Maine-ly fine

Once again here I am, connected to wireless internet, this time at the Holiday Inn in the city of Saint John in the Canadian province of New Brunswick. Sitting by the pool actually as the kids needed a swim after yet another day of driving and then an hour or so of school work. We popped over the border back into Canada this afternoon from northern Maine. Sadly the weather has turned and it rained this morning as we left Ellsworth, the forecast isn't much better for the next few days as we continue to head north. Maine was great, the fall colours and little New England towns were all we could have hoped for, heaps of white weather-board houses and little white churches with those distinctive steeples. During our stay at the B&B the kids all developed a taste for chess, playing on the main sitting area for a few hours.We parted our Naples B&B on Tuesday morning and headed for the coast. We drove to Brunswick and then followed the coast north on Highway 1. After a winding drive down a peninsula we came across the remains of Fort Popham, built from granite during the Civil War, and smelt something we haven't smelled for a long time... sea air. Ontario is not completely land locked but unless you drive a long way north of Toronto to Hudson Bay you wont see the ocean, the great lakes are of course fresh water (and pollution). So it was nice to see the Atlantic Ocean.We continued north to the Acadia National Park and stopped at Echo Lake where we took a pretty hairy walk up a rocky trail. We stopped short of the summit on reaching a steel ladder, the trail was getting too dangerous for the kids. Luckily the walk through a steep rock fall was thrill enough for them (and us) and we managed a good long walk to shake off the long drive.We stopped in Bar Harbour for dinner and I wished that I'd planned for us to stay there the night, it's like South Yarra at Philip Island, really nice place. Dinner was more clam chowder and lobster bisque, I had some buffalo shrimp too, awesome, the kids were over seafood and stuck to the pasta for a change. A short drive back to Ellsworth, further inland, and we stopped at the Comfort Inn for the night. we were supposed to have ajoining rooms but they couldn't find the key to the door so we left the kids in their own room and gave them our room phone number in case of emergency, Jo and I enjoyed a rare night of relative peace. Woke to driving rain this morning and got moving after a far more successful continental breakfast than the last one. Luckily the rain stopped when we did at Schoodic Point and we jumped out of the car and into a hard wind to watch the Atlantic waves smash against the rocky shoreline. Our search for a cute costal village, complete with fish and chips and quaint antique shops failed pretty badly. We mostly found badly run down coastly villages that had seen better days and the antique shops were mostly of the junk variety. We didn't stick around long and decided that the best idea was to get to the border quickly, have a late lunch and then push on to Saint John, our stop for tonight. Lunch was at Calais on the US side of the border and we quickly jumped back into Canada where Jo and I immediately stopped at Timmies for a coffee. Shortly after entering Canada the fog and mist rolled in and we drove the 100 of so K's to Saint John with about 100m visibility. Tomorrow we plan to head up the Bay of Fundy to Hopewell Rocks where the highest tides in the world are, the difference between high and low tide is usually 12 metres and can be as much as 16m. Low tide is at 11:40 in the morning so hopefully we can walk out to and around the rocks which are uniquely carved by the massive tides. Plenty of new photos on the site.

Andy, out.