7/7/95 (Friday)

We finally got out of Fairfax at 7:45, but not without one return trip to the house for a second pair of tennis shoes for Bob. I didn't think 1 pair and some sandals was good enough for two weeks. That turned out later to be wrong--I just wore the one pair of tennis shoes, not the sandals or the second pair. Martin put up with our leave-taking and last-minute advice for his upcoming weekend trip (and the To Be Done list for the rest of the 2 weeks!), but he looked slightly desperate when we came back the second time as if to say, "But damn me they DON'T go!" [Gilbert & Sullivan--Pirates of Penzance].

When we did finally leave, rush hour was in full swing on the Capital Beltway. A moderate backup delayed us after the Cabin John Bridge, but otherwise it was a typical, bumper-to-bumper rush hour driving. I drove through to Baltimore and gave it over to Monika for the next couple of hours. We had routed our first day's drive along the interstates to reach Binghampton, N.Y. by that afternoon, which went as planned. The only other traffic delay was around Harrisburg, Penn., and it wasn't too bad--we ended up getting 30 mpg for the day.

At Corbettsville, just South of Binghampton, we stopped for a Volksmarch. The 11 km VM was basically a walk straight up a LONG, gradual hill through a bucolic countryside. We both became fully aerobic (and worn out!) after an hour of steady uphill trekking. Along the way up we saw 3 pheasants in a field, darting for cover. The way back was a lot easier than the way up, and we could talk as we walked. Along the way, we flushed a quail from its cover in a bush right alongside the road, greatly surprising us both since the road had sparse but regular car traffic on it and we rather expected the cars would have disturbed any wildlife. My guess is the quail was used to cars but not to talking humans.

Good and tired after about 2 hours, we finished up our walk at the defunct Kiwis restaurant, which had previously offered German cuisine according to the locals. I could have used a bratwurst about then. Instead we had low-fat pretzels and sodas at the Quick Mart which was the registration point for the VM. The 2-lbs of pretzels we bought for $.79 were to last us as snacks until we were in Nova Scotia the second week.

We drove North of Binghampton to the Chenango State Forest to camp for the night. As we signed in, I said something about taking any site that would allow us to get a nice quiet night's sleep, and I saw the two ladies at the counter exchange an uneasy glance. I didn't think anything about it then, but I should have been more suspicious.

We set up the tent in a nice campsite backing up to a stream. It was still early, but we started dinner as we were hungry. Then I heard the bulldozers snorting in the field across the stream. Apparently we were across the stream from the county landfill. Fortunately, they knocked off work for the night at 6 p.m., so we had some peace and quiet after that.

After dinner, we took a walk around the swimming area at the end of an artificial lake over to the camp's nature center, which was closed for the evening. I saw a curiously dog-house shaped structure set about 8 feet high in the air on stilts. It was fenced in all around, and had no doors or windows, but the bottom appeared to the 1 inch strips of lumber set 1 inch apart all the way across. The sign on the fence said, "Bat House, do not disturb." This was the first bat house I've seen, and given the fact that they voraciously eat mosquitoes, I might build one myself.

We had come to the nature center for an "Owl Prowl" that was to start around dusk at 8:30 p.m., but we were an hour early. We debated whether to wait for an hour and take the walk, but we were both so exhausted that we just returned to camp to go to bed about 8 p.m. The campground was still a little noisy and rowdy at that hour, but a rainstorm hit right after we retired for the night, and that quieted everything down marvelously for a while and we both got to sleep.

Unfortunately, our neighbors a couple of tents down were drunk and raucous later that night, continuing until 1:30 in the morning. I dimly recall them arguing about whether you could just drink beer or you had to "chug" it in order to taste it. They were discussing this at the top of their lungs with country and wester music blaring in the background. Oh brother. After they quit for the night, I got back to sleep.

7/8/95 (Saturday)

It had rained again during the early morning hours, so we had to pack up a wet tent--one of the more unpleasant experiences while camping, but easier with the newer nylon tents than with the old canvas cabin tents we used in the 70s. Although the nylon gets cold and wet, it does not absorb loads of water and get stiff like those old canvas tents. We started our morning breakfast rotation of pancakes and cold cereal one day alternating with hot cereal and toast the next day. I had brought two containers of powdered milk for breakfasts, and that was to prove a very useful innovation as we no longer had to worry about buying milk or keeping it cool--always a problem on our previous camping trips.

Our morning drive to Albany was thru intermittent fog, but the green rolling mountains were breathtakingly and hauntingly beautiful in the mists. At Albany we switched to 2-lane roads to drive across Vermont and New Hampshire. Partly we wanted to see this area, and partly we wanted to avoid New York city. Vermont had very few people, and the Green Mountains were quite pretty--green, gentle mountains like the ones near us in the Shenandoah Valley.

The 2-lane road was a lot faster than I had feared it would be. The light traffic and complete lack of stop signs or lights or crossroads let us keep a very steady 55 mph in the "rural" areas. When we came to a "town" (a couple of houses and a gas station), the speed limit decreased to 45 mph, but that didn't happen too often, and we never had to stop except for the really big towns of Bennington and Brattleboro. This all made the driving very pleasant compared to the congested conditions in our area.

After passing thru Keene, N.H., and its stoplight, we stopped for our Volksmarch in Concord. I had always wanted to see the Revolutionary War historic site, and I thought this was the place. The VM started at the Holiday Inn downtown and circled the historic district and State Capital buildings, but nary a word about the Revolution. I saw the house where Mary Baker Eddy wrote the 50th edition of "the scriptures interpreted MY way", and many old Victorian houses, some beautifully restored and others in dire need of restoration. It rained off and on, but Monika had an umbrella and I had my rain shell which I had clipped on my hiking belt, so we made out all right. I began to dimly realize that this Concord was possibly not the town the British had invaded to start the Revolutionary War. For one thing, the distance from Boston to our location would be a hellaciously long multi-day march for British soldiers, and I seemed to recall that they marched out to Lexington and Concord and back to Boston on the same day. Well, my mother didn't raise no dummies, and by the end of the day I knew I had the wrong Concord, but a nice VM nonetheless.

We camped at nearby Bear Creek State Park for the night. The campground is set 3 miles back into the woods along a pretty forested lane--no landfills! We got the last of 2 open spaces. The Winston Cup NASCAR race was that weekend nearby, so many folks were there to sleep cheap and see the race. We were exhausted and turned in about 7:30 p.m. right after dinner.

