a new car on our return from Asia as the Derbster was exhibiting some troubling behaviour. At that point we learned that though there were a few used Fits available, the brand new 2010 Fits were actually going on sale by $2500 in order to make room for the 2011 models. Whether Derby decided that he had accomplished his task of getting us across the country and we now had a good alternative, or whether he was pissed off at us for looking at new cars (he was standing right there) (or whether it is just a car, and not actually a thinking being, and broke down randomly) about an hour out of Halifax Derby called it a day on us. We are not too sure what exactly went wrong (though it seemed oddly similar to our previous distributor issue) and we decided not to find out, finally letting the little guy have a break (hence Meg's eulogy for the little fellow on other posts).

After being hauled back into Halifax with a friendly tow truck driver from Bridgewater we spent the last few days trying to get a new car figured out (who we will introduce in a future post, when we actually get him). This has seen us walking through rather inclement whether several hours each day to figure out amongst other things, what car to buy, how to insure the car, how to register the car, how to get rid of Derby and how to carry our bikes on our new car. We are pretty sure we will have it all worked out tomorrow afternoon and be back on the road. Which is good news since we mean to be in Portland, Maine on Thursday night.

I think the funnest part of the last few days was spending a few hours in the provincial legislature while it was in session. We got to hear the opposition party ask about 200 questions about the closing down of an all girls religious school in Cape Breton, while the ruling party answered the same way 200 times. I think at one point the opposition may have asked, "Will the

eduation minister once and for all admit that her party will not buy the school, does not care about these girls future, and that it actually hates these girls and probably hates all children in Nova Scotia?" (I just made that up, but that's pretty much what it was like, and the guy saying it was this Cape Bretoner who yelled every question).

The Rest of Newfoundland

After our extended stay in St.John's with Dana we did a quick tour around the Avalon peninsula including hitting up the most eastern location in North America, Cape Spear.

Derby standing triumphant at Cape Spear.

It was honestly fairly miserable weather while we were down on the peninsula (I think we spent about a third of the voyage in a dense fog) so there were not too many highlights in the region. We did get out for a hike out to the East Coast Trail, unfortunately, by the time we actually got to the trail, after walking through streams and small lakes we had already done 6km and had to turn back in order to not be hiking in the dark. The documentation failed to mention the hike to get to the hike. The coast was really neat and rocky though when we got down to it. The biggest highlight though was our B&B that night. We ended up staying with a women name Rita Hagan and she was one hell of a character, she had stories to tell none stop. The first time Meg heard this older, Christian woman say "What the Eff?" she almost choked. Aside from being reviewed in Frommer's and having some opinions about that (strong opinions of course, as most of hers seemed to be) she also had an Aussi fellow stay with her who ended up writing a song about his memorable stay there. You can check it out here. The video pretty much captures what she is like.

After that we ended up back in St.John's for one night camping up near the university. We wanted to try to get out on the town for Halloween and we ended up having a great night. We heard lots of fun live music and ended up shutting things down around 3:30 and making our rather cold and windy way back to the camp site.

From there we made our way down to the south coast of Newfoundland. The south coast seems to have three or four highways running down to it off of the Transcanada Hwy (which runs up north most of the way along the island) but many towns along the coast are accessible only by ferry. We were actually in a little community with no cars, the "streets" were all board walks. It was really cool and we met and chatted with a few really interesting people. Unfortunately there were times when the language barrier hampered communication a bit. We have a couple photos below of our town hopping.

After that stay we boogied down to catch the ferry off the island.

Picture of McCallum
(they have a diesel generator that supplies power to the town, the power lines are not run from afar)

Little fishing shacks clinging to the rocks in McCallum
(On the far left you might be able to see some fish hanging to dry)

Me, looking good.