Hartt Island RV Resort (Sept. 8)
The trip from Ellsworth to Fredericton is very pretty, through wooded countryside. It cannot be denied that winter is coming, as the trees are beginning to turn red. We also had some interesting cloud effects. We kept expecting to see a face in the hole in the clouds in the photo below!
Signs on the road kept exhorting us to watch out for moose. There is no question that an encounter with a moose would leave both us and the moose the worse for wear, as a male can weigh up to 1500 lb, and even the smaller female can weigh up to 1000 lb. Still, we were disappointed not to see any, despite a lot of promising swampy countryside.
Neither the scenery nor the cloudy sky nor the moose warning signs changed much after we crossed the Canadian border. We now know that Canadian customs does not care about importing food, and care only minimally about alcohol. (You are allowed the equivalent of 2 bottles of wine per person, and that is more than we usually have on hand.) So, so far our crossings have been uneventful.
As usual, we pulled into the campground in the late afternoon. Hartt Island is a “resort” near Fredericton with a heated pool with water slide and minigolf. The camping area is basically a parking lot, but here is the view from our site. The water is the St. John River, and the scenery was breath-taking in every direction.
The path next to the water is a biking and hiking trail that is part of the Trans-Canada Trail – 24,000 km of connected trail (mostly RailTrail) stretching from the Alaska border to Vancouver Island to Prince Edward Island and Labrador. It also has lots of side trails, and links up with the Appalachian Trail (although it is much tamer).
Rumple has been waking me up at about the same time each morning, and our first morning in Fredericton was much the same. However, when we crossed the border, we also changed time zones. So, now it is an hour later, for me at least, which is easier to handle, even if I am still catching a glimpse of sunrise.
The early morning walk usually doubles as a “bird walk” as I record what I see and send it off to eBird. I saw both a bald eagle and a hummingbird, which I think means I saw the largest and smallest birds in the northeast within a few minutes of one another.
Saturday is the Farmers’ Market in Fredericton, and the bicycle trail goes directly from the campground into town. (10 km). Once we got to town, it was a bit harder to find the market than we expected, but Google maps did get us there.
The Farmers’ Market has a lot of food stalls as well as farm goods and crafts. The line-up at the samosa place was extremely long. I have concluded that this is not so much a matter of Canadians embracing diversity, as of the integration of Indian food into the Canadian diet — like tacos and burritos in the US. Fresh samosas are available in the prepared food section of the supermarkets, along with the cole slaw and BBQ chicken, etc.
I was thrilled to see several booths serving my personal Maritime favorite – the Halifax donair. ( http://www.foodnetwork.ca/shows/great-canadian-cookbook/blog/the-delicious-history-of-the-halifax-donair/) Unfortunately, one donair has enough calories to fill my daily quota – unless I use up a donair’s worth of calories biking 10 km in each direction to pick it up. I enjoyed my donair lunch. Chuck was not impressed and is sticking to hamburgers.
We filled my bicycle basket with veggies and a bottle of blueberry wine, and then headed off to see downtown Fredericton. As is our habit, we read all the historical signs we could find, and meandered around the main street. Note the crosswalk. Although fall is in the air, the gardens were still in good shape.
This celebration of Canada’s 150th birthday was in a park near the harbor. The building behind the sign is the original barracks of the British fort, and is now the historical museum (but it was closed.).
Upon returning to the campground, we planned to play mini-golf (which came with the campsite). Unfortunately, just as we got our clubs and balls, the rain started. We were lucky, however, that it had held off until we returned from our bicycle trip. And we were treated to a beautiful sunset. And then it rained some more.
We decided to stay another day to kayak in the St. John River. It turns out that this placid looking river, has a very strong current. It was like paddling in an infinity swimming pool – I paddled as hard as I could just to stay in one place. We did manage to get upstream just enough to be able to cross the river and explore a bit around the islands, although it was a struggle to get back to our original launch site. The photo was taken in a rare spot where a back eddy kept me from being swept away.
The river is home to many bald eagles. During our upstream travel, we saw two eagles fighting, talons to talons. After we landed, we saw a family of 4 eagles soaring over the campground.
After kayaking, we decided to make another try for mini-golf. This time the weather held. This was a much more challenging course than the one on Cape Cod. The course had a lot of different themes – not just jungle animals. But the animal holes required getting pretty personal with the props!
We decided to play through twice, and each of us won once. Any thoughts we had of a 3rd round were squelched in the name of domestic harmony and our need to get a good night sleep before our departure in the morning.
Our motivation for stopping in Fredericton was simply to break up the trip to PEI. But Fredericton turned out to have a lot to offer, and we could easily have extended our visit.