7/9/95 (Sunday)

Going to bed with the birds, as we tend to do while camping, leads naturally to waking up with the birds, which in this case meant 4:45 a.m. right before dawn. The birds were so noisy we could not get back to sleep, so we got up, showered, and had breakfast.

It was still so early after breakfast that we decided we had enough time to try to walk around the lake before starting the day's drive. We found a yellow-blazed trail which fortunately turned out to be a circuit trail along the lake's edge. The trail was perfectly quiet and carpeted with soft pine needles. A cool breeze blowing off the lake was wonderfully refreshing and the walk all-in-all was very enjoyable.

After sweeping dry sand from the inside of the tent (we track in a lot in wet weather) and brushing wet sand from the bottom of it as we rolled it up, we got everything packed and drove out of the campground area. On our way out I saw a sign for a “Camping Museum” and talked Monika into stopping. The museum itself was closed because it was still too early, but the outdoor exhibits of old pop-up tent trailers and hard-sided trailers were all open. We spent a few minutes looking over some of the old campers and imagining what it would have been like camping in them. The pop-ups from the 1940s were very similar to modern ones except for not having electrical or propane systems. Otherwise, the design of these old models was quite good and basically the same as new pop-up campers. The canvas was deteriorating on the oldest ones, but when new it would have been fairly water tight and wind-resistant. It seemed to me that camping would have been pretty much the same in the old rigs as in newer ones.

We drove thru Rochester N.H. to Saco, Maine, on more of the relaxing, reasonably fast and enjoyable country 2-lane roads we had driven in the previous day in Vermont and N.H.. However, when we turned onto Rt. 1 toward South Portland, the traffic became denser and started backing up, particularly in the town centers. We persevered on Rt. 1 to S. Portland where we took our Volksmarch of the day starting around 11 a.m.

As it was close to lunch, we bought a bad of Bing (sweet) cherries and ate them as we walked up Cottage Street toward the old fort and lighthouse which was built in 1782 (our first checkpoint). Along the way, I also bought two fat-free blueberry muffins and scarfed them down. Monika had a krohler. The return loop took us to the beach along the South side of the bay and back along a nice path thru the city. In between, we read the complete history of the construction of the Liberty Ships during WWII at Portland, trying in vain to find the name of a ship launched May 16, 1942. We wrote down information we did find, hoping that they would give us credit for trying and send the patch for this VM. The walk was very pleasant, but we got sunburn because it was cool and hazy along the shore and we didn't feel the noontime sun.

The drive North from Portland was scenic, but the bridge at Bath backed up traffic for 2 miles, and the city center of Camden caused another slowdown. We were looking for cheap gas and good food, and found neither until 2:30 that afternoon, by which time I was voraciously hungry + anxious about running out of gas. I finally found a Mobil station at $1.21 for regular, and Monika was finally desperate enough to stop at a Subway for lunch. I ate a whole 12 inch turkey breast sub (hold the mayo and cheese but put everything else on it that doesn't have fat except hot peppers).

We arrived at the agreed-upon campground at 5:15, but only had to sit and worry about the folks for a little over an hour as they arrived at 6:30. That is a pretty good connection since we drove 3 days from Virginia and they drove 6 days from Wisconsin. It was so good to see them. We all started gabbing at once, a bad family habit. There was much chattering back and forth about all our relatives and cousins "who we reckon up by dozens". We had been cooking chicken pasta surprise for our dinner, so we just added a lot more pasta and some applesauce and bread to round out a meal for everyone.

We collapsed at 9:00 as we were really on the "early to bed, early to rise" schedule by this time, but my sister's crew kept going for another couple of hours--we live in different biorhythm zones, so to speak. And so to bed.

7/10/95 (Monday)

To save gas, we all tucked into Merlin's Chrysler for the day. We first drove to Ellsworth to find a P.O. and a library. The citizens we asked didn't know where the town library was--it turned out to be one block off the main intersection in the town--but the administrator of a homeless shelter told us the P.O. was 2 blocks up Main Street. We bought our stamps and mailed our bills and letters, as did Lois. We also found the library, but it was closed for the day.

We drove down the peninsula to Acadia National Park. We were limited to driving and seeing things from the car, but there was a nice loop drive on the eastern side of the peninsula that was all inside the park. Along the way we saw beautiful white sand beaches in the sheltered areas along with rugged headlands, all contrasted against a deep blue sky. Very scenic. I had been to Acadia N.P. before, but had forgotten the large "ponds" or interior freshwater lakes between the mountain ranges. We had lunch at the Lighthouse Inn in Seal Harbor. It had a nice ambiance, a pretty garden in back, and good food although it was high-priced by my (fast-food) standards.

We also drove a loop around the western side of the peninsula, but the scenic views were fewer and harder to stop for since turn-outs were not provided. We did get to the lighthouse on the southern tip, which was quite small and attached directly to the old light keeper's house (now privately owned). Curiously, the color of the flashing light in the lighthouse was red rather than white.

One the way back to camp we stocked up on fruit (bananas, strawberries, nectarines, Bing cherries) and I pounced on fat-free blueberry muffins, buying 8. Later I found out that Merlin and Lois had bought 4 fat-free blueberry muffins and bananas for me. We all ate those muffins and bananas for several days, and they stayed remarkably fresh.

7/11/95 (Tuesday)

We were up and packed and on the road out of Ellsworth by the crack of noon. Knowing we would get off late, I spent the time after my morning shower and a long, drawn-out breakfast, laundry session, etc. writing this journal while Monika cross-stitched. We packed up and were almost departing the campground at 10:15, but the dumping station proved elusive--it was so minimally marked that Merlin missed it on his first pass--so we didn't depart for Ellsworth until 10:30. Merlin checked the state of the stock market at the Ellsworth library while Lois, Monika, and I checked out a bookstore (bought $20+) and el cheapo gift stores (bought postcards). Mom sat on the bench in front of the library and read some of the books I bought. She seemed to particularly enjoy the book about Mrs. Pollifax at the China Station, having trouble putting it down to see the sights later on during the trip.

