SEPTEMBER 18, 2018
When I got up this morning the clouds had cleared and the sun was making it's way over the horizon painting the sky a beautiful pink and yellow. Carol was still snoozing so I began the morning as we always do, by putting on the coffee. Recently we had purchased a small (1 liter) electric tea kettle, and since we are hooked to shore power I decided to try her out and see if it works. I had boiling water within a couple of minutes, just enough time to put the drip filters on the cups. Carol started moving as I was dripping the coffee and we sat and watched the morning begin along the St. John's river.
A pair of loons were playing in the river and I got a couple of good shots but as always I wish the birds had been a bit closer. I cooked up some bagels and eggs for breakfast and as we ate the neighbors pulled away. We had a leisurely morning as today was another travel day - and one with conflicting data. Google said we had 3 hours and 45 minutes to drive, Apple maps said we had 4 and a half hours and the GPS on the car said almost five...of course none of this really matters as we are prone to stopping along the way and listening to the calm voice of our GPS say "Recalculating". We wandered our way along the back roads from the Great bear campground, stopped at a 'First Nation' gas station ($1.23 Canadian per liter - who knows what I paid in US dollars for a gallon).
We found our way back to Route 2, the TransCanada Highway and toward Nova Scotia. We also found a Tim Hortons and drew the interest of a Canadian soldier stationed near the Tims' -he sure like the Vistabule and got a quick tour. Somewhere along the highway it began to rain and when I turned on the wipers, the blade on Carol's side of the car was flung off into the weeds, never to be seen again. Carol and I looked at each other in disbelief and had a laugh. Further down the road, like an hour later, we found a replacement blade and everything was back to normal. We are guessing the it somehow had gotten loosened when we were cleaning sap off the windshield earlier in the day. We had parked under a pine, lesson learned. At the wiper blade stop we got some food so we could eat lunch in the car. Also we found a farm market called 'The Green Pig'.
Here we purchased fresh vegetables and a locally made 'Green Pig' brand loaf of multigrain bread. As we crossed over into Nova Scotia it began to spit a fine Rain once again and we got dampened just a bit as we visited the Nova Scotia welcome center and loaded up on maps, brochures and local knowledge. Just down the road from here we turned off the TransCanada Highway and onto a long and winding road headed toward the Bay of Fundy and Five Islands Provincial Park. The speed limit here was about 80 KPH or about 50 MPH and sometime down to 25 and 30 MPH. Our gas mileage dropped form 23 to 21 and we kept climbing and descending.
We arrived at the park around 5:30 or so, I don't exactly recall and it really doesn't matter anyway but got all checked in after selecting the site with the perfect view. We could only keep this site or one night as it had been reserved for the next evening, but we had this view to ourselves this evening. We set up the Clam, our screen shelter so we could sit in comfort and look at the islands in the Bay of Fundy from our high bluff camp. The wind was beginning to pick up so we attached a couple of side panels to the screen house and sat snuggled in out of the wind and had super. By the time it was time to turn in the wind was really gusting so I tied the shelter to the car with a makeshift guy line. It worked as it was still there in the morning.
