Back in the ol' U.S.of A

Sunday, August 26th, 2007 St. John, New Brunswick to Ellsworth, Maine

196.0 Miles
FOG and later some sun


I was late getting started today – heavy duty fog, so heavy that I couldn’t see the RV two rows away. It was noon before I got moving.

I’m sorry there was still so much fog. St. John is a really lovely city. Reminds me of the Seattle area. Not as heavily populated, of course, but the trees, the hills, the colors, the homes peeking thru the trees. Really a pretty town!

There was a heavy scent of pine in the air today – really wonderful!! Sure is better is person than from a Christmas candle!! Or the spray can for the artificial Christmas trees!

Seems raccoons are as dumb as the rabbits in Arizona – there are lots of suicides by the ring-tailed critters. Must be night creatures, because I’ve sure not seen one in the daytime. Poor little guys.

More claims to fame – St. George is the “Gateway to the Fundy Coast”, and St. Andrews, just a little further down the road just calls itself the “resort area”. OK.

And interesting graffiti – GONAD. Huh? Gee I hope that’s not someone’s name!

As I approached St. Stephens, my palms started sweating! Good thing I didn’t need to shake anyone’s hand when I crossed the border! But I must have some special flag on my coach – three RVs in front of me just breezed right through the border crossing. I was waved over for an inspection. This is getting old! But at least they just inspected my papers and let me go.

This picture is taken crossing the bridge at the border as I'm entering the U.S.

I had decided to take the inland route heading south – partly because Maggie and I had taken the coast route when heading into Canada (and it was magnificent!!), and partly because it was still really foggy, so would be slow. Since I had a late start, I figured taking the shorter inland road was wise.

Hwy 9 is definitely a higher quality road than most I’ve seen lately – two lanes, but smooth and nice. But the inland route is pretty boring. Pretty much just trees, and I’ve seen plenty of trees. Also, it appears that the locals use this road, probably to avoid the tourist traffic, and it’s seriously manned by the cops. Busy cops.

Drove by the Church of the Open Bible. That’s a new one to me. But the building next door to the church is Lord’s Well Drilling and Supplies. Hmmmmm.

You may spot on the map that I made a little detour from the planned route. It was unintentional. I saw a sign pointing to the town I was headed toward and made the turn, without looking at the map program. Oops. And by the time I realized it wasn’t the correct road, it was way too late. Tiny two lane road, very rural area, with no place to turn around. No big deal – it paralleled the road I should have been on. But this was truly rural – a lot of the redneck jokes may have been photographed here. Yards full of dead cars. Yards full of trash. Sad.

Thru here I wasw seeing an odd little slice of nature - the trees lining the road, and presumably everywhere, were loaded with the oddest looking webs - they seemed to be encasing something. Out on the ends of limbs, they are really big. I wrote to my good friend Roger, in Arizona, who has always been able to answer almost any question I throw at him. He's familiar with them, of course, and I just have to put his response here! "We called them 'Tent Caterpillars. They come out in late summer (see, it's late summer already im ME. They show up later in PA). Only certain trees host them.... The tents contain thousands of the larvae of a certain kind of caterpiller common throughout the N.E. After they pupate, They will be found in great numbers all over lawns and sidewalks for a few weeks. Without consulting the books, I know nothing more useful. I wasn't into that stuff much as a kid, growing up in the N.E. All I knew is how much fun it was to squish the caterpillars underfoot!" My kinda kid!

Saw one restaurant that seemed to draw the locals though. Porky Sue’s Place. Good thing I wasn’t hungry.

The fog had finally lifted by the time I reached the coast. Sunshine and 83 degrees! Hurray!!

I have a little p.s. here - my apologies for not having my little weather thingy over on the right be current these last few weeks. I simply cannot figure out how to get it to show the Canadian cities. I really tried! But now I'm back in the real world (no offense to our neighbor) and can keep it relatively current!