From Ellsworth we drove about 20 miles in 2 hours, with various stops for gas, lunch, putting a spare tire on the trailer, getting the tire fixed, replacing the fixed tire, etc. One tire on Merlin's trailer looked low, so I grabbed my tire pressure gauge and checked it, measuring only 5 psi. I checked the other one on the same side and it measured 45 psi, so I told Merlin there was a problem. The tire iron wouldn't fit, so we stopped at a gas station to borrow a 13/16 socket and wrench to change to the spare. Then we drove 10 miles and found a gas station that would fix the flat. After that, Merlin and I drove back to a NAPA auto parts store to buy a lug wrench with a 13/16 socket on it, but then Merlin remembered he had one such wrench in the trunk (many things lie in the trunk of the Chrysler). So we drove back to the trailer, found the correct lug wrench, and installed the repaired tire.

It was getting late by then, and we changed our Canadian destination to a quick visit to Campobello, which was about 15 miles away. We crossed the border without getting searched--I left my pepper spray which was confiscated on my last Canadian crossing at home, so I felt safer from the border guards if less safe from the unrestrained mongrels I sometimes meet while hiking. Our campground was Herring Cove New Brunswick Provincial Part, right on the island. They had plenty of campsites and mosquitoes, which we avoided by having dinner in the trailer.

7/12/95 (Wednesday)

We popped out of bed at 5:30 a.m., showered, and left for 2 hour morning walk by 6. We walked down to a curious beach which the sign said was a result of glacial deposits of rock after the last ice age. The upper levels of the beach were black sand, looking as I imagine the black sand beaches of Tahiti look like, while the lower level of the beach within 20 feet of the water was deep layers of rounded pebbles. Walking on the sand or the pebbles was quite difficult, but we finally settled on the pebbles as we walked the 1.6 km along the beach to where our trail turned off. The rounded pebbles slid under our feet in such a way as beat the bottom of our feet and made our backs ache with strain of keeping balance, so although the beach was very picturesque we were glad when our trail branched inland.

The loop backward went past Eagle Hill lookout (where we ran out of film!), and an associated nature trail on a boardwalk. Saw a perfect example of a pitcher plant, which has a large, ugly flower on it as well as the pitcher-shaped leaves to catch insects. We continued into a soft, mossy forest path which soothed my aching feet, and walked past the "Gibraltar Rock" which is a large glacial erratic stone somewhat resembling the Rock of Gibraltar, if one uses one's imagination. We had breakfast at 8, and boy were we hungry, just as I imagine the farmers used to be when they worked for 2 hours before breakfast.

The folks were up by the time we returned, but there was a problem with the trailer. The trailer's left rear wheel had been locking up with only mild braking, which was especially noticeable on gravel. Merlin decided to try to fix it by disconnecting the electrical lines which actuated the brake. After first calling Airstream to check this solution out, he did it and tested the result, which was satisfactory.

We packed up and left the campground about noon to drive the short distance to F.D.R.'s summer "cottage" at Campobello. It was really a beautiful 3-story house with 18 bedrooms. Six bedrooms were for the servants, but they hired more locals as temporary maids and valets if friends came to visit (gag me with a spoon).

The furniture was simple and quite modern or perhaps classic in appearance--possibly Frank Lloyd Wright-ish and definitely NOT Victorian. I was surprised because all the furnishings were probably purchased shortly after FDR received the house as a wedding gift around 1900. The house is beautifully situated with a 4 foot by 8 foot picture window in the living room which overlooks the bay.

The guides were stationed at each point of the house to give their spiel and answer questions. Although the spiel was a bit sing-song, they were pleasant and very knowledgeable about answering questions. The main curator told us the model biplane in a bedroom was constructed by FDR for his children and was a rubber-band flying model of a Curtiss "Jenny". She also said, "After my husband and children, this house is the most important thing in my life." She had worked there happily for 15 years.

Leaving the FDR cottage in good hands, we returned across the bridge to the U.S. and drove out to Quoddy Lighthouse, the eastern-most point in the U.S. The lighthouse was sheathed in a light fog, and we couldn't get too close from the seaward side as the foghorn was blowing. But Merlin and I drove around to the service entrance and obtained reasonably good pictures of the lighthouse before continuing our drive northeast to recross into Canada.

We recrossed the border in Calais, which the natives pronounce "Callus", and continued into New Brunswick along Canada 1, the major Canadian through-route. We stopped around 6 at Ocean View Campground, which indeed was just across the street from the ocean. After dinner, Monika showed the folks our photo album from last year and hit the high points. I did my best to stay awake until we hit the sack at 9 p.m.

7/13/95 (Thursday)

Fog! The trucks on Canada 1 passed only 50 yards from our tent, and although the sounds were muffled by the fog, it sounded like they were driving thru our tent flap. I couldn't get back to sleep after 4:15 because the birds started their twittering about 4:30, sun or no sun, so I just laid back and listened to unnatural combination of truck and bird sounds until Monika awakened around 5.

We didn't know how long the fog would last and we thought it would be fun to take a walk in the fog, so we decided to take our morning walk before breakfast again. We walked about 3 miles North on Canada 1 to the Provincial Park and campground, which Monika recalled as one of our campgrounds on our trip to Canada with our boys Judson and Martin in the late 1970s. So we went to see what we could remember.

We walked the side roads wherever possible, as walking on Canada 1 was noisy, unpleasant, and in the fog, dangerous. One bridge in particular had absolutely no shoulder and cars and trucks were swooping by in the fog. We had to listen very carefully and wait until there was no sound of approaching traffic, then walk as quickly as we could toward the other end. We still got caught and had to squeeze against the side once.

In contrast, the side roads had almost no traffic and were much more pleasant. The fog cooled us off very effectively, so I didn't need my sweatband on that hike. Along the way we saw a beautifully symmetric spider's web outlined in sparkling dewdrops (fogdrops?), but we hadn't brought the camera.

Monika remembered camping right beside the beach at this campground on our previous trip. We found the beach, but it was across the street from the campground rather than beside it. Whether our memory was faulty or the park had relocated and expanded the camping area we couldn't tell. We need to look at some of our old photo albums to see for sure.

The tide was way out along the beach and we walked out to the water's edge. It was so foggy we could not see any sign of the shoreline from there. A father and his two young daughters were with us, and the reaction of the children to the waves was fun--the father was very nice to them, speaking to them in French and to us in English. They all had a race back to the shoreline.

We wended our way back to camp to find the others up and about. Merlin took some "fog" pictures (same scene without and with fog) and we had our belated breakfast. After packing up we drove North towards Moncton. The fog was a curious combination of dazzling to the eye and soothingly monotonous, so I had trouble nodding off while driving. At the first stop I had Monika take over since she had more sleep the previous night than I.

