A Long Travel Day
It was a good day to continue on the way home. Basically a travel day, we took our usual early start out from Five Islands Provincial Park and took mostly back roads up to Amherst, NS where we joined the highway. It wasn't long until we were in New Brunswick.
We briefly considered going to Fundy National Park, but a quick check of their reservations website showed the park totally full, so it was off to the border.
After a coffee stop just outside of Moncton at the Second Cup, purveyors of fine coffee and fine oatcakes, we were on our way southwest towards St. John. About halfway there we detoured off he highway for a long section of twisty back roads which were the inland portion of the Fundy Trail. I took it to surprise Ellen by going through the home town of her great-grandmother in the town of Upham, NB.
It was back on the highway from St. John to the border at St. Stephen. As we got closer, I was increasingly nervous at what awaited us. We have gone in and out of Canada many times, but the horror stories in the news of overzealous border guards holding people for no reason and tearing up their property was a bit concerning.
I finally decided to go through the crossing between downtown St. Stephen and downtown Calais rather than the big new multi-lane station that the signs on the highway lead to. I have been through the small downtown crossing since I was seven (70 years ago), first traveling with my grandparents to summer on PEI and later on my own on our many visits to the Maritimes. We have never had any problems besides having to give up citrus fruits, tomatoes and avocados (Well there was the incident in 1968, but that is best forgotten).
This time was no exception. The agent was very friendly and we chatted about our trip. There was a pleasant older woman who was the agriculture inspector, who went through our cupboards and refrigerator with Ellen. All we gave up were mandarins and potatoes. The potatoes only went because the place of origin was not printed on the package. The inspector was almost embarrassed about the potatoes, since it is a brand sold in the local Walmart.
Within 10 minutes, we on our way south on US 1. We figured that we would just drive down Route 1until we got to Belfast and Route 3 over to Augusta...or until we got really tired. The northern part of Route 1 from Calais south has all been repaved so it was smooth going with no traffic until we found ourselves behind a huge trash truck just beyond Machias. We were stuck behind it all the way to the center of Cherryfield where it turned further inland. We went straight and onto a back route through the woods (182) to the outskirts of Ellsworth.
The summer traffic through Ellsworth is horrendous. The town has really gotten overgrown with all the traffic going to and from Mt. Desert and Acadia NP, all on a single road through town leading to US 1 along the coast and 1A from Bangor.
It eased after that, but was never the as quiet as the northern part and we arrived at Belfast at about 5:30pm having driven nearly 425 miles. We considered going up route 3 to Lake St George SP, but was another half hour. We stopped and consulted iOverlander and found that we could park in the lot next to the marina overlooking the harbor. Boondocking it was. We backed up to edge of the lot with a great view and went off to dinner downtown. We chose Darby's which was an old "American" food restaurant. While the interior was quite different, the food and service was reminiscent of Schooners in Hull...but with better selection of beers.
We stopped to pick up ice cream on the way back to Speedy and had it with the perfectly ripe strawberries and oatcakes we got in Nova Scotia (we were amazed they didn't take berries at the border).
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