The moose we saw along our walk towards the boat	Entrance to the fjord in Western Brook Pond	One of several waterfalls	This is called "Pissing Mares" waterfall	Silhouette of man on top of mountain	There was even some snow left in the mountains

We got up on Friday morning to see, guess what, blue skies!!!  We packed up the coach and left Rocky Harbour, heading south for one more leg of the southbound trip to Port-Aux-Basques and the ferry to Nova Scotia.  We returned to Corner Brook for a quick stay that included such mundane activities as grocery shopping, a haircut for Norm, downloading e-mails at a local bank, and some on-line banking.  We even got a rare opportunity to go to the movies.  We walked out of Pirates of the Caribbean after a short time and went to see The Return of Superman.  Shelley thought that it was OK, and Norm was ready to walk out of that movie also.  Since a caravan is coming into this campground tomorrow morning, we have to be out of here by a little after 10, so we'll need to be up and ready.   [Kinsmen Prince Edward Campground - Corner Brook, Newfoundland - 48.58 N / 57.54 W ]  

Saturday found us up and ready early. Its been pretty sunny since we started heading south...as if the sun was happy to see us go.  We drove about 130 miles to a campground close to the ferry, we have a 9 AM reservation for Sunday morning.  Like almost all of the campgrounds that we've stopped at since we left CT, this one was pretty empty.  Their season is really short, most are open from 6/15-9/15 - its hard to understand how they survive financially.  [Little Paradise RV Park - Port Aux Basques, Newfoundland - 47.46 N / 59.17 W]

We got up bright and early on Sunday morning and arrived at the ferry terminal at 8 AM, right on schedule.  The passengers were the only ones on time, as the ferry didn't get in until 11:05 and we left about 11:45, more then 2 hours late.  Our friends from Texas, Gene and Judy were also on the ferry and we spent most of the trip over shooting the breeze.  Norm managed to watch the World Cup soccer final with a crowd of others.  We arrived in North Sydney, Nova Scotia at about 6:30 p.m., and we drove off the ferry and just kept going.  Our friends Mo and Mary Guffy were probably with a caravan at a nearby campground.  We thought about stopping to visit, but we heard that there were 5 caravans there, and not a bit of space.  So we drove by, and drove past Baddeck and all the way to Antigonish, where we again stopped at the Visitor's Bureau for a free night of camping.  [Visitor's Bureau - Antigonish, Nova Scotia - 45.37 N / 61.59 W].

On Monday, 7/10 we got up, did some shopping at a supermarket, and hit the road.  It was the longest day on the road since 5/24, and we drove all the way through Nova Scotia and through part of the province of New Brunswick.  We didn't pick our campground until the last minute, and ended up at a large campground in the middle of a municipal park, right in the middle of Saint John.  There was a caravan of 24 RVs, and they were on their way up North for a 40 day trip.  Shelley spent most of the afternoon doing wash and getting things dried in the damp air, which ended up with dense fog late in the day.  There was lots to do in Saint John, so we set out on Tuesday morning to see the sights.  Downtown wasn't far away, so we drove over and parked our car.  Our first stop was the Jewish Museum of Saint John.  Norm found this one of the most memorable stops in almost 2 years of driving around.  In the 1960's there was a flourishing Jewish community in Saint John of about 2,500 families, and there were 2 congregations in town.  We were told that today there are about 25 or 30 Jewish families in town that are temple members.  According to a pamphlet, "In the 1970's and 1980's the community started diminishing with the migration of children to universities and opportunities in larger centres.  Often parents followed in their retirement years." The Hebrew school has 3 students, and the last Bar Mitzvah was 4 years ago.  The museum was created in 1986 "to preserve our heritage and to share with with the larger community."  We visited the synagogue of Congregation Shaarei Zedek, and it was beautiful, but it is only used during the high holidays.  It is too vast a building to heat in the wintertime with such a small congregation attending.  The rest of the time, services are held in a little chapel in the museum building.  Following this, we went to the City Market, where lots of meat and fresh fruit is sold, along with a potpourri of other stuff.  There are a number of little places to eat there. Among the more interesting foods for sale is Dulse.  This is a type of seaweed that grows naturally on rocks along the seacoast.  The Dulse is collected, dried for 6 hours and then eaten as a nosh, like potato chips.  Norm was brave enough to try it; it was very salty with a strange consistency, but he survived - Shelley wouldn't even consider tasting it!  We descended to an underground shopping mall that snaked through the downtown area and connected some aboveground businesses.  I guess it makes shopping easier during the cold winters.  We also stopped at the New Brunswick Museum which features a full length model (and also a skeleton) of a 49 foot long right whale which died about 12 years ago. It also had furnishings and artwork from New Brunswick and around the world.  We found it very interesting.  After that, we walked outside and found Barbours General Store.  It is a restored 19th century country store containing some 2,000 artifacts, including grocery items, china, farm tools and kitchen utensils.  It was jam packed with signs all over the place "Do Not Touch"!  We had a few more things to see, so we left the rig on Wednesday morning and headed out.  The AAA tour book mentioned a tour of a brewery with free samples, so we thought we'd do that.  But first we visited the Reversing Falls.  Imagine a water fall that dropped a river by12 feet as it entered a bay.  Now imagine the tides in the Bay of Fundy raising the water level by 20 feet.  Suddenly the water would flow up the river. Now, combine this with water depths that vary from 10-15 feet to over 150 feet, giving rise to whirlpools and eddies, and you get the Reversing Falls.  We were there at slack tide, so we didn't see the turmoil of rapid flows.  Next we drove a short distance to see the Carleton Martello Tower, a remnant from the War of 1812 placed on the highest point of Saint John, initially to help defend the city from American troops.  This circular tower, 4 stories high was used as a lookout in defense of the harbor from 1815 until the end of the 2nd World War.  While the views were impressive, the dense fog, which came and went during the whole time we were in Saint John, obscured most of the view.  I'm not sure if a lookout tower does much good if its fogged in.  That evening, at the campground, a caravan of old cars came for a visit.  There were about 15 or 20 antique cars, all in excellent shape.  [Rockwood Park - Saint John, New Brunswick - 45.18 N / 66.03 W] 