After we diverged from the coastline, the fog thinned and gradually lifted. Curiously, the landscape became more verdant as the coastal scrub forest gave way to the rolling hills and cultivated areas of the river valley we were following. The farms were almost all dairy and the only crop I saw was hay, but it had a very "English Countryside" type of look.

We drove eastward from Moncton to the ferry at Cape Tourmentine along the two lane roads that hugged the coastline, wherever possible. In retrospect, the bumpy roads might have caused a problem with the trailer's water system we observed later. We arrived just as the ferry was loading and we drove right on after a short wait--dumb luck. Beautiful ferry. Very luxurious lounges and even a bar and dance floor--it reminded me more of a cruise ship than a ferry's lounge. The ferry was built by Canadian Rail at least 35 years ago, so maybe that accounts for it. A bridge will replace the ferries in 1997, which will cut the 45 minute ride to just a 10 minute drive. Although the ferry is expensive and inefficient, I enjoy ferry rides and will be sad to see them go.

Prince Edward Island was even more intensively farmed than N.B. Besides dairy farms and hay, I saw many fields of potatoes and maybe a couple of fields of rye or wheat--I wasn't sure. We missed the information center completely, but found the Strathgartney Provincial Park for our campground. Fortunately, everything on PEI is close enough that you can camp in the middle and drive out to see things on the other parts of the island. This avoids the daily chores of making and breaking camp that are required if you change campgrounds each night, and gave our vagabond existence a temporary air of stability.

The park had a very well-laid-out nature trail about 1 mile long which we walked with Lois. Our campground was in the open area next to a rim of trees (site #14), whereas the folks were up on the hill near the bathrooms where the trailer hook-ups for water and electric were located. For a change, this campground was quiet. Unfortunately, our site was on quite a slope, so we both had trouble sliding "downhill" off our cots during the night. I fixed this the following night with sections of 2x4s and wood scraps under the legs of the cots to level them, and we finally started sleeping well.

7/14/95 (Friday)

The winds had been very gusty during the night with an occasional spurt of rain showers. Fog and mist during the morning convinced me to wear long pants and a long sleeved shirt for breakfast, but keeping that attire for the rest of the day was a mistake, as I later found out. We all needed Canadian money, so we headed to Charlottetown to find a bank. Mom was given preference at a special "Senior's Wicket", which I thought was a great idea.

Since we were already in Charlottetown, we continued downtown to the Province House. Several rooms of this building are the seat of the PEI government, but the rest has been restored to the 1864 era when it was the site of the first meeting of the representatives from all provinces to discuss the confederation of Canadian provinces. Curiously, as I later learned, PEI was one of the less enthusiastic proponents of confederation, apparently pushed into it by a debt overload from constructing the island's railroad system.

Next door to Province House was a very modern arts center with an outdoor arena or amphitheater. Performers from all provinces sang and danced from 12 to 1 p.m. Lois, Merlin, and Mom watched, but it was too noisy and crowded for Monika and me, so we walked down to the harbor area. The harbor area is being renovated from a tank farm into a nice marina and park, and was quite pretty although it was not yet finished.

I bought a belt which I needed since my long pants fit too loosely now and I had forgotten my money belt. I finally was frustrated enough at repeatedly pulling my pants up off my hips to buy the belt at a tourist shack at the harbor even tho it was $20 (Canadian). Fortunately we had sufficient money as we were spending way under our allocated $100 per day--closer to $50 a day at this time. We ended up with $300 in traveler's checks at the end of the trip, but with VISA charges of about $200 total, so we were slightly under budget for the whole trip.

The clouds had cleared away and the sun became quite hot as we walked back up the hill to meet the folks at the end of the show. A lady driving a radio-station advertising car at the show gave us free soda (me) and potato chips (Monika), so we munched and drank on a park bench behind the Province House and waited for the performance to end. It heated up surprisingly quickly and I sought shade while Monika connected with the folks at the end of the show--I really regretted not bringing shorts and a short-sleeved shirt.

We all had lunch at a small shopping mall across from the arts center. I made the mistake of entering a discount bookstore and only got out an hour later and $30 poorer--I have trouble resisting temptation in bookstores. Bought lots of interesting books including one on the creation myths of cultures from around the world; now if I can just find the time to read them.

Monika bought 2 china cups and a quart of island strawberries for $1.39, which we later found out was a bargain price as it was the cheapest we ever bought them on the trip. We all had some strawberries as we returned to camp, after which Lois and Monika went shopping, Merlin went to a car museum, and I took a cold shower and had a nap even though the tent was quite hot. In the evening, Lois, Merlin, and Monika played recorder trios while I built a fire for Mom and myself, which we all watched until bedtime.

7/15/95 (Saturday)

Monika and I walked the nature trail loop twice this morning, the first time for exercise. The trail dipped down from the campground to the river, and at the reiver I saw a branch of the trail that led on, rather then circling back in a loop. It looked like it had once been an official trail but hadn’t been maintained recently and was somewhat overgrown. I talked Monika into taking the branch and seeing where we would end up. We struggled through the underbrush for another 1/2 mile before coming up against fallen trees and underbrush that completely obscured the trail. The river was a still pond at this point. We took some pictures and retraced our steps to the nature trail loop.

Later that morning, we walked to the trailer and Momsaid that Lois and Merlin were taking a walk. We assumed that they were walking the nature trail, so we tried to find them by walking in the reverse direction around the trail. We walked along expecting to meet them any second, but never did. It turned out they had decided to walk around the campground loop road rather than the nature trail loop.

We started off to see the Green Gables House at 10 a.m., our earliest start yet.

The drive across the island was uniformly pretty, with all the views like those you would see on picture postcards. It reminded me of our drive down the upper Rhein in Germany, only pastoral and bucolic rather than ruggedly spectacular. We stopped at the PEI jam factory, which is a tourist trap complete with tour buses, but does make many unique varieties of jam and different fruit combinations, liquor additives, etc. The manufacture was like I do at home--the "hot pack" method, but scaled up to 20-40 gallon batches to judge by the size of the stainless steel cooking vats. Mom bought Lois and us jam. Ours was gooseberry and red currant jam, a combination I had never seen before but which I thought would be interesting (it was).

We reached Green Gables, our destination for this trip, and took a quick tour of the farmhouse which inspired the "Anne" books. The farmhouse is rather exactly as specified in Montgomery's "Anne of Green Gables" novel. The Canadian Government bought it for historical preservation way back in the 1936 after the initial popular reception of the "Anne" books. The house has been restored to its 1890's appearance as portrayed in the novel, complete with 1890s furnishings and costumes in the rooms. I liked it.

Montgomery did not actually live at Green Gables, but rather at her grandparents home over the hill, who appear rather strict and dour by their portraits. David and Margaret MacNeill, elderly cousins of Montgomery, lived at Green Gables and made her welcome there. Even the "haunted woods" and "lover's lane" areas around the house are as described in the books. Monika and I took a quick turn around the Lover's Lane path in back of the house, which had trail markers with pictures of Montgomery and quotations from her 23 novels. Judging by the quotations, she seems to have been a real nature-loving, outdoorsy woman. A park service guide gave a very nice 15 minute summary of the "Anne of Green Gables" story--we later heard her give the 15 minute French version and she was equally fluent in either language--remarkable.

Outside the National Park, commercial "touristy" development is present but thankfully not overwhelming. Given the advertisements I had seen for a wax museum and a Ripley's "Believe It Or Don't" exhibit, I was afraid the area outside the park would be another Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Fortunately, these "attractions" were few in number and spaced far enough apart and far enough from the park that the effect was not the "Oh my god!" reaction Monika and I had to Gatlinburg. This may change in 1997 after the bridge to the island increases its accessibility, and that would be a shame. My advice would be to see PEI in 1996 rather than later--I'm glad I saw it as it is now.

We also wanted to see Dalvay-by-the-Sea, which was the White Sands Hotel of the "Anne" books, so we drove East toward the other end of the park, stopping at a restaurant to have lunch along the way. At Dalvay-by-the-Sea we found a beautifully preserved Victorian resort hotel of the late 1800s. It is kept in pristine condition and still in use as a hotel. There is a croquet green out front and we watched a croquet game in progress, which is just about the lowest-key type of sport you can imagine, but very nice if you want to relax. We joked about having enough money next time to stay overnight in this charming place.

We drove back thru the park along the seashore drive, and the combination of the red cliffs, red sand beaches, blue sky, and even bluer sea was magnificent. We started a tradition of taking lighthouse pictures wherever possible. There are currently some 60 lighthouses on PEI I was told, but all of them are electrified, automatic, and unmanned. Some are just tiny things, but the ones on the major headlands are generally the older, larger, and more impressive lighthouses.

We continued "lighthouse hunting" along the coast road to the West of the park, and then curled back around toward camp on a "Scenic Heritage Road". This turned into an unpaved, red-dirt road filled with bumps, ruts, and the occasional muddy puddle. At points the road was so narrowed by the trees growing on either side and so rough, we wondered if we had chanced on someone's driveway or private country lane by mistake. I thought it was great fun, but it was definitely hard on our automobiles.

For diner we had leftover potato salad made with good-tasting PEI "new potatoes" which are for sale all over the island at prices ranging from $3 (roadside stands) to $5 (stores) for a 5-lb. bag. Lois had made potato salad from them with fat-free mayo, so I could eat it, thank heavens. It tasted wonderful.

That evening I overdid the "helpfulness" bit while Monika was working, and Monika complained about being treated like a "Pampered Princess", but then Lois piped up and said, "What's wrong with that?". Definitely two different views, and I thought the contrast quite funny. "Pampered Princess" is now one of my stock phrases whenever I want to do things for Monika. I'm glad she has a sense of humor.

7/16/95 (Sunday)

Our morning walk with Lois was out to Rt. 1 and down to a "new potato" roadside stand, but no one was there on a Sunday, understandably. After our earliest start yet, 9:45. We celebrated Sunday by taking pictures of all the church steeples on our way over to the West side of PEI. The steeples ranged from plain to fancy, but all were unique. The one Catholic church we found in an Acadian French village had a steeple that had lace-like wood trim on it, pretty in a typically "French" way. There was also a two-steeple church with equal-sized steeples. We also saw one-and-a-half steeple churches, having two steeples, but one much shorter than the other. Every village had its church, however, and every church had an interesting steeple, so our drive over to the West side of the island was rather prolonged.

Our goal was to visit the shipbuilding museum at Green Park Provincial Park. The museum was small but informative. We first watched a 20-minute film on the shipbuilding era on PEI and then read about the shipbuilding boom of the mid 1800s in the various exhibits. The Yeo brothers, owners of the shipyard, had a curious commercial arrangement with their half-brother back in England. They completed the hull and basic sails of a ship and had it sailed back to the half-brother's yard in England, where the fitting-out and customizing for the final customer was completed. The finished ships brought more in the English market than they would have in the North American market, apparently. The family must have had trust in each other and a good working relationship to make this work but the endeavor was a commercial success for many years, giving one of the Yeo brothers enough money to build a fancy house.

The Yeo house was the high point of our museum visit. It is a completely restored Victorian house from about 1865. Two guides dressed as maids gave short spiels about the house and answered our many questions. The house was not dark and dreary as I imagined all Victorian houses to be, but rather light and quite cheerful. The furnishings were complete and they all fit together to give the correct living atmosphere for each room. All of us except Mom climbed to the cupola above the 3rd floor, which offered a 360 degree view of the museum grounds.

The shipyard itself was quite simple, as most wooden shipbuilding yards were in those days (e.g. Mystic, Conn.). It consisted of just a blacksmith/machine shop and a carpenter/sail shed, both with very simple tools although I was surprised to see a hand-operated drill press in the blacksmith shop. More important than machinery for building wooden ships was location. Large stands of timber were needed for framing and planking, and a gradual slope into a nearby body of sheltered water deep enough to float the ship was required for the initial fitting out. A steaming chamber for bending the wood to shape was something I hadn't seen before. Back at the museum, I couldn't resist buying a schooner model kit and a lighthouse model kit before we left. Now I hope to get the time to build them using my new workbenches in the garage.

The museum staff told us that the West Point lighthouse had a nice restaurant, so we headed that way, but didn't arrive until 2 p.m. when we were all famished. The view was great, the food tasty, the ambiance very nice, and the prices quite reasonable--what more could you ask? After dinner, we ran up 4 tiers of ladders to the lighthouse top and were rewarded by a panoramic view of the beautiful red sand beaches stretching off to the left and right, and the deep blue see straight ahead.