Shaarei Zedek small chapel	Shaarei Zedek main chapel	Shelley with the Dulse	Barbours General Store	Antique MG

On Thursday morning, 7/13,another foggy day, we hitched up our car and set out.  We had exchanged our Canadian money back for American on the previous day, but suddenly we were faced with a toll of $1.05 to cross the Saint John River.  I guess we weren't the first to face this, as the toll collector was glad to take American money.  The border crossing was at the Canadian town of St. Stephen, and it took us about an hour to inch through the town until we got through immigration.  We were worried that they were going to confiscate some of our food, but we escaped any such penalty.  The trip down the Maine Coast was slow, with the rain and drizzle combined with the narrow bumpy road called "Coastal Route 1".  We found our campground, pulled into our site and got all hooked up and leveled.  Then Shelley went to pay.....she came back irate, upset and really ticked.  Part of the sign in procedure included asking us if we had any pets.....when she told the office staff that we had a small dog, they told her that the dog couldn't be left alone in the coach. That's the first time that we heard that one.  They expected us to take Rags with us in the car wherever we went, regardless of the fact that there is a heat wave, 80 - 90 degrees outside.  We called a few other Bar Harbor Campgrounds, and they all had the same rule!!!  Norm went back up to the office and just told them we would follow all their rules, all the time knowing that we would be leaving Rags alone when we went sightseeing.  Who would know, as long as he stopped his barking relatively soon after we left.  So, we calmed down - or at least Shelley did....Norm stayed calm throughout!  We went out for dinner with our neighbors in the next campsite, who used to live not far from us in CT!!  Talk about a small world....  Anyway, we each had an "a la carte lobster" plus a salad bar for $17.98.  Not too bad!!  On Friday we went to Acadia National Park, a place of unspectacular beauty with incredible views and the well known Maine rocky coastline.  We had many great views of the coast, one from Cadillac Mountain, the highest point on the Atlantic seacoast at 1,500 feet.  Acadia was the first National Park east of the Mississippi, and is the only park composed entirely of land donated by private citizens.  They were the super rich, who built a society in Bar Harbor comparable to that of Newport, RI.  They bought the land themselves and then donated it to the federal government.  These huge mansions as well as much of the rest of the area were ruined in a large fire of 1947.  Following our travel around the loop road and trip to the top of Cadillac Mountain we drove into the town of Bar Harbor.  We were both unimpressed by the town.  It seems as if its nothing very different than all of the other touristy places that we've visited - too many shops and too many people.  We got a phone call from one of our RVing friends from Connecticut whom we've meet in Lafayette, Louisiana and now here in Maine.  We met them for dinner, along with their friend from Bar Harbor and went back to their friend's house.  We all got to talking and realized that each of the three couples has lost a child.  Our friend's son Patrick, died 18 years ago from an auto accident.  Their friend Bob lost his 4 hour old infant son from a medical mistake in the hospital.  Our beloved daughter Amy died almost 3 years ago - how can that be already???  It was so heart rendering to be able to speak about our grief and loss with others that can fully understand - and how sad that we each experienced such a life changing grief filled event.  [Bar Harbor Campground - Bar Harbor, Maine - 44.26 N / 68.16 W]    

View from the top of Cadillac Mountain	Shelley on top of Cadillac Mountain	Acadia National Park	View from the Loop Road	Sand Beach from the Loop Road	Boats at the dock in Bar Harbor