We had set a second goal of driving to the North Cape lighthouse, so after our late lunch we drove up the western coastal road to the North Cape. The red sand being washed into the offshore currents created a fluid, contrasting panorama of intermingled red and blue that was quite unique.

We saw the windmills at the North Cape before the lighthouse. The North Cape has a windmill experimental station with 4 different types of windmills that were functioning, and two more that were stationary. The lighthouse itself was very ordinary, and the restaurant there was a separate building a ways down the road. I was very glad we had eaten at the West Point lighthouse restaurant.

As it was getting late, we took Mom and decided to shoot straight back on Rt. 2, which appeared to be the quickest route, and fix dinner at camp as early as possible for Mom and ourselves. We got turned around twice, once by lack of a sign and once by a completely misleading sign (turn left instead of go straight), but each time we recovered within a mile. Stopping only to buy nectarines at a fruit shop, we arrived back at camp about 7:30 and made dinner along with a nice campfire to help warm us. It became cold remarkably quickly after the sun went down on each of the clear days on PEI.

I had fixed enough food to also feed Lois and Merlin, so after dinner we watched the campfire and waited for them to return. And waited. And waited. They finally rolled in around 8:30 as it was getting dark. They had also gotten lost twice, taken a slower route after losing the main route, and stopped off for gasoline and power steering fluid, fruit, pictures of all the church steeples, and so forth. They were glad to have a hot meal waiting (vegetarian chili, green beans, and instant mashed potatoes), to which they added fresh strawberries as a dessert. We all washed clothes after dinner, so we got to bed at 10 p.m. instead of our usual 8-9 p.m.

7/17/95 (Monday)

We packed up to drive to Nova Scotia. Unfortunately, Merlin noticed that the trailer was leaking water at a steady drip. He tried to get at it to fix it, but that proved very difficult so he drained the tanks for the day. Monika and I walked back out to the potato stand to buy some more PEI new potatoes while Lois and Merlin prepared the trailer for traveling. No one was at the potato stand; there was just a row of 5 lb. bags of potatoes, a sign saying "$3", and a an old plastic container for the money. What an honor system. I couldn't imagine using the honor system around Washington, D.C.. However, Lois later mentioned that sweet corn is sold on the honor system in rural Wisconsin.

Leaving Strathgartney around 10:30, we visited the Mic-Mac Indian museum and re-created outdoor displays near Charlottetown. I found the outdoor displays slightly hokey but basically authentic. The museum was very informative and I tried to read it all, with Monika pulling on my arm at the end. The custom that fascinated me the most was that at death all of a person's worldly goods were either buried with him, burned, or given away to strangers. That would surely discourage a materialistic, wealth-accumulating society like most western cultures.

Driving along the eastern part of the southern shore of PEI, we arrived at the ferry at 3:15 when they were boarding for a 3:30 departure. We didn't wait more than 5 minutes before boarding (more dumb luck). This ferry was 1 hour, 15 minutes rather than 45 minutes because it was 14 miles across rather than 9 miles across the Northumberland Strait at this point.

I had waited for filling up the car to get back to Nova Scotia, thinking it would be cheaper, but it was only 2 cents a liter difference, 59.9 instead of 61.9 on the island. During our whole time on PEI, we were impressed by the well-kept houses and yards--we only saw one or two "shacks" in all our driving. Also, on the island we saw only 2 farms that had dead cars planted in their lawns, a rather common feature of farms in the U.S. The driving was also noticeably different on PEI than on the mainland. No one tailgated and we saw only about one "impatient" driver per day during each day's drive. All of these factors combined with the perfect weather to give an idyllic impression of the island--the sort of impression that leads to thoughts like, "I'd like to retire here if I could."

We missed linking up with Lois and Merlin after the ferry as Merlin stopped in the first information center as we had planned, but we missed it entirely. Our backup was to meet at the info center at the Camso causeway, so we drove across Nova Scotia, stopping at each of the other information centers, until we reached the one at causeway. I wrote our name in the guest register and left a message for Merlin under "comments" that we were waiting down at the Irving gas station. Since we now knew they were behind us, we waited down at the Irving gas station right before the causeway, with Monika out on the highway in her shorts--she got some honks from the truckers, too.

Meanwhile, Lois and Merlin gave up after waiting over an hour at the ferry and drove the same route, only behind us, arriving at the Irving station around 7:30. Since it was late, we gave up the initial plan to drive to a campsite in the interior of Cape Breton Island and instead curled back about 10 miles to camp at "Hyclass", a nearby private campground on the beach. Fortunately, they had kept two spots next to each other open after we called from the gas station, so we were able once again to camp next to each other.

7/18/95 (Tuesday)

Our goal for the day was to see Louisburg, the reconstructed French fortress on Isle Royale, as Cape Breton Island was then known. From the Camso causeway we took Rt. 104 to Rt. 4 along the shore of Lake Bras D' Or (pronounced "bradoor" locally) to Sydney, then cut South on Rt. 22 to Louisburg. The landscape along this route is rolling wooded hills verging on mountains, but the land is otherwise bare and the mostly evergreen forests give the landscape a more somber flavor than a deciduous forest. The exception was the stretch from East Bay to Sydney, which was a relatively flat, cultivated area with homes and fields in the bottom lands of the river valley.

Since we started about 10 and had lunch in the town of Louisburg, we didn't get to the fort until 2. The attendants in the visitor's center noticed Mom when we arrived and offered us a special parking permit and the use of a wheelchair to save Mom walking. We accepted, which made the rest of the afternoon much less strenuous for Mom, which was good as we stayed for almost 4 hours until closing time at 6 p.m.

The accuracy of the reconstructed quarter of the fort and town was excellent. After a 45-minute guided tour that was a very good introduction and overview of the fortress, Monika and I walked about a bit. We bought some "Soldier's bread" which was a very dense loaf of half wheat and half rye flour. The re-enactor said the original bread was about 80% rye and 20% wheat, but this was easier to cook. We like our bread tough rather than floppy, so it suited us to a T, and we just broke off hunks and chewed on them as we walked.

We met the folks in one of the reconstructed inns, where they were having a snack, and added our bread to their repast. Dipped into the brown sugar, the hunks of bread really tasted good and made a very filling snack. Afterwards, Lois and Merlin split off while Mom, Monika and I saw a film about the history of Louisburg (Mom got in a nap during the film), and then visited the Royal Barracks. It was amazing how the time flew by, and I wish we had made a longer visit--Lois, Merlin, and Mom may re-visit Louisburg on the way back.

The weather had held at cold, windy and cloudy (but no rain) during our afternoon at Louisburg, but when we started our drive back it began to rain cats and dogs. It was already late for dinner, so we stopped at a nice-looking restaurant at St. Peters. The service was awful. It was so slow that some people left before being served and our dinner took over 2 hours total--I gave less than my usual 15% tip.

It was after 9 and quite dark by the time we left the restaurant. Mom found the driving on the dark, wet, 2-lane roads to be very stressful to watch, and it was a little stressful to do it, too. When we returned to camp, our tent, which was not staked down, had been pushed together by the gusty winds, and our sleeping bags were damp from the wet tent walls laying on them. So I had to find the stakes (in the rain), pull the tent back into shape (in the rain), and stake out the tent the way I should have done earlier (in the rain). Outside of crawling into damp sleeping bags (unpleasant), things went reasonably well until the next morning except for the condensation dripping down from the inside of the rain fly thru the screen ceiling area of the tent. Otherwise, the tent was watertight, thank goodness. I slept OK, but Monika was kept awake by the wind and rain during the rest of the night.

7/19/95 (Wednesday)

The morning dawned cold and foggy but the wind had dropped down during the night to nearly calm. Still, we were cold and wet, and eating breakfast whilst sitting on a wet picnic bench was not an enchanting prospect. We didn't want to intrude on the folks in the trailer at that early an hour, so we drove off to find breakfast. We were just down the road a few miles on our way to town when we passed "Karen's Place", a restaurant/deli/bakery combination. It looked cozy, so we stopped and went in for a breakfast of french toast and a fat free blueberry muffin (me) and the "heart attack special" of sausages, eggs, and home-fried potatoes (Monika). While we were eating, I pondered the somewhat strange combination of functions of Karen's Place and suddenly had an idea. Why not have them bake Mom a 92nd birthday cake, invite the folks to Karen's Place tomorrow for breakfast, and surprise Mom with the cake right after breakfast? It sounded like a good plan and I was very happy when the proprietor agreed to cook and decorate the cake by the next day.

When we returned to camp the other folks were stirring. As they had breakfast in the trailer, we held a pow-wow on our plans for the day. Initially, we had planned to drive around the top tip of Cape Breton Island, but we figured that beautiful scenery wouldn't do us any good if we couldn't see it. We discussed alternatives in our usual fashion, with no one really wanting to make a decision. We all do this to be polite to each other, but the dithering and vacillation drives Monika crazy.

I had heard good things about the Alexander Graham Bell museum, which was on the Lake Bras D'Or, but on the northern shore rather than the southern shore we had driven to see Louisburg. I figured that if the museum was a bust we would still have time to make a smaller loop around the top of the island without getting onto the unpaved roads which Merlin wanted to avoid. This seemed to suit everyone, so we set off around 10. We stopped to buy gas, fill tires and buy power steering fluid (Merlin), and pop off a hubcap to get rid of the stones that were rattling in it (me).

The scenery along the very long lake was just beautiful, like I imagine Scottish lochs are like. Surprisingly, it is a salt-water lake with two outlets to the sea that we found on the map, but no tides. The outlets are narrow and I suppose that the inflow and outflow are not enough to cause a noticeable tide. The tops of the hills and ridges were still fog-shrouded, so we couldn't see anything from the heights, but the valleys were clear and afforded us the great views. It was a very somber looking landscape, partly no doubt due to the low grey skies and fog shrouded hills.

We arrived at Baddeck about 12:30, and decided to have lunch rather than wait until after finishing our museum visit as that would be too long for Mom to wait. This was also fine with us as we had eaten about 7-8 that morning and were getting hungry by that time. We lunched at a restaurant one block from the museum which had all the windows in its dining room facing the harbor and lake. I knew this restaurant catered to tourists when we were asked at the door if we wanted "smoking or non-smoking", and when the menu featured "Heart Smart" low-fat offerings. Neither of these things had occurred at anyplace else we had eaten in Canada, which affected me particularly. In desperation for salad with some kind of dressing, I had taken to asking for vinegar only dressing, which I sloshed on to give the salad at least some kind of flavor (bitter, but flavorful). When the lighthouse restaurant on P.E.I. didn't have vinegar, I tried Monika's suggestion of lots or salt and pepper. This also imparts some flavor to salad, but I went too heavy on the pepper and ended up sneezing. After lunch we finally got to the Bell museum.

The exhibits in the Bell Museum itself were arranged in a chronological order, starting with his family and his profession of teaching the deaf to speak, which gave him insights on "undulating current" and lead to the development of the telephone. Bell never used "Hello" to answer the phone--he and Watson always said "Yo" or something like that. The museum had a ordered set of telephones from the very earliest to the turn of the century in a display case, and Mom recognized the middle one as being like what they had on the farm in Michigan, only "not so fancy" she said.

Bell, after fighting off patent infringers for 15 years and finally realizing a good financial return on his invention, continued to tinker and invent for most of the rest of his life. My kind of guy. He got into aviation with Glenn Curtis and the development of a practical hydrofoil. Bell, Curtis, and the gang developed the aileron approach to roll control in aircraft. His approach to aviation research was very systematic--I saw propellers canted at every 10-degree interval from 10 degrees pitch to 80 degrees pitch, and another set with the chord varied systematically from very thin to quite thick. They were all tested to find the maximum thrust configuration. That systematic approach is very similar to the Wright brothers who systematically tested different thicknesses of airfoils in their wind tunnel before building scale model kites and finally developing the Wright Flyer. Bell also advocated building scale models to test ideas before the "real thing".

We were all finished by about 4:00 p.m., and then engaged in another discussion about whether to try a small loop drive over to Inverness and back to camp or go back the way we came. It had cleared a little, but there was still a low overcast, so I didn't think the views would be very good. Also, Merlin had to add more power steering fluid and the power steering pump was starting to howl, neither of which were good signs. Merlin, Lois, and Mom left the decision to Monika and I, and Monika left it to me.

I decided to return directly to camp so that we would have a final relaxed evening with the folks before departing for Virginia on the morrow. As it turned out, that was a good decision as Lois and Monika were able to play recorder duets, I was able to elicit a couple more stories for Mom's autobiography, and Merlin was able to check out his car. Around 8 p.m., we trooped down to the beach recreation area to hear a 15-year-old girl play bagpipes for an hour. She was very good and the setting sun and still water on the bay gave some nice photographic opportunities.

7/20/95 (Thursday)

It's never too hard to convince Mom to go out to eat, and Lois and Merlin had been let in on my plan, so we drove over to Karen's shortly after 9 a.m. We had a jolly breakfast, and then surprised Mom with the cake and with the videotape of the sequel to "Anne of Green Gables" and a box full of applesauce and various types of jam. She was happy and although it was very hard to leave such friendly people after breakfast, we left on a “high note” as Monika put it.

Given our 10:30 start for the day's driving, we made reasonable time. We chose to try a different route through New Brunswick to see what that would be like. After returning to Moncton, we headed due West to Fredericton instead of southwest toward the coast. The first thing we noticed as we left Nova Scotia was the shift from English-only street signs to English-French bilingual signs. In New Brunswick, our route followed land which was farmed to a large extent, which contrasted with the stark, empty forests of most of Cape Breton. The houses and yards well still largely well-kept, although not as uniformly so as on P.E.I.

We stopped early, around 5:00, as we wanted to have time to take a walk and work on sewing a ripped seam in the tent. When I was yanking on the floor of the tent prior to staking it out in the rainstorm, I had heard a funny pop-pop-pop sound but didn't think more about it. But when rolling up the tent our final day in Nova Scotia, I saw that the corner I had been pulling on was almost ripped off the tent--I had heard the stitches giving way. So Monika sewed the tent while I cooked dinner. Afterwards we hiked for about an hour and a half down the campground access road to an amusement area called Woolastook Park. It combined several water slides, miniature golf, and an animal park which looked like a fenced off outdoor zoological area. It was late and we were just out getting exercise, so we didn't do any of those things, although we might have tried the mini-golf if their prices had been more reasonable. Altho the weather looked very threatening and spattered us with raindrops while we hiked back to camp, it held off any serious rain that evening, allowing us to have our final evening campfire.

7/21/95 (Friday)

Monika's fix on the tent held up well. We had our final morning campfire while we had breakfast, but we knew we had a lot of territory to cover, so we left around 6:30. We were not in too much of a hurry to take the scenic route through Maine, so we branched off our original path to St. Croix to take U.S. 6 back to Bangor. The shacks on the U.S. side of the border were a marked contrast to the consistently well-kept Canadian houses. We also noticed abandoned cars left to rot in the yards much more frequently in the U.S., which is another type of eyesore. After Bangor, we flew down Interstate 95 through Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts, stopping off in Concord, Mass. to take a Volksmarch there.

We were initially mislead because the HoJo's had become a Best Western, but I guessed at the situation because the roof shape was still the characteristically steep-pitched HoJo style of roof. The VM was routed nicely through an area of beautiful estates (3-car garages were de rigueur) to the small downtown area (mostly tourist-oriented boutiques), and finally to the National Park which covers the area on which the opening shots of the Revolutionary War were fired. I had finally gotten to the right Concord.

The reconstructed wooden bridge of Revolutionary times was at the site and a series of panels explained the encounter between the British and the Minutemen. This was a piece of historical ground Monika and I had never seen before, and I enjoyed it very much. So much, in fact, that we were way later than our usual 2-hour pace for an 11 kilometer VM--this one required an extra half hour for all my reading.

Continuing toward Connecticut, we started to encounter massive backups at the toll interchanges, causing us to divert to Springfield, Mass. and drop down to Hartford, Conn. on I-91. The curious and disturbing thing in Connecticut was that the state posted speed limits on some interstates as low as 45 mph, but the drivers consistently did 75-80 mph no matter what speed limit was marked. It was as if the unreasonably low posted speed limits had trained the drivers to completely ignore the posted speed limit instead of using it as a rough guide to set one's speed. For instance, I usually go 4-5 mph over the limit, but in Connecticut the majority of drivers were routinely 20-30 mph over the limit.

It was getting late (8:00) when we approached Hartford, the sun was setting, and we were both dog tired, so we searched for a place to stay for the night. Monika wanted a motel, so we first stopped at a Motel 6, but the cheapest 1-bed room that they had was $ 59.00! Needless to say, we continued on and tried a campground at Kettletown State Park, and much to my surprise (Monika's disappointment), they still had two spaces available.

Again we experienced dumb luck in getting a site, but even I began to wonder if it was good or bad dumb luck when I realized that we were near enough to the bathrooms to hear the toilets flushing and that the people five sites over were playing their boombox loud enough to keep the entire campground "entertained". Although we had experienced the same type of loud-talking, loud-music discourtesy earlier on our trip in the U.S., we never experienced this kind of thing in Canada. There must be different cultural expectations and norms about camping, and I much prefer the Canadian "enjoy nature" emphasis to the U.S. "party hearty" folks. The boombox folks finally turned it down and people stopped going to the bathroom, so we were able to get to sleep, but much later than usual.

7/22/95 (Saturday)

I awoke around 5:30 as usual, but couldn't get back to sleep for thinking about the drive around New York. The only times I've driven thru N.Y. city have been nerve-wracking disasters, so the question was not whether to avoid N.Y. city or not, but rather how big a detour we wanted to make around the city. On previous trips, we have crossed the Hudson upstream and taken the "far out" detours over parts of N.Y. state to avoid the city, but this time we decided to take the toll bridge right above N.Y. city that leads to the start of the New Jersey Turnpike. I hoped that being a Saturday and having an early start would reduce the traffic along the route. We didn't have a morning campfire, but rather did an quick "instant oatmeal" breakfast, packed, and left by 6:30.

In the event, it turned out that my fears were overblown. Perhaps the route and the time were right, but there was only moderately heavy traffic at worst and small backups at the toll booths. Another unpleasant memory I had of the N.J. Turnpike was bathrooms that were really nasty, with all the doors ripped off the stalls so you couldn't get any privacy. However, the rest areas have apparently been renovated and commercialized into "food courts" with a decent choice of vendors. Best of all, the bathrooms were quite nice and clean (with doors). Traffic flowed at a steady 65-70, and we arrived home by about 1:30, exhausted by the 3 days of driving but relaxed by a nice two weeks cam ping.